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It may not seem like a big deal to take a pad of paper or a few pens from the office and save yourself the expense. But add it all up and imagine the cost to the business over time!
Cost
North American businesses pay billions of dollars due to employee theft. A Harris Interactive survey taken on employee theft, and commissioned by Lawyers.com found that 58 percent of employees asked about the subject, admitted to stealing from their employers. According to this same poll, the most popular items to pocket are:
- Pens and pencils
- Sticky notes
- Paper clips
Conduct standards
Office supply theft can be a symptom of a few different things. While some employees may simply have low moral standards, there are often bigger things at play. Employees who feel unappreciated or under-valued may compensate for this by taking what they can get their hands on. A 2007 survey commissioned by Deloitte & Touche found that employees are more likely to steal if they are constantly pressured, regularly working long hours, or feel underappreciated..
Having disproportional work and home life balance also contributed to less than desirable behaviours.
Workplace productivity
The productivity of your workplace can be greatly impacted when workers help themselves to office supplies. The added cost, time and efforts to stop and prevent theft can interfere with job duties and office morale. It’s important to nip things in the bud before it gets out of hand, and try to implement some measures that make it easy to track office supply usage without burdening the person who has to put the policy in place.
A few tips on stopping and preventing office supply theft:
- Appreciate your workers, reward good behaviours and positive contributions
- Don’t place unreasonable demands on your employees, make sure that there are reasonable expectations being set
- Create an office supply inventory and assign one person to manage it
- Keep track of who uses what, and how much
- Be open and honest with employees, if there is a problem, hold a meeting and discuss the issue
- Make it clear to your staff that office supplies are to be used at the office!
If you have a problem with office supply theft in your workplace, the best way to approach it is by tracking where supplies go, and in what quantity. The second part to this lies in creating a great workplace morale. If your workers are content in their job and you maintain a good relationship between them and the company they will be less likely to pocket office supplies.
