I just read that according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 75 percent of employees steal from their workplace, and many do so repeatedly. Instant flashback to the day my neighbor showed up on my doorstep, lamenting that his kid didn’t get a job because he had flunked the ‘honesty test’ given to him by HR. This is the same person who knocked on my door to confess to having done small thing that I hadn’t even noticed was awry. In short: the most honest kid I have ever known. So much for honesty tests.
I was once president of a sheet metal manufacturing company. It was the kind of business where “theft” meant someone had highjacked your truck and fenced the contents, so I’m sensitive about the various levels of what I prefer to call ‘misdirection of corporate assets.’
Dr. Dan Ariely, behavioral economist and author of bestseller Predictably Irrational, has done dozens of studies on just how far people are willing to go in the direction of dishonesty while still maintaining a self-image as a ‘good’ person. So we have some reassurance from a distinguished researcher that it’s forgivable to take a pen home from work, but not a box of them. But I found it a bit disturbing to realize that I’ve often been overly tolerant of bad behavior.
So what can we do to tighten up the ship? Deterrents work very well. But only if all of these conditions are met:
1. Everyone needs to know that if anyone steals, something bad will happen.
2. They need to believe that if they steal, they will be caught and punished.
3. They need to see that punishment as truly undesirable.
I can see you shaking your head at that third one, asking yourself, isn’t every punishment undesirable? Actually, no. The usual punishment for stealing things at work is getting fired. For some people, that’s a reward, not a punishment. This is especially true if the person heads directly to the unemployment office and collects benefits because you didn’t have the heart to fight it.
America’s prisons are filled with people who: a) never thought or believed that they would get caught; b) thought that getting caught wouldn’t be all that bad; or, c) just didn’t care at the time. That’s the problem. It’s truly rare that all three of the essential conditions of deterrence are present at the same time.
So here’s the question: How do you make sure your people are not among the three-quarters of the workforce cited as pilferers (or worse) by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce? The answer: You can’t ‘make sure,’ but you can make improvements.
First, do a security audit and check on critical systems and processes in Finance, IT, and physical security. Remember: when you allow vulnerabilities, you create the other guy’s temptations.
Second, know that most people do desire to ‘be good’, so take action to reinforce that orientation. One of the most effective tactics is to educate and improve management skills in reducing workplace stress. Why focus on stress? It’s because uncertainty, verbal abuse, and unfair treatment makes people frustrated and angry. And when people are angry, one of the ways they work it off is to take things and self-justify that it is only ‘evening the score’.
Finally, take the advice you’ll find on any typical investment brochure: “Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.” Think about this when you invest your trust in people. Some of the best and most honest workers you can hire might have slept behind bars for a time, and learned the hard way that they never want to go back. It’s called ‘going straight’, and it really happens. Meanwhile, there are plenty of ‘honest, respectable folks’ who might be just a bad mood or a breakup away from dipping into the till.
Now, getting back to that dad on my doorstep with the kid who flunked the honesty test. Here’s what I told him…after first calming him down and citing chapter and verse on the virtues of his admirable and upright offspring:
“Would you really want your son to work for a company that doesn’t trust him?”
Dr. Janice Presser is CEO of The Gabriel Institute – Creators of Teamability®, the completely new technology that predicts how people will perform on teams. Contact her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
