Labour crime includes a large spectrum of offences, ranging from reporting false working hours, using work equipment without permission, transferring information to competitors or even robbing the work place.
15% of the total income of young companies is abused by labour crime offences. 25% of companies go bankrupt because of the destructive behaviour of criminal employees. An employee may cause up to six times more damage than a company’s costumer. Yet, these percentages and degrees of criminal labour abuse depend on the size of the company—the larger the company the larger the damage.
It is impossible to prototype labour criminals. There is no unique profile of such people that abuse the system at their work place. The best thing to do, as Gabriel Orgal suggests, is to lookout for personal values and behaviour. Orgal explains his personal intake, “when I interview I find that most youth work an average of a year and an half in each job, they always want to progress and progress, they do not need to think about family and such, but rather the rationale is here and now. Consequently, the employee does not feel obligated in any way to the work place, and in turn his sense of responsibility to counter or deter criminality of others is very low, and the possibility that he will become a labour criminal increases”.
It is very much like a triangle. At the top is the need; an employee may feel that he needs the money because of debts, gambling habits, etc. Of course, other variables may encourage such acts, such as personality type or past success with labour offences at prior work place the employee worked at. The second level in the triangle is the ability factor; there should not be a breach in the system for an employee to be able to commit an offence. The third and most important level lies in the employee’s belief that he will be able to succeed in committing the offence.
So what to do? Well Orgal offers two deterring options: First, to distribute computer questionnaires that can provide a scope to a person’s profile and their value system or behavioural norm. Through the questionnaire we have a picture of the person’s characteristics and we are more equipped to evaluate now how dangerous he may be. The second tool is a polygraph. In addition to these options, there are a few smaller but yet effective tools that can supplement to the process of sifting out potential criminal labour. For instance, you should check every CV, call the recommendations and check their professional diplomas; you would be surprised how often people fake diplomas. Today Orgal is working on something new. His new approach includes distributing questionnaires every so often at work, and analyse the dependent variable of feelings towards the workplace. The longer an employee has worked in the company, the more damage he will be able to do, and therefore catching criminal tendencies in the middle of his career path, is very important. American research found that a nineteen year old can cause an average of $500 worth of damage while working for only six months, while a fifty-five year old that works for fifteen years can cause an average of $5 million.
Often the employee is simply fired, only losing his job; he goes on to the next workplace and again finds a place he is able to abuse. These labour criminals are in the thousands, and most eventually become experts! Do not let it happen at your workplace.
PURCHASE THE ONLINE SECURITY MANAGEMENT COURSE
PSOSONLINE© All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part prohibited without the prior written consent of PSOS.
