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| Letter from Paul
Dear Colleagues,
As you are aware, we are entering the ever-so-important holiday season. I always reflect on the words that a former chief executive officer imparted to me regarding the holidays: “It’s Christmas, a day is equal to a week, a week is equal to a month, and these two months are our year.” Our year has been filled with adversity and uncertainty in sales, the markets, politics and business.
As business executives, our programs and risks change as frequently as our environment changes, which has been daily. In speaking to many loss prevention leaders, I am learning that despite record shrink reductions as an industry for 2007, many retailers are now experiencing rising shrink, slower sales, reduced loss prevention budgets and increased risks.
Given the obstacles, how do we impact the fourth quarter and 2009? One suggestion that I believe works well is live in the now. Worry about what you can impact and impact it. Spend very little time focusing on the factors outside of your control. It may be the right time to reflect and retool your plan. Then, spend the remainder of your time on executing the game plan and leading your team. Focus on inspiring, engaging, retaining, teaching and having fun with your team while impacting what you can influence through “Excellence in Execution.” Even an average loss prevention program can produce above average results with an engaged, motivated team.
That same CEO imparted some additional advice to me. “Some things never change: right is right, wrong is wrong, and Christmas falls on the 25th of December every year.”
So take a moment to be grateful and thankful for all that we have. Too often, our families bear a hardship as we stroll on the retail highway for another holiday season.
Conference Update
Your Loss Prevention Steering Committee and the RILA team are hard at work planning a can’t miss event for our annual Loss Prevention, Auditing & Safety Conference, to be held in Orlando, Florida, May 3-6. We will open our conference with our keynote speaker Marvin Ellison, executive vice president of stores for Home Depot. We will learn about his beginnings in loss prevention, his transition to broader roles and the critical success factors that worked for him. We will close with legendary police chief and bestselling author of Turnaround, William Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department and formerly of the New York Police Department and the Boston Police Department. He and business executives from the Target Corporation will discuss public and private partnerships.
Some of the areas that we will cover include:
· Shrink analytics
· Reducing shrink with cycle counts
· Building a loss prevention program
· Organized retail crime (ORC) technology
· Shrink in self-scanning
· Performance improvement
· Retailer – supplier success stories
· International forums
· Building an international loss prevention program
· Leveraging shrink down in good stores
· Addressing return fraud
· Securing high-value items in the supply chain
· Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) analytics
· Systems shrink
· Robust safety track & audit track
Conference Exhibitors & Solution Providers – New and Exciting
In an effort to add a greater return on investment, we are launching our first ever educational forum for solution providers. This forum is aimed at allowing you to learn firsthand what loss prevention decision-makers are expecting and need from solution providers. We will also provide you a copy of the first ever survey on the future needs of loss prevention professionals and the success factors they value in solution-provider relationships. This session will take place on Sunday, May 3, 2009, and after the presentation we will have a 30 minute open forum of LP leaders. You will be able to gain insight and knowledge relative to selling your solutions through questions and answers with our panel of experts!
Two Additional Notes:
1) Take your family to LP 2009 in Orlando and experience great education and the magic of Disney! If you are having your family join you, please review the great ticket offerings.
2) Have you downloaded your 2007 NRSS report? Email Richard Hollinger for your copy at rhollin@crim.ufl.edu.
Here’s to a great start for the holiday season!
Paul Jones
Vice President, Asset Protection
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Executive Profile
Mark S. Stinde is the vice president of asset protection for Circuit City Stores, Inc. Discover more about his thoughts on the loss prevention field in RILA’s exclusive nine question interview.
1. What is the biggest challenge your department faces right now? The challenge that all LP executives face, especially right now, is managing in a very difficult economy. LP departments are asked to be smart about how money is spent and are expected to return favorably on that spend. These tough times require LP executives to be creative, leaning on the knowledge and ideas of their team and their peers. Folks that are successful in a declining economy will set themselves up for success as times get better. Read more. |
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Feature Articles
A Different Perspective on Internal Theft
By King Rogers, CEO, The King Rogers Group
In retail, when we think of “internal theft,” what usually comes to mind? I think many of us immediately have a vision of a dishonest cashier or a dishonest sales associate. Most of the time, we think hourly associates are most inclined to steal from their employers, probably because we ‘catch’ them most frequently. Occasionally, we might catch a salaried employee but, because our pool of hourlies is much larger than our pool of salaried associates, we tend to focus our efforts on the hourly employees on the sales floors or in the stock rooms of our stores.
In the 2007 National Retail Security Survey, Richard C. Hollinger, PhD, University of Florida (rhollin@ufl.edu) reported that retailers attributed 44 percent of their shrinkage to employee theft, which translated to about $15.2 billion in 2007. Also in this report, Hollinger said retailers reported an average of 38.76 employee theft apprehensions for every $100 million in sales and that the average admitted dollar loss per employee theft incident for this past year amounted to a record $1,442.67. Read more.
Expertise Credibility: A Prerequisite for Persuasion
By Walter E. Palmer, CEO/President – PCG Solutions, Inc.
In last month’s column, we discussed the need to understand the “hot buttons” that really capture the attention of your senior executives. As examples, we talked about financial return on investment, risk avoidance, sales risks and high value theft cases as possible hot buttons. One reader weighed in this month with another example. He wrote, “In my company, my CEO is all about protecting the integrity of the brand, as it relates to merchandise and customer experience.” Knowing that hot button allows this executive to advance his proposals in light of how they would support this important organizational aspiration.
This month, we will look at another key factor in gaining board and CEO support for your programs – expertise credibility. In 1998, Jay Conger wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review titled, “The Necessary Art of Persuasion,” which gives a great, easy to understand summary of the two prerequisites for persuading anyone to do anything – expertise credibility and relationship credibility. Read More.
Coach’s Corner
By Steve Lundeen, CPCC, executive coach and consultant, Dream Engineering
Transition
By the time you read this we, as a country, will have chosen a new president to lead us in these tumultuous times. Whoever has won this election is moving into, arguably, the most demanding position in the world and probably the most challenging in history. I am sure we have all been thinking about the transition of our governmental leadership lately. How will they handle it? How will it affect me?
As a coach, my work has increasingly been about transition . . . transition from old job to new and, from a more private perspective, transition of one’s life. Two distinct elements are at play here. How do I ensure astute career management and how do I ensure astute life management? Or, another way to say this is – How do I ensure astute career transition? And, how do I ensure astute life transition? Read more.
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Investigator’s Corner
Confidential Informants: Part 2
By David E. Zulawski CFI, CFE and Douglas E. Wicklander CFI, CFE
Informants can be a useful, productive means of resolving cases, but if there are ways to obtain the same information without using them consider doing so. The motivations prompting one person to inform on another person range from being a good citizen to serving only oneself so the investigator must carefully weigh the truthfulness and accuracy of any information provided. This is especially true if the reason for offering the information is self-serving. Give me what I want today and I will gladly give you your information tomorrow, maybe. Read More.
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Exception Reporting and Your Field Team: Building a Successful Approach
By David Johnston, Director of Business Development, LP Innovations.com
Exception reporting applications provide a wealth of information. Putting these tools in the hands of your field personnel can make your team members more efficient and effective in their responsibilities. Providing them with a solid analytical approach, structured reports and focused review process will make it easier for them to access the information and take action on the results.
Here are five (5.5 actually) quick tips on some of the successful steps to rolling out an exception-based reporting (EBR) application to your field team. Read More.
Working with an LP Search Firm Partner
By Chris O’Leary President, Loss Prevention Recruiters
As leaders in your industry, you have hired many executives in your careers and probably some with the help of a search firm partner. With all of the Internet job boards that are available and your own networking capabilities then why would you need to partner with a search firm? Won’t you be saving your company money by not using a search firm? Well, perhaps, but let us consider the following.
Did It Really Save You Money?
During a recent conversation with a pyramid head, this individual shared with me that the company was about to make a third offer on a field level position that has been open for six months. The two previous offers had been turned down with one person accepting a counter offer from their current employer. It is their opinion that this individual used them to negotiate more money from his or her employer. If this was the case then it was certainly a very shortsighted decision by this candidate, who has put his or her reputation in serious jeopardy. So by not using a search firm partner did it really save the company money? You be the judge. A qualified search firm partner would have filled the position in less than six months and probably would have closed the deal the first time. They also would have been able to identify and screen out the individual who played the counter-offer game.Read More.
Loss Prevention Certfication
Loss Prevention Foundation
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The Loss Prevention Foundation would like to remind you that there are only a few days left to get the LPQualified Coursework at a fabulous price of $395, a $100 savings. This will be the only time all year we will be giving such a generous discount so take advantage of it while you can. You have one year to complete the coursework. DO NOT delay any longer! Offer expires 10-31-08. Get Certified Now!
Why get LPQ Certified?
• Improve your potential to get promoted.
• Enhance your performance by gaining knowledge.
• Demonstrate your understanding of core competencies.
• Demonstrate your desire to learn.
• Increase your marketability – add the “LPQ” designation to your name and resume.
LPF Business
The Loss Prevention Foundation continues to add whitepapers, articles, etc. to the Education Center. A few of these new titles include:
- Three Strategies for Managing Generation Y
- How to Successfully Build a Business Case for Automating Time & Attendance
- Recession Friendly Employee Perks
- Recruiting Generation Y: Four Killer Tactics
- How to Get Started with LinkedIn
- Integrity Testing
- Five Rules of Style for the Business Casual Workplace
- How to Get Results From Your Team
If you haven’t visited the LPF centers lately, you may be missing out on some great resources. For suggestions or to submit additional resources, please contact a member of the LPF staff at anytime. Read More.
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Test Your Knowledge about Non-Professional Consumer Shoplifters
National Association for Shoplifting Prevention
True or False
1. The majority of shoplifters decide to shoplift before they even enter the store.
False: In a recent survey conducted by the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention (NASP) and sponsored by Punch Integrated Communications, fewer than 20 percent of the shoplifters surveyed (both adult and juvenile) said that the decision to steal happened before they entered the store, revealing an opportunity to influence the decision making of 80 percent of the shoplifters at the store level before the offense occurs.
For almost half, the decision to shoplift was based purely on something that happened after they entered the store environment; for nearly 40 percent it was an impulse based on an opportunity that presented itself within the store environment.
Finally, 35 percent of adults and 37 percent of juveniles indicated that they did not have or did not want to spend the money for the item they stole.
This finding is supported by the results of a 2001 survey that asked how carefully the offenders planned their thefts. Even then, 72 percent of both adults and juveniles said that they did not plan their theft in advance – also indicating a clear opportunity for attentive employees to interrupt and influence a shoplifter’s thinking and thus change their decision to shoplift when they are in the store. For more information or to get a copy of the complete survey, Identifying the Impact of Customer Service on Consumer Shoplifter Behavior, e-mail Greg Griffin of Punch Integrated Communications at greg@punch.ca. Read More.
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For the the latest in loss prevention-related news, visit RILA’s website!
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Inside this issue:
Letter from Paul
Executive Profile
-Circuit City’s Mark Stinde
Feature Articles:
- A Different Perspective on Internal Theft
- Expertise Credibility
- Coach’s Corner
- Investigator’s Corner
- Expection Reporting and Your Field Team
- Working with a LP Search Firm Partner
- Loss Prevention Certifcation
- Test Your Knowledge
RILA Calendar
November 11
Greenhouse Gas
Webinar 301
11:30am-1:00pm EST
Register
November 11
Greenhouse Gas
Webinar 301
2:00pm – 3:30pm EST
Register
November 18
Economic Outlook: An In-Depth Analysis
2:00pm-3:00pm EST
Register
November 19
Government Affairs Committee Meeting
Washington, D.C.
January 25-29
Leadership Forum
Naples, Florida
Invitation-only event for CEOs
February 8-11
Logistics Conference
Dallas, Texas
May 3-6
Loss Prevention, Auditing & Safety Conference
Orlando, Florida |
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