To the average retailer, it might seem like there are many reasons that an employee would steal from their employer, but this isn’t so. A worker’s choice to take merchandise or money from their employer is simple. Based on many actual field investigations, their motivations can be broken down into a few, general reasons. The big retailers use this information to make their Integrity Interviews laser focused and tremendously effective.
The Big Retailers Know
During the course of speaking with an employee about their theft, it’s beneficial to offer them a reason to admit to it. When a personal connection is made with them, they feel more comfortable explaining why they did what they did. These are the 4 reasons that employees will respond to, the industry term for them is “rationalizations”:
- Peer Pressure
- Impulse
- Revenge
- Financial
Peer Pressure
This rationalization is commonly used with younger employees and employees who have had a lot of family members into the store. For this example, let’s assume the employee gave merchandise away for free. Here’s how the interviewer would present this option:
“I know that you wouldn’t normally do something like this. It’s very difficult when other people pressure us into doing something that we don’t want to do. It’s really hard to say no to our friends and family members. How can we possibly make our friends understand that we don’t want to get into trouble? With our family, we want to feel like we’re helping them out in some way. Who could find it easy to say no to our family? It’s understandable that this situation would make you make a mistake in judgment.”
Impulse
When you think about it, we are all victims of this rationalization. We are bombarded by advertising and companies trying to sell us something. These companies understand the strength of certain kinds of messages on our psyche and use that to get us to buy things.
Think about the last time you were in a grocery store. You’ve made all your selections and now you’re waiting in line to pay for them. As you stand there, you notice items displayed on either side of you. Those items are categorized as “impulse buys”. The store knows that you probably didn’t come in to buy a 5-pack of lip balm, but since you’re standing there you may decide, on impulse, to add it to your purchase. We all have moments where we make a decision that we hadn’t planned on ahead of time.
Employees who are in this situation did not have the intention of stealing, but the opportunity presented itself and the conditions existed where they thought they could get away with it.
Revenge
This one seems self-explanatory. The employee feels that they have been wronged by their employer. Maybe they didn’t get the schedule that wanted. It could be that they were talked down to on some occasion. Any number of factors could influence an employee here. It is not, usually, an isolated incident. There is often a pattern of negative interactions with the boss that pushes the employee over the edge. The employee that uses this as their rationalization will justify it by believing that the business makes a lot of money and won’t be impacted by their theft.
Financial
With the nature of the current economy, this is the rationalization that an owner will come across more often. People are being devastated financially and can’t make ends meet. There are car payments, mortgage and rent payments as well as credit card and other miscellaneous bills. People find themselves trapped with no other options available to them. With money pressure building around them, the cash in the till and the merchandise start to look very tempting.
It is important to point out that there are a great many employees who are honest and loyal. The ones that steal are usually the exception to the rule. Despite the mistakes they’ve made, they are still human. They’d like to be given the opportunity to make up for their mistakes. Large retail companies have used the above information to conduct their Integrity Interviews for a very long time. When done correctly, these interviews commonly result in the employee agreeing to repay the losses.
