Stop! Employee Theft

While the exact toll will never be known, employee theft is
indisputably epidemic. And the best solution, contends Jerald Greenberg,
Ph.D., isn't always aiming more surveillance cameras at workers. Instead,
companies should try treating them with more respect.

Theft is particularly common when employees feel mistreated,
reports Greenberg, professor of business ethics at Ohio State University.
Pay cuts, lay-offs, even banning workplace smoking -- all may set the stage
for theft. But managers can slash the pilferage potential by explaining
the rationale for unpopular actions and expressing regret for any ill
effects that result.

In one of Greenberg's studies, a financially strapped firm opted to
temporarily cut salaries at two plants. At one site, managers gave only
cursory explanations for the pay cut and expressed little sympathy for
the plight of employees. The result: levels of missing inventory more
than doubled.

But at the second plant, where management painstakingly explained
the need for cutbacks and made clear their regret, theft rose only
modestly. Follow-up studies in Greenberg's lab confirmed that simply
sharing information with people and treating them with dignity reduces
their inclination to steal in response to injustice.

"There's no good reason why companies shouldn't do these things,"
Greenberg insists. "They're easy -- and they're free."