For many, the idea of employee time theft evokes thoughts of one of two things: an employee taking a 5 minute break to send a text or two more than they ought, or the other extreme where an employee is not working and someone else is clocking them in that day. The reality is usually somewhere in between, but the damage they do is surprising.
Obviously the bottom line for the business suffers when an employee is stealing. No way around that. But if one digs deeper, you find that the cost is even higher. Consider the following: when a worker (leaves early, comes in late, engages in personal activities or a side business) their work still needs to get done and someone else is doing it! Now lets look to other costs incurred as part of employee time theft. Employees who aren’t doing their job are usually causing damage to the final deliverable. The product or service is less accurate, of lower quality, shipped late or underwhelm the client in some way. Another real cost of employee time theft is the damage it causes to moral and the productivity of those left behind. If they are aware the offending activity, they may resent the offender, but they also resent the company. No employee whats to out a colleague and they either consciously or unconsciously resent the company for not taking action to prevent this. Although they would not mimic that behavior, it adversely affects their productivity and always damages culture. It also leads them to take more breaks, work less diligently and promotes gossip and drama. If the other employees are unaware of it, they still end up working harder, incurring unneeded stress and again suffer a loss of moral.
If your organization is experiencing employee time theft, we encourage you to call us today. We have safe, professional, cost effective employment investigations that can help you to catch the culprits and regain trust and control in the workplace.
