In one of the places I work we employ student workers and we run a cash register but without employee background checks our students can’t run the register. Now as someone who has worked for nearly three decades in retail I find it hard to wrap my head around this. On a busy day we rarely take in over $200 in fines and payments. Yet I have seen teenagers in the stores I have worked in handling thousands of dollars in transactions in any given day! I did think about this as we are now starting to ask our college Human Resources Department to begin background checks on some of our student employees. If our college is this concerned over what I see as miniscule transactions compared to what a private business does, shouldn’t small and medium retail owners be as well?
In 2017 retail inventory shrink cost U.S. retailers 48.9 billion dollars (2017 National Retail Federation Survey, pg. 6). Of this amount 30% is due to employee theft (pg.8). This only accounts for merchandise shortage and does not include cash theft or financial transaction fraud perpetrated by retail employees. It is clear from these numbers that it can be costly if a business owner does not hire a company to conduct employee background checks in order to prevent employee theft.
A background check can encompass a number of different areas. Take for instance the checks Loss Prevention Systems Inc. conducts for clients. They can look into driver histories, criminal background checks and even education verification. Store owners should also remember that there are other factors they should be concerned with such as staff and customer safety. Employee background checks can also look into sex offender registries helping to ensure there is minimal risk of a predator being hired onto the team. How about a residence history? It may not seem important until you realize that there are people who move around frequently because they are always in debt. They may also be trying to hide from Law Enforcement officials. Seeing that an applicant is regularly pulling up stakes and moving should be a red flag that this could be a problem hire. Learning about an applicant’s history is a strong check against employee theft and creates a safe work environment.
It is easy to focus on merchandise theft since inventory is completed annually or in some case it is done more frequently. Shortage results show how much merchandise is unaccounted for and what is ‘missing’ through theft, paperwork errors, etc. Theft and fraud at the point of sale can be much more difficult to ascertain. Having an extensive background in Retail Loss Prevention I have worked cash theft cases that were not easy to identify and more difficult to close. Added to that were the cases of credit card, check and gift card fraud each with its own unique challenges to investigate and close. As a small retail owner there is a strong probability you do not have the time or resources at your disposal to identify and then properly investigate point of sale theft and fraud. Oh, and don’t forget a lot of that inventory shortage could be due to employee theft issues at the registers too. Employee background checks can significantly reduce the odds that you will hire the wrong people and have to worry about cashiers stealing from you OR your customers.
Theft cannot be taken lightly. If a college is concerned over who operates a cash register that may take in $200 a day, how much more concerned should a store owner be taking in a lot more in a day? Conduct employee background checks and focus more time on running a successful business and stress less over point of sale shenanigans.
Employee background checks are important and we can help with it. Call 1.770.426.0547 and let’s talk.
For many years I was a Retail Loss Prevention Manager and actively used Electronic Article Surveillance anti-theft devices to protect many high theft items. Two departments that we had an incredible amount of theft in were fragrances and skin care products. We tagged the boxes with security labels but found that we still were experiencing theft issues. The problem plagued most of the stores in the company and eventually Corporate Loss Prevention reviewed their strategy and worked with manufacturers to put the fragrances in blister packages. The packages were source tagged with security labels to stop shoplifting. The hard-nosed criminal didn’t want to fool with any kind of security device unfortunately they weren’t averse to using a knife or razor blade to circumvent the blister package to remove the product. Eventually individual security boxes became available to us to protect the merchandise. The boxes worked really well for the higher priced items. We were able to put more products on the shelf rather than limit the numbers on display. We also had the protection of electronic article surveillance with the security of a lock up showcase. A detachment key at the checkout lanes was required to open the boxes up in order to remove the product. So what could possibly be improved upon if we were seeing improvement in shortage numbers?
There is one area in which improvements could be made and it is an opportunity most people would not think about in a discussion on electronic article surveillance devices. The opportunity I am thinking of is flexibility of protection hardware. There are many different sized protection devices that help stop shoplifting but I have found that one size does not fit all. I have seen small packs of razor blades safely tucked away in a box that was also used for a large perfume bottle. I have personally had to use electronic article surveillance labels of one size to protect a compact disc and a label from the same roll to protect a box of medicine. It is a pain in the neck and if you take merchandise protection seriously it requires the purchase of a lot of different sized containers, wraps and labels to do it properly. Using a security box that is too large for the item being protected takes up unnecessary shelf space. This can limit the number of shelves or peg hooks you can use for merchandise displays and that cuts down on facings or varieties of products available to customers. Sensormatic has developed Adjustable Multi-Purpose Safers to make it easier to keep goods safe from criminals. These Safers give retailers more flexibility in the variety of devices that need to be purchased. One device can now protect a wider range of merchandise without requiring a planogram change to accommodate a bigger box than necessary.
The Adjustible Multi-Purpose Safers Can be raised and lowered to fit the height of the item you want to keep safe from criminals. Going back to my fragrance problem, I had to work with perfumes and cologne boxes of varying heights. Today’s merchants have the ability to stop shoplifting without having to buy nearly as many different anti-theft protection boxes as they once would have done. If you are one of those store owners who believes that locking or alarming display cases are the best protection for high theft items I have something for you to consider. I know that the perception is that lock-up cases are a guarantee against theft. Having worked in retail for over 28 years and over 17 of those years in Loss Prevention I know the problems showcases cause. They require an available associate to respond and unlock a case when a customer wants to look at an item. That isn’t even a sure sale. That employee is tied to that display case until the customer decides if they do or don’t want an item. IF the customer wants the item the employee has to take it to the checklane and ring it up or have a cashier hold it until the customer comes up to make the purchase. Safers allow customers to view a product and carry it around the store until they are ready to proceed to checkout. Managers get all of the security of a showcase and none of the hassle.
If you haven’t considered how you can save money through theft reduction and the use of electronic article surveillance equipment contact Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. If you are using Sensormatic equipment but need to find ways to save money or planogram changes due to protection devices talk to Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. about the Adjustable Multi-Purpose Safers from Sensormatic.
Electronic Article Surveillance is important and we can help you with it. Call 1.770.426.0547 and let’s talk.
The area I live in has several annual events coming up that are good for businesses and would make it beneficial for store owners to invest in customer counting systems. I say this because while I was working at my part-time retail job I thought about the coming month and two of those activities that will be taking place. Having lived here for over 30 years I am very familiar with the events and I also know that many vendors are in attendance and will need supplies. Some purchase cash boxes, some raffle tickets and others will purchase cash registers. Since I have worked for this retailer for over seven years now I know many of the requests we will get so I started to look at our in-stocks on several of the items. Sure enough we were out of many or critically low and there is a good chance we will lose sales without getting more into the store. We were still several weeks away from the start of the season so I let my store manager know of the potential for missed sales opportunities if we did not put in a request for replenishment of these items. The store manager said he would look into it. The company I work for does have a door counting sensor and the data is tracked and used to some extent I just do not know how much. For small and medium sized retailers if you aren’t keeping track of the foot traffic in your store you could be missing your own opportunities to increase sales.
Customer counting systems are exactly what they sound like. They are systems used to keep up with the number of people entering a store. While many stores will track only the number of sales transactions that take place through the point of sale systems, the system reports how many people entered the building. Some may be protesting, “Why should I care about how many people came in, I need to know how many people spent money!” You should care because if there is a difference between transactions and foot traffic you should be asking, “Why didn’t these people spend money in my store?” How many missed opportunities were there to get an additional sale and your team dropped the ball? During special events or activities was there an increase in patronage that did not reflect in your sales? Was there anything you could have done to increase sales during those times or improve add-on sales? These are all questions that would not need to be asked if a store manager has a door counting sensor installed.
The addition of a door counting sensor would be beneficial to the small store owner for evaluating the impact local events are having on your business. Using the information gleaned from that data can help prepare you for similar events in the future. If the activity is going to be an annual event then you can look at what you sold and ran out of and have more on hand next time. As an example take the Fourth of July. If you sell coolers, grills, grilling accessories or outdoor games look at what your foot traffic was last year and sales of those items. Did you run out? Add a few more units to your on-hands the next year. Did your door counts far exceed your sales transactions? You can use this information in conjunction with your scheduling plans to determine if you could have used additional floor help to provide service. Could you have used an extra cashier to ring transactions so people would not get frustrated and leave empty handed? Bill Bregar, the founder of Loss Prevention Systems Inc. recognizes that not having real patron numbers only gives you a glimpse at what is really taking place in your store. This is why he strongly supports adding a system to his client’s stores.
Customer counting systems are a valuable tool for retailers who are truly interested in improving sales. Used in conjunction with sales data and calendar and event activities it can be a powerful addition for evaluating what you are doing and preparing for future activities. Don’t settle for less than your store can actually produce, install a door counting sensor today!
Get more information on customer counting systems, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today
What does a Loss Prevention Calculator do? Does it keep track of the payroll a store spends on Loss Prevention Staff? Does it help keep count of the amount of merchandise being stolen from your store? Does a Loss Prevention Calculator tabulate the costs of installing anti-theft equipment? Perhaps you have never even heard of such a device. Device is not really an accurate description as it is more like an application than hardware. It isn’t something that you will go into a store and purchase. It is an online tool. As a matter of fact after you use the calculator you will be asking the question, “Can Loss Prevention Be Free?”
I know you have to be wondering if this article is some type of spoof. How serious can someone be if they are raising the question, “Can Loss Prevention Be Free?” It makes no sense, a video camera system costs money. Certainly hiring a Loss Prevention Associate in ANY capacity is going to require a paycheck. So how does this proposal sound intelligible at all? To begin with what we are talking about is the return on investment that a Loss Prevention System is going to put back to your store in savings. No, you won’t be winning a raffle and getting free equipment and set-up. But what I can guarantee is you will make an investment that is going to start reducing inventory shortage caused by theft, fraud and even some operational errors from day one. A Loss Prevention System from Sensormatic with electronic article surveillance towers, tags and deactivation pads can conservatively reduce your shortage by 30%. How do I know this? Well, I think after more than 17 years in the retail loss prevention field as both an Associate and a Manager I am well-qualified to speak on the subject. I have worked with a variety of theft prevention strategies and have kept shrink below 1% consistently. One of my best and most successful tools was the use of a Sensormatic system with a heavy emphasis on merchandise tagging procedures.
However, I am fully aware that people are going to be somewhat skeptical. Short of taking a blind risk and installing some kind of theft prevention system purchased on the internet on the cheap (and possibly getting burned in the process) how can you verify what I am saying? Go to the Loss Prevention Systems Inc. website and look on the top of the page for the ROI Calculator. Click on here (go ahead, it’s free and no one is going to start filling your inbox with unwanted spam) and you will see the calculator with a couple of fields of information to complete. You will notice you are not asked for personal information or any email or business name. Fill in the two boxes and the result is an estimate of how long it will take for a new Sensormatic system to pay for itself through the return on investment. Change the information you enter as much as you like it’s FREE, remember?! The Loss Prevention Calculator can give a good idea of what you can save over time.
Have I seen tangible evidence I can point to that a Loss Prevention System saved money for a store? I will give you a specific situation from a department store I worked for. We had a major shoplifting problem with a high end brand of shirts we sold. The shirts were displayed folded on a table display near a cash register. Despite the proximity to an employee the shirts were being stolen at an alarming rate. We finally started tagging the shirts with hard tags and the theft dropped significantly. The huge empty holes on the tables from stolen product of this brand began to fill back in and we again had product to sell. I saw the impact electronic article surveillance made in our store. I really believe the Free Loss Prevention Calculator will give an accurate (if not understated) idea of the impact a retail loss prevention system would have in your store(s).
“Can Loss Prevention be free?” Unequivocally yes it can be. It is not going to be free out of the box but you will have such an improvement in your inventory results that you will have no doubts. Calculate for yourself what theft, fraud and operational errors are costing you and look at the results of the ROI calculator. Then take time to calculate how you would use that savings to improve your business. The answers are a click away so what are you waiting for?
The Free Loss Prevention Calculator is important and we can help you with it. Call 1.770.426.0547 and let’s talk
It is important stop shoplifting but it is just as important to find ways to prevent as much operational shortage as possible. In part 1 of this series I shared a recent story about finding merchandise during a transaction that could have resulted in shortage. A customer had placed 3 ring folders in a binder and failed to mention it as I rang the binder. I did look inside and discovered about $7 worth of merchandise. The operations on the front registers and how cashiers are processing merchandise can be a prime location for operational shortage. Aside from hidden merchandise there is the temptation to use a ‘quantity’ key when checking out a lot of merchandise that is the same. Scan the first item, do a count of the items and key in the total amount. It saves time over scanning each one right? Well maybe not. As I am working the back to school season I am finding a lot of issues with merchandise quantities that are wrong. One example was when I was looking for a specific colored folder for a customer. Our on-hands showed we had a certain number but I was unable to locate them. I encountered a similar problem with index cards and composition books. While Sensormatic systems can help prevent some operational errors as I mentioned in part 1, they can’t impact all errors. If merchandise is properly scanned and deactivated or tags are removed the system has done what it is designed to do. It did stop shoplifting and would have identified merchandise missed in a basket when merchandise was processed at the point of sale. It won’t have any impact on a register keying error or merchandise stocking errors on the salesfloor.
The on-hands problem was causing several problems. I had one customer looking for wide-ruled composition books for her child. I showed on hands of over a hundred but they were nowhere to be found. Having told the customer our system said we had plenty it led to a somewhat embarrassing situation for me. In another instance I had a customer looking for a certain style of index card. Our system showed we had a quantity of 35 I had to search and in the end I could only locate 10. At least we had them but we had 25 packages of index cards I could not account for. For the sake of this conversation let us assume the cards are priced at $1.00 each that is $25 in shortage. Were they stolen? I don’t think so (though I can’t completely rule it out since we don’t have tags on them to activate our Sensormatic systems). I believe cashiers were busy, got lazy and rang up one style of index cards counted the total in the sale and keyed in a quantity. They could easily have rung up a package of unlined 3×5 cards and failed to notice the other cards were 3×5 lined cards. It may seem like no big deal but if customers are coming to your store looking for an item and you think it is there and then it isn’t you are causing a huge customer service issue to yourself. Customers don’t go to places where they feel they can’t find what they want. To make matters worse if they have a poor shopping experience they may share it on social media. It also may delay your store replenishing the merchandise you need to get back in stock, leaving ugly holes on your store shelves.
Sensormatic systems are extremely effective when it comes to reducing theft and fraud and some operational shortage. Bill Bregar, the CEO of Loss Prevention Systems, Inc. a firm that helps small and medium sized retail stores prevent theft and fraud recommends this system to their clients. Store managers and owners must recognize that there is more to shortage reduction than to simply stop shoplifting. You must recognize where operational shortage happens and make that part of a larger shortage reduction action plan.
For more information on how to stop shoplifting, contact us or call 1.770.426.0547 today.
