We are excited to invite a guest blogger to our site today! Let me introduce Roger Grow for A Insurance in Utah! He has been in the insurance industry for many years and is a local expert in understanding how insurance ( or the lack thereof) can affect your life. Today we asked him to write about the value of security cameras in the workplace:
Risk Managers know all about the importance of cameras in the workplace. Employee theft is the #1 risk to inventory and money in any business. The statistics are staggering. The US Chamber of Commerce reports that an employee is 15 times more likely than a nonemployee to steal from an employer. Unfortunately, 75% of employee-related crimes go unnoticed.
The use of visible cameras cut down employee theft by half, and by using cameras that employees are not aware of (in appropriate places) are half the battle as well. They key is they know they can be caught and by catching a few bad apples and prosecuting them to the highest extent of the law it helps reduce the desire to steal. Here are a couple of ways we have seen employees steal.
1. Sometimes employees who shoplift simply carry brand-new merchandise to the trash Dumpster outside the back door during a working day. After dark, they drive up to the Dumpster to load the merchandise into their car. CAUGHT ON HIDDEN CAMERA
2. A restaurant employee loves Prime Rib and feels entitled to taking some home. About once a week when taking the trash out he hides an entire 10lbs of Rib Roast and “empty box” in the back. They employee goes out for a smoke break only to make sure the rib found its way into his truck! CAUGHT ON CAMERA IN PLAIN VIEW!
3. Two long term restaurant employees devised a plan that had it when many people would come in for lunch and order just a salad bar many would pay with a credit card and many would pay with cash. They would store up a cash register receipts from the ones paid with credit cards and give out these when someone paid cash AND POCKET THE MONEY. They were discovered after the restaurant added security camera above the registers. Once handcuffed and taken away the women disclosed that they had been doing this for over 5 years and at the tune of $25,000 each over that time frame! CAUGHT BECAUSE OF THE CAMERA!
Moral of the story is “TRUST, but verify” !
For more info on Roger and A Insurance go to : http://ainsurance.com/