Shoplifting in British shops can take quite some time to stop, since most thefts are carried out mainly by the staff of the shops themselves, a new study reported.
Reports by the Centre for Retail Research disclosed that Britain was the worst hit in terms of staff theft in European countries and was costing UK retailers dear, as employers had to bear as much as £1.5bn losses in the past year.
The study revealed that there were 29% of ‘shrinkage’ or losses due to thefts were on account of employees stealing from shops, against the 28% recorded in 2003. A whopping 48% of the shrinkage, however, was attributed by retailers to thefts by customers, while 16% was blamed on calculative errors and operational failures.
Amongst employee thefts, Britain featured second place to Iceland. However, as a whole, losses caused by thefts, cons, damages or miscalculations and other mistakes had considerably reduced by 13% in Britain over 2004.
Moreover, surveying about 423 shopkeepers in 24 countries, revealed that many measures were being employed to fight internal thefts, like selecting staff with added precautions and assessments, along with providing the required bonuses and incentives in order to prevent any tendency to steal.
Nevertheless, the crime policy officer of the British Retail Consortium, Nick James believed something different about employees at retailers. Nick acknowledged that some staff could be found guilty of stealthy activities, but a majority of them were totally innocent. Explaining his point he said, “It is due to a very small number of dishonest staff who may be stealing for extended periods of time and that may be very hard to detect.”
Meanwhile, a criminologist from the Leicester University, Professor Martin Gill, analysed shop thefts and said that employees could have been driven to do this for a number of reasons. He was quoted saying, “When staff feel marginalised and not attached to the organisation, when they have some sort of gripe about the way they've been treated, the culture of the organisation and just having the opportunity to steal things.”
He added that thieves mainly chose to steal designer products, leather items, disposable razors, perfumes, trainers, CDs, videos, jewellery or vitamins mainly because they could get such goods exchanged into cash faster, as they had “good second hand market value”
Posted
on : Fri, 07 Oct 2005 00:35 GMT | Insurance News
By : Paula Jenkins
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