An increased awareness of employee theft in the UK retail sector – and, in particular, high value retail – has prompted many end users to invest in improving their store security. According to the British Retail Consortium’s recently-published ‘8th Retail Crime Survey 2000’, the investment appears to be paying off.
As reported in Security Management Today (‘Stock take’, SMT, October 2001, pp28-30), there has been a decrease in employee theft levels, with only 30% of stolen items attributable to staff during the survey period. That said, employee theft across the UK’s retail sector still weighs in at GB pound 426 million each year.
Given such a scenario, it’s unfortunate that much of the security equipment installed in retail outlets is better designed to deter customer as opposed to staff theft. CCTV cameras and video monitors, for example, may well succeed in making potential shoplifters uncomfortable enough to leave a store empty handed, but an employee may experience little ‘discomfort’ if he or she is familiar with the store’s security systems and procedures.
Although excellent at deterring customer theft, alarm wires and the presence of visible tags pose little threat to members of staff looking to steal goods. Many of them will have access to areas such as stock rooms and warehouses – environments where even high value consumer goods are rarely security tagged. Even when such goods are tagged and put out on display, theft remains a relatively easy business for staff familiar with a store’s ‘blind spots’ and trained to remove tags both quickly and simply (‘Daylight robbery’, SMT, February 2002, pp18-20).
An additional problem for retail security managers is the difficulty they face in identifying would-be thieves among the ranks. If you believe what you read in many retail security reports, the ‘typical’ staff thief is someone who has been employed for less than a year on a part-time basis. Reports will often paint a picture of an individual who has to steal to feed a drug habit, or who harbours a grudge against his or her employer.
While this may well be true in some cases, the Centre for Retail Research’s report entitled ‘Fighting Retail Crime’ acknowledges that: “It is possible the reason why so many new employees are apprehended for theft is that they’re not very good at it.”
Based on interviews conducted with 30 retailers responsible for more than 50% of the UK’s retail sales, the report goes on to explain: “More experienced employees may continue to steal for many years. Forty per cent of interviewees suggested that one quarter or more of their total staff apprehensions occurred at management grade, supervisor, senior administrator and security officer levels – the very people entrusted with guarding the company’s assets.”
The report also states: “While the novice thief would steal goods worth between GB pound 1,000 and GB pound 2,000, the more experienced and senior employees would probably appropriate more than GB pound 10,000 of goods over a longer period.”
Another concern for retail security professionals is that staff thieves will often collude with customer thieves. To this end, ‘Fighting Retail Crime’ states that: “The normal practice of calculating staff and customer theft as separate totals may significantly understate the involvement of staff in crime.”
What is abundantly clear is that retail outlets need to employ security systems that engender a high level of security from the shop floor to the back door, at the same time restricting access to all security-sensitive areas such as offices and stock rooms.
Display versus security
On the shop floor, one of the most important considerations is how to display desirable items in a creative, secure way. The most effective method of achieving this is to secure glass display cabinets, for example, with near-invisible and patented locking mechanisms (either mechanical or electromechanical). Either way, what’s important is that key access is properly managed.
As well as cabinets and showcases, a typical retail environment will boast store rooms, staff rooms, cupboards and cash tills – all of them secured by different types of lock. Access to them will vary depending on the status of the employee. The installation of a master keyed suite of locks can provide a cost-effective solution for the security manager, who is then able to issue just one key to each employee – affording them access to only those locks which they are authorised to open.
The very latest electromechanical cabinet locks may be centrally controlled or locally controlled via a choice of devices (including switches, keypads, card readers and remote controllers). This not only ensures an unbeatable level of security, but also facilitates ease of locking and unlocking.
There’s now a wide range of digital locking mechanisms designed to offer the end user greater control over access to areas like store rooms and offices. Stand-alone digital mortice locks, for instance, provide many of the features associated with online entry systems in a single, compact and self-contained unit. These entry systems offer simple, menu-driven programming that allows for a number of users to be logged and their movements monitored via a real time printer.
For extra security, certain systems feature anti-passback and anti-tailgating facilities.
Theft through the back door
In many of the larger retail outlets, the main area of concern for the security manager is theft through the back door. The back door, of course, may often be a means of escape in a fire scenario, thus the problem facing most managers is striking the right balance between security and safety.
Today’s panic exit devices provide complete control over emergency exit doors, offering unrivalled levels of security. The systems can offer both local and remote control via a control box connected to an opening device at the door (or by connecting a series of doors to a central station that will monitor all doors on a remote basis). In addition, the systems will be connected to a fire alarm such that egress is assured in the event of an emergency.
It has already been proven that the increased levels of functionality and high degrees of flexibility demonstrated by the latest in-store security systems are helping to drive down employee theft. By investing in new systems and working with manufacturers and installers, retail security managers should be able to save at least some of the GB pound 426 million that is currently escaping through the back door.
