Stealing is not always noticeable, nor illegal

My friend Ray almost lost his construction company, because his friendly, always smiling bookkeeper Sally, made herself a "partner" and wrote checks to support a lifestyle that a bookkeeping salary doesn't.

When Ray found out why Sally was always smiling, he called the cops, saved his business and had her sent to where she doesn't have all those bill to pay… prison. The big lesson learned is that you can't have the same person write your checks and reconcile your accounts.

What about another type of corporate stealing going on that is harder to identify and near impossible to quantify? This stealing is not illegal, but could be sapping all the profits you expected when you wrote your business plan.

Here's an example:

• Before settling in, each morning, Your employee, Harvey, surfs the net for half an hour to see what happened in college sports the previous night.
• Then he downloads a few songs to his iPod, because your broadband is way faster than his DSL at home. If you're lucky, he doesn't spend time visiting porn sites and printing to your new color printer.
• He reads emails from his school buddies, fishing buddies, and ski club members.
• He reads an on-line newspaper, or two, and a couple of newsletters.
• He reviews the stock market, estimates which way the economic winds are blowing and makes his on-line trades for the day.
• Can't be in the market without surfing the bulletin boards and blogs to read and reply to. So he takes time for that.
• Then he checks on when his car can be picked up from the shop and when the kids should be picked up at school.
• It's now almost lunch time, so he makes a few more personal calls to round out the morning, knowing that since he cried so loudly about being swamped, you hired an assistant to help him get his overdue work finished.

If you're losing half a person, and half a salary, for Harvey to do personal chores. How many other Harvey's are doing the same thing? This could be big bucks.

Unregulated internet access, email, free phone calls and copies are like chicken wings, ribs and fries at happy hour. They appear free for the taking. Yet, such liberties taken to extremes can debilitate you. On the other hand, despotism doesn't work either. So set reasonable personal use rules that keep employees happy and then watch your productivity soar.