Dealing with employee theft
How to reduce loss through theft at your company ; 4 major keys
Many Nigerian employees steal from business owners. It has very little to do with the actual employees and more to do with the pervasive culture in Nigeria. The culture has trickled down from the elite ruling classes of government to the poorest man on the street.
Stealing is frowned upon in Nigeria, but not as much as it is in other countries. For example, I once had a part-time pastor working for me. The pastor could not understand why he was accused of stealing. He claimed that he was ‘just doing deals’.
Many Nigerians don’t see, collecting bribes from vendors, giving overpriced corporate contracts to friends, or even asking their spouses/siblings to open up companies and then awarding corporate contracts to them (without declaring) as stealing. Many think, it’s ‘just deals’, ‘just business’, ‘just survival’. But it’s not. Its theft.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75% of employees steal from the workplace and that most do so repeatedly
So, it’s pretty frightening to imagine what the Nigerian statistics would say. A typical organization loses 5% of its annual revenue to employee fraud. Applied to the estimated 2009 Gross World Product, this figure translates to a potential global fraud loss of more than $2.9 trillion.
4 tips to prevent employee theft at your organisation
Below are four things that I have learned over the years. They have probably saved me from many bad experiences
- Make it clear you have a zero-tolerance policy
Whether or not you prosecute criminally is one thing. Continuity of employment will absolutely guarantee continuity of theft. Even more so, it will lower the bar (or open the vault) for every one else in the organization.
Moreover, build a culture of integrity and honesty in your organisation. This is something that I have tried to do over the years. Cultures are like immune systems, they rapidly reject people that don’t fit into the culture.
At my company, anyone suggesting a plan to steal from the company simply would not fit into the culture. The culture rapidly rejects dishonesty and dishonest people
2. Put in place internal and external checks and balances.
Always have second set of eyes — both inside and outside the company — checking your numbers.
3. Perform background checks
You must perform background checks on all hires, not just candidates who are applying for jobs where they are handling money. Poor pre-employment screening contributes to the rise in employee theft incidents according to business news daily. For more info on background checks, read my article Hiring in Nigeria.
4. Beware of ‘pastors’
I am not saying don’t hire pastors. My dad is a pastor, my uncle is a pastor, some of my best friends are pastors. I spent almost my entire time at university in love with my pastor ; the love that dared not speak its name. But in my experience, the overly religious pastors that wear the religion on their sleeves, talk about nothing else and even randomly start speaking in tongues and prophesying at interview are bad news.
You can usually smell the hypocrisy at the door. They are ‘fake pastors’.
Hire at your own risk.
Hope this helps you as you build great African companies.
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