Reduce employee theft in warehouses

Internet shopping giant Amazon hit the headlines recently after resorting to putting up flat screen TV’s in their warehouses which showed stories of alleged former employees who had been ‘terminated’ or ‘arrested’ for stealing company stock.

While this is an extreme method of deterring employees from stealing from you, it is understandable that Amazon aimed to put protections in place considering how much of their stock has a resale value.

However, there are other ways to show your employees that you mean business that have less of a chance of damaging company morale and creating a public relations storm.

Mirrors & cameras
First of all, mirrors can be installed in strategic areas of your warehouse that highlight any hard-to-see areas where employees may be able to conceal items away from your cameras or the sight of other employees. Your employees are less likely to try and commit opportunistic crime if their actions are highly visible through a combination of mirrors and cameras.

Create secure areas
For particularly high value items it is important to put systems in place so that employees are unable to easily gain access to them. Security does not end simply with perimeter protection and you need to make sure that items of high value are given full protection. This could be achieved by enforcing a two-person rule where no-one is ever allowed to access specific items by themselves, or by securing a room or cage with a key pad or finger print biometric access control system.

Limit the number of keys
While it’s important to lock up your building at night, keys are not as secure as they might first appear. Physical keys are easily copied which means that if a key is lost or falls into the wrong hands then it could put your entire warehouse and stock at jeopardy. Instead you should limit physical keys only to specific high clearance members of staff and provide key fobs for other staff which can be deactivated if they part ways with your company.

Outside of these three key areas you should also ensure that checks are done on new employees to make sure that they are fit to work for your company and don’t have shady details in their past. You may not need to enforce a DBS check even just calling previous employers can help.

Gateway Automation can provide free, no obligation quotes and feasibility surveys for your premises. To get us to assess your security requirements, please contact us here.