Watch out for sticky-fingered employees

May 9, 2006 11:00 AM

           

Employers might want to lock up the supply cabinet before leaving the office if they want to find it stocked when they return.

Why? It turns out that the majority of office workers (58 percent) have taken or stolen office supplies for their personal use, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell's lawyers.com (www.lawyers.com).

Among those who admit to taking office supplies for personal use, the most commonly stolen office supplies include pens and pencils (77 percent), followed by self-adhesive "sticky" notes (44 percent) and paper clips (40 percent).

But that's just the little stuff. Some employees (2 percent) are even taking decorations like plants, paintings and office furniture (2 percent). "People often forget that workplace resources are not their own and are actually considered company property," says attorney Alan Kopit, legal editor of lawyers.com. "We are not just talking about pens and paper here, employees are also stealing expensive things too like computers, software and books."

Kopit suggests employees review their office policy and be sure to alter their behavior to abide by the regulations. Employee theft costs small businesses billions of dollars a year, because in addition to pens and paper, employees are also stealing resources directly related to the productivity of the business, such as classified information, patents, corporate contacts, case studies and periodicals.

"Business owners need to evaluate the current policies and employee practices and if necessary institute new systems to eliminate the risk to the business," Kopit says. Harris Interactive fielded the online survey between March 31 and April 4, 2006 among a nationwide sample of 2,364 U.S. adults 18 years of age or older. The data were weighted to be representative of the total U.S. adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity and propensity to be online. The results for the overall sample of adults have a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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