Trust, but Verify: Tips to manage risk of employment theft and fraud from your business
Trust, but Verify. A phrase you may have heard from Ronald Regan during his time as president of the USA. Being an employer, you are the president and leader of your company. A company you may have started from scratch and poured everything into making it a success. You have a team of staff employed to support the business and help it grow and exceed your expectations. The staff have been chosen by you. You trust them and have a good working relationship to know the work will be completed. But how well do you really know them? We often hear leaders and directors tell us how they know their staff well and can tell us about family connections from the chat they had at the kettle last week while making a cup of tea. But do your employees really tell you everything? The answer I’m afraid is no. You could have a brilliant member of staff but for whatever reason a personal matter puts them into financial vulnerability. You may notice they are not as punctual with their time keeping. They may be slightly quieter than normal maybe. You know them though, right? They are continuing to manage your payroll on their own and keeping up with the workload during your own busy workload right? Then you realise money is unaccounted for. Verify. You notice this has been ongoing for over 12 months. Tens of thousands of pounds gone. No trace and it is all gone. That one employee who you knew well and trusted but didn’t verify, has taken thousands from the business. The money has gone. The employee used the money to keep afloat after that personal matter which made them financially vulnerable. Verify. This is the key. Former GP staff member pleads guilty to stealing £22k from surgery A former GP staff member who had taken over the sole banking of cash from payments for prescriptions and other items was not banking the money and keeping it for themselves. This went on from 2019 til 2022 before it was picked up by external accountants. Placing one employee as the sole responsibility for banking and cash transactions is where this GP practice went wrong. They did not evaluate their staff processes to ensure it went through 2 or 3 other employees to verify any transactions. It unfortunately went undetected for nearly 3 years. This employee is currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of fraud by abuse of position and acquiring, using, or possessing criminal property at North East Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court on 27 June 2024. Some tips to manage risk of employment theft and fraud from your business:
- Know your employee – Employees at risk of stealing from your business maybe suffering financially in their personal life. Before employment, we always advise using our background checks. We can verify references, build a picture of their personal life and carry out financial checks to ensure they are not vulnerable to committing theft to help a dire personal situation.
- Notice change in behaviour – Are they turning up to work late? Unusually stressed and short tempered? This may indicate personal problems which could lead to poor judgement. The welfare of employees should be paramount for an effective workforce and spotting any unusual behaviour first could prevent further problems.
- Track your finances – Always keep on top of your finances within the business. Once a month ensure your numbers match up. Doing so regularly can highlight any anomalies quickly. The sooner it is detected the quicker to tracing the culprit and preventing further loss of revenue. Also ensure you are completing the audit to ensure numbers aren’t presented as being tampered with.
- Staff sickness – When an employee is on long term sick that they are being paid for, you want to ensure this is the case. If you have any concerns your employee is fit for work we can carry out surveillance to gather any evidence of wrongdoing. Detecting this quickly again will ensure further loss of revenue.
- Security – Ensure you have well developed security equipment within your business. High quality CCTV systems are an effective deterrent to dishonest employees. This can also ensure employment safety from other staff and the public.
If you have any concerns around your employees or business partners, don’t hesitate to get in touch for a free consultation to discuss how our services can help. And remember, Trust, but Verify! If you need assistance for any of our employment or commercial services, get in touch!
- Employment Investigations
- Surveillance
- Theft/Fraud in the workplace
- Person Tracing
- Asset Tracing
www.taylorinvestigations.co.uk | [email protected] | 01603 904031