To achieve maximum profitability, store staff at every level need to be checking up on each other. Staff members should appreciate this as long as it is done in a supportive way.
How does this apply to the systems in your business for handling money? Here’s what Art Freedman, my co-author of Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening, advises:
“You say, ‘Martha’s been counting that money for a thousand years.’ Just don’t let her also reconcile the checkbook. So you say, ‘Okay, I’ll start reconciling the checkbook, but how am I going to tell Martha?’ That’s simple. Honest people respect checks and balances. You go to Martha, and you say, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m going to start reconciling the checkbook. I want to get more involved in where this money is going.’ An honest Martha will respond, ‘Thank you. I have enough to do anyway.’
“If Martha replies, ‘What’s the matter. Don’t you trust me?,’ I’ll be thinking to myself, ‘No, not any more.’ That reply is a red flag you can run up a tall pole. I would start auditing every single piece of paper Martha did because I am clearly thinking Martha may have been stealing from me for a long time, and I just don’t know how she’s doing it.
“If you have ten people working for you, two people are never going to steal from you, no matter what. You could set the money right in front of them, and they’d take the money and say, ‘Here, boss, you dropped this money.’ Two of them are going to try to steal from you no matter what you do. It doesn’t matter. And the behavior of the other six will be based on opportunity. So we need systems in place to reduce the opportunities.”
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