4 Ways To Keep Your Remote Employees Honest

In business, every dollar counts. As a business owner, you can’t afford for your profits to walk out the door. It’s even worse when it’s your employees stealing from you. Not all employees are dishonest but unfortunately there many who are. The Association of Fraud Examiners posted some startling statistics about employee theft late last year. The amount stolen from US businesses each year is approximately $50 billion dollars. These statistics can’t be ignored. When 75% of employees have admitted to stealing at least once from their employer, it means that your employees could be stealing from you or even multiple employees stealing from you.

Not all of these are thefts of cold hard cash or inventory. Stealing time is also a big culprit. Most employees may not even be aware that they are stealing when they take an extra long lunch or extra breaks but they are. Here are a few ways to keep your remote employees honest.

1.Use Mobile Time Clocks

With employees on the go, it’s difficult to keep track of them at all times. Adding an extra hour on their time sheets, taking a longer than usual lunch break or spending time on the internet when they should be working are ways that employees can commit time theft. Mobile time clocks have been an easy solution to keep accurate time. An app on the employees phone or device allows them to clock in and out. Some of the more advanced programs will even have a GPS stamp that tells what location they are in when they clock in and out.

2.GPS Tracking

Remote monitoring apps on employee’s devices can help you keep tabs on where the employee may be. With employees travelling from place to place, making sure they are where they are supposed to be can be helpful. With GPS tracking this can be accomplished.

3.Remote Monitoring For Employees

Keeping tabs of what your employees are doing online is important. In a recent Salary.com survey about wasting time at work, they found that 69% of workers waste time on a daily basis. 24% of those employees waste between 30-60 minutes every day. It may not seem like a lot in small increments but an hour of wasted time per work day can add up to over 250 hours a year. Imagine 35% of your workforce wasting at least an hour of time a day (and some even more). It could add up quickly. By monitoring your employee’s internet use, you can try to curb this behavior.

4.Limit Apps& Access That Employee Has To Non-Essential Documents

Theft of time and property isn’t the only ways that employees are committing theft. Stealing documents and intellectual property is theft, too. With access to apps like Dropbox and Sugar Sync, it makes it easy for employees to steal confidential information. By limiting apps that employees can download on their work devices, you can avoid some of these issues. Also limiting employees only to files that they need for their jobs is just as an important.

Don’t ignore the fact that your employees may be stealing from you. Take precautions to keep your company safe from inside attacks.