Loss Prevention Research Council Weekly Series - Episode 105 - Shoplifting, Top Supply Chain Retailers, and Common Cyber Crimes
With Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D'Onofrio, and Tom Meehan
Jack L Hayes Annual Shrink Survey
https://hayesinternational.com/news/annual-retail-theft-survey/
Let me start with the latest retail on shrink. Jack L. Hayes International, just released the results of their 34th Annual Retail Theft Survey which reports on over 200,000 shoplifters and dishonest employee apprehensions in 2021 by just 25 large retailers, who recovered over $240 million from these thieves.
“When it comes to shoplifting, the survey showed many retailers moved away from apprehensions in 2021 and focused more on recoveries. Our survey revealed shoplifting apprehensions were down 16.2% in 2021, while overall shoplifting recoveries (from apprehended and non-apprehended thieves) were up a staggering 30.8%,”
“Survey respondents noted the pandemic environment, staff safety, lower police response and higher risks as some of the reasons for less shoplifter apprehensions. “There was an increase in 2021 in both dishonest employee apprehensions and recovery dollars, 6.0% and 29.8% respectively. Survey respondents noted additional focus, enhanced investigation methods/tools and less associate supervision as some of the reasons for the increase in apprehensions and recovery dollars of dishonest employees.
My favorite every year are the responses from job applicants. To further evaluate the severity of employee theft, Hayes International analyzed over 19,000 randomly selected Applicant Review questionnaires (pre-employment ‘honesty tests’) given to retail job applicants nationwide.
Of these 19,165 job applicants, 12,283 (64.1%) were rated as “low risk” and 3,700 (19.3%) were rated as “high risk”, due to their admissions of previous wrongdoings, and their attitudes regarding honest and dishonest behavior. Rest were medium risk.
Nearly 27% of high risk applicants said they could be tempted to steal from their employers. Over 17% admitted stealing money in the past 3 years. Nearly 16% stole merchandise.
Previous theft admissions for the group of 3,700 “high risk” job applicants totaled $256,050, or $69.20 per applicant, while the admissions for the group of 12,283 “low risk” job applicants totaled $71,930, or $5.86 per applicant. It is generally estimated the correct dollar amount for stolen money and merchandise is approximately 10 times the admitted amount. Therefore, based upon admissions made on The Applicant Review questionnaire, the average “high risk” job applicant was responsible for the theft of $692.03, compared to $58.56 for the average “low risk” job applicant.
Nine retailers make Gartner top global supply chain list
https://chainstoreage.com/nine-retailers-make-gartner-top-global-supply-chain-list
From Chain Store Age, with all the talk these days about supply chains, thought would share the new 2022 edition of the annual listing of global companies Gartner identifies as having leading supply chains which includes nine retailers. Microsoft debuted on the list at #10 (the highest-ranking retailer of nine companies with significant direct-to-consumer retail operations on the list). The other eight retailers included are L’Oreal (#11), The Coca-Cola Company (#12), Nike (#13), Walmart (#14), HP Inc. (#15), Dell Technologies (#17), BMW (#19), and Alibaba (#25).
Cisco Systems scored the overall top spot in the ranking for the third consecutive year, followed by Schneider Electric, Colgate-Palmolive, Johnson & Johnson, and PepsiCo.
According to Gartner, supply chain executives are balancing long-term investments in automation with immediate investments in technologies that reduce employee cognitive load and prioritize time and attention to areas where people perform better than machines, such as relationship building and responding to new operating conditions. There are also cases where people perform better with machines. For example, warehouse or factory workers can increase their productivity by working with robots.
The most common types of cyber crimes
Finally, in support of Tom, here are the top 5 cyber crimes according to Statista.
According to an FBI report, the number of Americas that fell civilians by type of crime in 2021 are:
- Phishing / vishing/ smishing Nearly 324,000 people
- Non-payment / non-delivery – Just over 82,000 people
- Personal data breach – Nearly 52,000 people
- Identity Theft – Again nearly 52,000 people
- Extortion – Just over 39,000 people
Total victims losses from the listed crime by Statista was $4 billion dollars.
