Employee Theft

Employee time theft is a serious crime and occurs when an employee gets paid for time or work they did not do.  If you pay a full-time employee $20 per hour, and they steal ten minutes every day, that employee costs you $869 per year in stolen time. If you have 30 employees, time theft costs you a little more than $26,000 per year.

Examples of Employee Theft

• Incorrect time – rounding up or logging commute time
• Punching time cards for co-workers
• Long lunches and extended breaks that aren’t decreasing time reported
• Goofing off like excessive water cooler talk or doing personal things
• Internet browsing related to personal things and not work
• Time card excuses – forgetting to punch in and out

Let Employees Know Stealing Time is a Crime

• Inform employees of rules
• Set expectations
• Follow disciplinary procedures
• Set good examples

Steps to Prevent Employee Theft

• Use biometric time clock systems
• Screen employees’ personal and financial background
• Watch employees from a distance
• Restrict unauthorized websites

High-tech time and attendance software makes it easy to track when employees clock in and out, as well as where they are recording time.  One of the most common forms of time theft is buddy punching, which occurs when one employee clocks in or out for another employee who is not present.  Also, employees traveling to job sites will clock in while driving to the job or won’t clock out until they get home.  Cutting-edge time keeping technology allows organizations to confirm the identity of the employee and their physical location.

At Payroll Vault we are awesome at processing payroll and we provide services such as bio-metric time-keeping systems and/or software as well as background and credit checks, to help you avoid employee time theft.  If you need more information, please feel free to contact me.

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