Consulting Journal: Techniques

Techniques: Legalizing theft

by David Blakey

Here's a way to stop people stealing your property: give it to them.

[Monday 20 May 2002]

Everyone does it.

Maybe you don't. Maybe I don't. Maybe no one you know does. But still: ‘everyone does it’. It's the justification for workplace theft. Someone may feel that they're not doing any wrong when they take home pens or stationery, because ‘everyone does it’.

Many employers put up notices and issue policy documents declaring that workplace theft is not acceptable. Anyone found taking home something that is the property of the employer will be subject to a warning, at least, in the first instance, and may eventually be dismissed or even prosecuted.

Other employers ignore workplace theft, provided that it is on a small scale, and write off the stock losses from stationery.

I suggest an alternative: legalize it. Now, there have to be limits. Someone lugging a desk or an electronic whiteboard out of the offices into a van on a Sunday afternoon is clearly going beyond the limits. But some areas should be permissible.

Pens

Have your company name and a short slogan printed on all your cheap disposable ballpoint pens. Regard them as an advertising medium. Encourage employees to take them. Encourage them to give them away.

I have been in meetings when I haven't had my own pen with me, and been given a ballpoint pen by the person I was meeting. They have always said: ‘Keep it’ to me. Some of these pens have actually been attractive. One from Unisys has a white body and a red top. The words

UNISYS
Better information - Better decisions
are printed in red on the white body. The pen probably ran out of ink a long time ago. I never use it, anyway. But I keep it in my pen tub on my desk at home. I like this pen, and it gives me a good impression of Unisys whenever I look at it.

Paper

Legalize people taking packets of paper home. You can restrict this to packets of the 80gsm white paper that you have in laser printers and photocopiers. Many people work at home and print documents at home. You should provide the paper for them to do this work for you. If people do work at home, there's a trade-off. The extra paper that they take for their own use will be a trade for using their toner and electricity on your behalf.

So you can give away something that you've already accounted for, in return for not getting expense claims for various kinds of toner.

If you do set up this policy, then you should tell people clearly how it operates. You will not accept any claims for expenses for work done at home, but you will make some stationery items available.

You may have already set up a scheme for a number of people to all buy the same product at the same time, so that they get a discount. In that case, they will all be using the same model of printer, and you could make available toner cartridges as well as paper.

Laptops

You may not see an issue with laptops, as they are intended to be taken out of the office. But there are two issues.

Some people may work on desktop machines while they're in the office, and they may not have access to a computer at home. Even if they do have a computer at home, it may not be powerful enough and may not have the desktop software on it. If they want to work at home, then give them a laptop as well. (I have never found that a ‘pool’ of laptops works well. People alter the settings to their own preferences.) This is really important if these people are doing creative work. If an idea strikes them at the weekend, they will be able to use the laptop.
Provide access to your databases through a dial-up connection. People working out of the office should not be building data bases on the laptops. They should be storing information on the office systems. The best solution to this is through an Intranet that allows replication of files between the office systems and remote users.

With these two combined, your desktop publisher can greet you at the start of the week with ‘I had a great idea for So-and-so's design over the weekend. You can call it up from So-and-so's folder.’

Equipment

Make some equipment available to be borrowed. This will need to be scheduled, and it will need to be logged. The most likely item that someone may want to borrow is probably a CD burner. If you use external CD burners, they will probably be logged out of storage when they are about to be used in the office, anyway. You can extend this to include overnight and weekend borrowing for home use.

One restriction that I recommend is that you do not make CD-Rs available in the same way, for two reasons. First, some people use CD-Rs for ‘inappropriate’ purposes. Second, most people will keep the CD-Rs as part of their personal archive, and it is better if there is no possibility of a dispute over ownership. If people want to archive business data, then let them take home a CD-R and then being it back to store it in the office.

I have written this article as if you were the employer. If you are an employee, then try to persuade your management to adopt at least some of these. Work from the top of the list and see how far down you can get.

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