Are your trusted employees taking you for a ride? There are good chances that this might be true. White-collar crime has become common in the workplace. You cannot identify who might be betraying you to gain that extra dollar. That’s the saddest part about white-collar crimes. You do want to eliminate it from the root, but identifying whose committing those crimes is challenging.
White-collar crimes can impact your brand’s image and also cost you a fortune. According to a report, an average company can lose around 5% of its revenue due to white-collar crimes. Hence, it is evident that you would be looking for ways to prevent these crimes in your workplace. If you are, then you are in the right place. In this post, we will be going through some preventive measures to help eliminate white-collar crimes in your business.
How to curb white-collar crimes
You might think that your employees are honest. But believe me, you cannot trust anyone in today’s money-centric world. Hence, it is essential to practice some preventive measures to stop your employees from stealing from you.
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Install monitoring systems
The best and easiest way to eliminate half the white-collar crime from your office is by installing surveillance systems. Something as simple as a CCTV camera can do the job for you. These monitoring systems let your employees know that they are being watched. This will prevent them from committing crimes in the open.
You can also go a step further to enhance the efficiency of surveillance systems. For instance, if you have a motion sensor camera in place, you can install complex commercial or simple home alarm systems along with it. Suppose someone is trying to enter a restricted area. The motion cameras can catch it and trigger an alarm to prevent any fraud.
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Teach business ethics to your staff
It is evident that you would have done some background research and hired only the employees with good business morals. But that does not stop employees from committing fraud. Hence, it would help if you taught them business ethics. Try to incorporate the importance of a job and how it provides them with their living.
Besides teaching ethics, letting them know the consequences will keep them from committing the crime. Let them know that you are strict about these things, and you won’t hesitate to take action against any white-collar crimes.
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Regulate internet usage
The world is going digital now. If even you have embraced the digital journey to leverage its benefits, regulating internet usage will help you prevent many white-collar crimes. The thing is that you would have stored most of your business-critical data on a server or data center. Employees can access all this critical data through the internet.
Regulating and monitoring internet usage will prevent employees from misusing the data. You can install various cybersecurity measures to ensure that your data is safe on the internet.
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Create an internal audit function
A frequent audit is necessary to ensure that the crime rate is going down in your office. With good experience of how companies work and why employees commit fraud, the audit team can identify potential employees who can cheat you.
As mentioned earlier, identifying employees who might commit fraud might be the biggest challenge for you. The audit team can remove this bottleneck and help you prevent white-collar crimes.
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Have an anonymous tipper
Have you seen cops having a tipper in movies? Well, you can get one for yourself. A tipper can be a primary source of information on potential crimes. You will get the details of what’s going around in your venture.
Not just one, you can have multiple tippers. The more the sources, the better the information. For instance, you can have a tipper in each apartment of your organization. But completely blind trusting even your tipper is not a good practice if you want to ensure zero white-collar crimes. Thus, listen to your tipper and the information, and do the investigation yourself. Of course, I am not telling you to stop your work and become Sherlock Holmes. Just do some basic digging to cross-check the information.
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Provide clear roles’ segregation
Clear role segregation will create transparency in your organization. Small businesses usually fall prey to white-collar crimes due to a lack of clearly defined roles. Suppose a single employee is handling accounts as well as sales. It will be easy for the person to do theft and manage the accounts accordingly. Thus, unclear roles can create opportunities for fraud. Ensure assigning clear roles and responsibilities to all your employees.
Businesses lose a massive amount of money due to white-collar crimes. According to statistics, the UK alone loses £190 billion a year due to these crimes. If you want to save the money, you are losing to white-collar crimes, implement the tips mentioned in this post.