Any business that deals with cash is susceptible to internal theft by employees. A flower shop certainly qualifies!
The FloristWare Point-Of-Sale system for flower shops has a lot of tools that can help reduce internal theft, but there are a lot of things you can do outside of (or in conjunction with) FloristWare to help combat the problem. This article discusses some of those things.
Please give it a serious look and think about following some of the suggestions. It doesn't take a lot of internal theft for you to start hurting. Curtailing this type of activity can go a long way towards making your store more profitable.
Research All New Employees
Ask prospective employees for permission to do a background check. If they don’t give their consent you should probably avoid them. If they do give their consent you can take it to the next level - check with previous employers and maybe even consider hiring a service to look into their background more thoroughly.
Use The Security Tools In FloristWare
FloristWare gives you excellent tools for monitoring suspicious activity. Not only should you use these tools, you should make it known to the staff that you use them. It is always better to deter employees before theft occurs than to try and catch them afterwards.
Treat Your Employees Well
Theft can be as much an act of anger towards an employer as anything else. If an employee doesn’t feel appreciated or respected it is easier for them to do something they know is wrong. Conversely, it is harder to steal if you do make them feel good about themselves. Ask for their opinions. Treat them well. Make them feel like the are a part of something.
Pay Good Wages
By paying better than average wages you accomplish three other things. First it allows you to attract better quality employees. Second, the employee will be more inclined to appreciate their job, and they will be aware that is will be hard to get another job that pays as well if they get fired for doing something stupid. Finally, decent pay helps your employees to feel appreciated and respected - which we have already discussed as being important.
Maintain A Tight Refund Policy
There is less internal theft in business with strict and tightly enforced refund policies. Fortunately FloristWare makes this very easy because it forces the employee to actually find the original sale and customer information before they can issue a refund. If you believe that a certain refund doesn’t look right than you should definitely call the customer. FloristWare makes this kind of theft very easy to stop.
Offer Employee Discounts
Your employees are surrounded by beautiful flowers and they’ll want to be able to enjoy them at home from time to time. Give them a good deal. Any time you make a sale to an employee you can be almost certain that you would not be making the sale at all if they were not an employee. That means that there is no real opportunity cost involved - you can offer the flowers to your employee at or slightly above your actual cost. This will help the employee fell valued and appreciated, making them less likely to steal. It will also increase their appreciation for their job.
Never Take Cash From The Drawer
Even if you are the owner and technically all the money is yours you should never, ever take cash from the register. There are several reasons. It gives the impression that controls are loose - that cash can be taken and not be missed. It also leads to hard feelings that can lead to theft. Your employees work hard to put that cash in the drawer - if they see you casually scoop it out it undermines their efforts. And while $50 might not seem like a lot to you, your employees are acutely aware that they might have to work a whole shift on their feet to make that much money. Whenever they sense the disparity in your respective incomes it becomes easier for them to rationalize theft by convincing themselves that they need the money and you don’t.
Be Very Careful About Scheduling
Keep a close eye on your scheduling and employees match-ups. Changing employee match-ups can be a great tool for diagnosing problems and narrowing down the list of suspects. Only allow your most trusted employees to ever work alone. On a similar note it’s a good idea to avoid having close friends working together on their own unless there is a lot of trust - they may very well like each other more than they like you!
Balance The Cash Mid-Day
You should periodically “cash out” one or more times during the day by printing a temporary Daily Sale Report during the day, removing the drawer and making sure that it balances. There are a couple of reasons for this. First it 'turns up the heat' on any employees who might be stealing. They will quickly realize that you know something is wrong, so this makes for a strong deterrent. More importantly it helps you figure out when things are going bad. If you are balancing the previous days cash the following morning it can be very hard to figure out what went missing and who is responsible. If you try and balance the cash two hours after opening it's much easier.
Spend Time Behind The Cash
Employees will feel more confident about stealing if you’re never around. Make sure to spend time around the cash register and safe. Make sure they know that you are keeping an eye on things. We mean that literally! You want them to see you looking at the cash register and the transactions that take place on a regular basis.
Install A Security Camera
A working security camera installed over the cash area will of course be very helpful if you are ever held up, but more importantly it will help deter employees from stealing from you.
Other Quick Rules:
Employees cannot leave bags, purses, packs, etc., near the register.
Employees cannot enter their own purchases.
Employees cannot enter purchases for family or friends.
