White Paper on Staff Dishonesty (2006)

The purpose of this project was to develop greater understanding of the ways in which dishonest members of staff exploited retail processes and procedures to steal cash and goods from their employers. It is based upon data collected directly from offenders themselves together with interviews with loss prevention staff responsible for deterring and detecting such behaviour. As such it sought to make a valuable contribution in an area that has to date been little understood and researched.

The data is derived from four retail companies based upon direct interviews with offenders, analysis of taped interviews between security staff and those suspected of being dishonest, questionnaires completed by security staff interviewing staff receiving their ‘exit’ interview, and interviews with a select group of security practitioners. In total, some 74 cases generated data on 99 ‘dishonest’ events occurring primarily in retail stores (two offenders were interviewed who had colluded to steal stock from a retail distribution centre).


Findings Of the 74 cases, 47 were till operators, with a further 12 working primarily on the shop floor. The rest were security officers, store management staff, cashiers, warehouse staff and distribution centre pickers. The vast majority of offending took place at the till (69% of incidents) followed by the back-of-store (16%). Very few incidents took place on the shop floor, at the refund counter or in the cash office.

The most frequent method of offending at the till was to take cash, followed by the non-scanning of items for family, friends and colleagues, allowing friends and family to use a staff member’s discount card, adding points to their own loyalty card and serving family and friends. Relatively few made any effort to conceal their tracks through manipulation of the till (last item voids, offering discounts, deliberately short changing customers etc).

The most frequent method of offending in the back-of store was to eat stock, take items out of the back of the store (either walk out with them or hide them in the garbage area) or simply secrete goods about their person and leave the store as normal. The research identified a number of vulnerable processes and procedures:

• Security searches were either not random or simply not done.


• Staff sharing till pin numbers or not logging off at the end of shifts.


• Tills not being emptied and checked on a regular basis.


• Staff not leaving by staff exits.


• Irregularities in use of the security cage.


• Unauthorised staff entering the warehouse.

Download Report / Presentation of the White Paper findings