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As with any business, you want to constantly be protecting your assets and preventing your company from being manipulated by consumers. However, in some cases, it’s what’s happening in your backyard that could cause you issues. It’s just as important to monitor and review your employees when it comes to laying the foundation for a safe business.
Here are three crazy ways that your own staff could potentially harm your business:
Stealing Company Time
Every year, businesses lose millions of dollars in employee theft, and one of the least understood and calculated loses involves time. According to a study conducted by Statistic Brain, the average time that passes before a business catches time fraud is two years. According to another survey from one staffing firm, cell phones cost employers an average of five hours per week.
One of the best ways to keep track of your staff is to use time clocks that accurately measure employee productivity during the day. There are various types of time clocks that have varying degrees of complexity, depending on your business needs. This includes biometric time clocks, web-based time clocks, WiFi time clocks, and much more.
Once you’ve chosen the appropriate time clock, it’s important that you set up protocols to monitor their time usage regularly. Not only will this help you identify any opportunities where an employee is stealing time (this can be something as simple as not clocking out on a lunch break), but it can also help you identify areas where your employees need help. For example, if you notice that employees are taking longer to shut down a store then necessary, perhaps you can observe the closing situation and see where some time can be eliminated, or talk to your employees about what they think can be done to streamline closing.
Bringing In Malware
In 2016, IBM revealed that there are at least 1.5 million cyber attacks annually. This number equates to 4,000 cyber attacks daily—and this number is only increasing, as well as the cost of damage. For instance, the total cost of a data breach was $3.8 million in 2015, and went up to $4 million in 2016.
There are some cases where your staff can bring in malicious malware, which can not only affect their computer and personal information, but the resources of your entire business. With so many daily breaches, phishing activities are very popular. Phishing is the process of gaining fraudulent access to a server by pretending to be an authority site.
For example, an employee might receive an email from what appears to be a legitimate source—like a bank or payroll system—requesting that they log in to fix an error with their account. However, in this case, the email would contain a link to a duplicate site that appears to look legitimate. Once you input your details, the hacker will have access to those important credentials.
It’s important that your employees are aware of many of the common hacking techniques that happen today. The more they are aware of them, the more likely they are to recognize a potential threat should one occur.
Stealing Intellectual Property
In rare instances, your employee may be intentionally trying to hurt your business and bottom line. This might be because of a disagreement you had with them, or simply because they aren’t a good person after all. Whatever the case, it does happen.
There are several ways you can prevent and protect your intellectual property (for all intents and purposes, your “intellectual property” refers to anything that can be copyrighted, trademarked, or patented). The first step is to create an employee agreement, which explicitly states that any work they create on the job is intellectual property that is owned by you. This includes everything from graphic design to blog posts.
There are other types of agreements, too. A non-compete agreement protects businesses by ensuring their employees do not start a competing business or enter into a competing business. This way, the knowledge about your business that they gain as an employee cannot be transferred elsewhere.
It’s also important that employees understand that any data transmitted through company servers bears no privacy. You, as the employer, have the right to access any electronic resources and digital discussions that you please. This also means that there are strict rules about posting personal business information publicly, and discussing personal business matters/trade secrets outside of the workplace.