Retail crime

According to recent research conducted by the Centre for Retail Research more than 50 percent of theft from stores was committed by store employees. This type of theft is mainly categorised as direct theft by staff or collusion by employees with outsiders.
In addition shoplifting and in store violence is costing retailers £700 million per annum. Despite enormous investment in crime prevention the upward trend shows little sign of abating. Top UK retailers average £29 million in expenditure on loss prevention methods. With a lack of police resources retailers effectively have to spend much more on self-policing.

Whereas large retail conglomerates may be able to afford this level of investment, the small retailers clearly cannot. The best small businesses can normally do is CCTV installation. State of the art technology is often beyond the budget of the smaller stores.

Affordable loss prevention

By far the best form of preventing employees from stealing from you is to employ people who aren’t going to do it. Naturally computerised systems and robust stocktaking helps but in reality no system is infallible.

Paying staff well and having an incentive bonus scheme keeps them happy. However, knowing and being confident in your staff has many benefits when attempting to stop retail crime.

Criminal record checks and verifiable CVs are great but they don’t give you a full insight into the character of a person. Using retail theft polygraph examinations as part of pre-employment screening allows you to verify the honesty of applicants.

The cost of lie detector tests is affordable to most retailers and pays dividends when you compare it to potential loss. Used widely by corporations when screening executives, it’s a great way of keeping staff too. You know that an applicant is genuinely interested in the job, your business and more importantly, is highly unlikely to steal from you.

Structured questions posed during the test are pre-determined by you and the examiner. A lie detector test will reveal what you want to know.