New Year’s resolution, keep more of your profits!

 

Employee dishonesty is the number one threat businesses face today. Your employees know your customers, vendors & contractors. Your  internal audit systems and process will mitigate the opportunities a dishonest employee may have. Many if not most of the small to mid-sized businesses I meet during local chamber of commerce meetings have no systems developed to prevent a dishonest employee from acting.

My name is Frank Costa, and I’m a licensed private investigator located in the Hudson Valley area of New York. I started my loss prevention career as a store detective 17 years ago. Just out of high school, I thought it was a pretty cool job to catch shoplifters. It had its adrenaline pumping moments, when shoplifters refused to cooperate with the detention process. Fast forward just a few years later, I was promoted to a Loss Prevention Manager and then a had much different perspective on organizational losses. I worked for a Fortune 500 organization, which had enough funding to control the process and develop internal audits to control exposure. The organization utilized computer systems, surveillance equipment, and investigators to combat internal dishonesty. But what does a small to mid-sized business do who can’t allocate funds to combat risk?

 

3 simple tips to mitigate internal dishonesty

 

1.Employee screening – It’s a great thing when a business has to hire new employee. It shows the business is healthy and is growing. However, don’t forget to check the new applicants out. A Pre-Employment screening has a relatively low cost with high returns. A professional pre-employment screening service will provide you more than just a criminal history checks. The service may provide information regarding this individual previous address history, credit file, and driving records. Just because a person has been convicted of a crime does not mean they’re a bad person, they may have just made some bad decisions.

2.Drug testing- It’s not a bad idea to send prospective employee to a drug screening. An individual who has a habit of doing drugs may have a higher propensity to steal from their employer. There are some crafty folks out there who can find ways to pass a drug screening, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to send a recently hired individual to a random screening a few weeks after getting hire.

3.Internal audit- Hiring a loss prevention consultant to analyze your operations and identify key risk factors would be ideal. If your budget says otherwise, then taking a closer look at operation yourself. Identify your key areas of your business. Look at your revenue flow, think about what part of the flow would be the highest risk and develop a plan to check it. Think like a disgruntle employee, what would I do to sabotage the business?

It’s time to protect your bottom line. With the new year just about a month in, it’s a great time to think about how you will safeguard the key aspects of your business.

About NEXGEN Investigations

NEXGEN Investigative services offer a wide range of individual screening solutions to help meet your investigative needs. With over 15 years of investigative experience in both the investigative field and background research departments; the investigators will help you find the information necessary to make educated business, financial, and legal decisions.

Our research extends beyond a computer monitor and telephone inquiries, it extends to court house research and includes criminal records, civil litigation histories, driving records, residential histories and more. Our services are contracted by business owners, landlords, renting properties, attorneys and legal teams across New York.