Good workplace relationships key to preventing shoplifting

Friday, 17 August 2018

Shoplifting creates significant losses for businesses.

Shoplifting is reduced when staff take 'psychological ownership' of the problem - which depends on good workplace relationships, a University of Otago study has found.

PhD student Balkrushna Potdar has completed a pilot study interviewing employees, and the next step involved gathering more data from 1000 supermarket employees around New Zealand.

'We wanted to see if there was evidence to show that good relationships between employer and their staff would mean more proactive prevention of theft.'

Most shop staff interviewed said they had witnessed customer crime or some kind of 'deviant behaviour'.

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Dr John Guthrie and PhD student Balkrushna Potdar at Otago University.

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This ranged from customers grazing on food before reaching the check-out, switching bar-codes at self-service check-outs, and pocketing goods.

The staff in the survey had notified security staff, and said they did so because it affronted their values, or felt it was their duty.

Two years ago Julie Jones of Go To Food Clearance & Organics armed herself with a dye marking gun to deter shoplifters.

Shop theft was estimated to cost nearly $1.1 billion a year, and retailers viewed crime as part of doing business, relying on television cameras, radio frequency identification tags, burglar alarms, or security staff, he said.

But the ineffectiveness of many of these traditional approaches had led to calls for alternatives.

Potdar's initial in-depth interviews were aimed at discovering the attitudes of 26 supermarket employees from two major chains.

Four of them were Kiwi-born with the others coming from countries in nearly every continent.

Two men recently tried to shoplift this Liquor Centre in Hamilton and then assaulted the shopkeeper.

The majority said their relationships with owners were positive.

The questions were aimed at finding out what they thought about their employer's behaviour towards them, and other issues - for example, if the owner contributed to charities or involved staff in community activities.

'If we can prove that better employer-employee relationships mean less crime then we could improve the bottom line for businesses and lift staff morale and satisfaction,' Potdar said.

The online questionnaire survey to gather the next wave of data will go to participating supermarkets in early September, with results and findings expected in October 2018.

Potdar's supervisor Dr John Guthrie said there was evidence retail crime was growing, based on the findings in the New Zealand Retail Crime Survey that he conducted in conjunction with Retail NZ in December 2017.

'From a practical standpoint this study can allow retailers to better understand their employees, and help deliver more productive training, Guthrie said.

Most of the $1.1b thefts, or 6.6 per cent of sales, were never recorded, according to Guthrie's crime survey.

A woman was processed recently for attempting to shoplift 30 kingsize bars of Cadbury's chocolate worth an estimated $109.50 from Wanaka New World.

Guthrie said it was 14 years since the last survey he conducted.

Petty theft was overwhelmingly the most common type of retail crime, making up 86 per cent of all retail crimes in the survey.

Fraud was the next most common, but made up just 5 per cent of offending. Employee theft or fraud accounted for 1.3 per cent of known crimes, although 18 per cent by value.

Guthrie's survey showed that costs recovered were just over $10.5 million or 3.6 per cent, from whether insurance claims or other means..

The crime survey asked supermarket owners to estimate their stock loss 'shrinkage' and the amount attributed to crime rather than administrative errors or mistakes.

External crime losses from shoplifting and burglary were estimated at $836 million in 2017 compared with $479m in 2003. Employee theft or fraud was estimated at $249m compared with $85m.

'Anecdotally we knew that the crime problem was getting worse, and that crimes were becoming more aggressive and brazen, and we now had evidence to back it up with 81 per cent of respondents affected by retail crime over a year.'

Larger retailers tended to lose less than medium sized and smaller shop owners, most probably because larger retailers invested in loss prevention technologies and staff training. Guthrie said.

But the smallest retailers also had less crime because of their small floor size and good visibility.