There are really three parts to this. When I say “Open the door”, I mean that loss prevention must be accessible to the employees and managers that we support. The first step in opening the door is building relationships and credibility through communication. As an LP professional, you can’t sit in your office or camera room all day and expect that your employees are going to relate to you, or feel any connection with you, or your programs. You also can’t be the Audit Nazi, and nit-pick every discrepancy that you find every time you visit a store or walk a sales floor.
Become A Person
If you are to open the door to your employees, you have to take some time to build relationships. Early on in my career in LP, I had a district LP manager who insisted that I eat my lunch everyday in the store break room, with the other employees. I didn’t understand the logic at first, but I soon realized that I was having conversations with all the employees about our families, what we did for hobbies, etc. Suddenly, I was a person to the employees, and next thing I knew, I was getting calls and visits to my office from employees who wanted to help out. They were giving me tips on the employees who were stealing. They were telling me about their neighbors who were known to be shoplifters. There were even some whom I came to actually “trust”, and they were all great assets to my success.
Become A Mentor
Employees can pick out a fake, and they will come to you for answers and partnership. If you don’t know the answer, don’t lie or try to come up with something that will placate them. That will destroy the relationship you are trying to build. Tell them honestly that you don’t know, and then find out for them. Always follow up, as this builds credibility. Employees will learn to trust you because they know that you will either have the right answer, or you will get if for them. Loss prevention should be a credible source of information to the employees, and should give direction based on good business decisions. We have to understand that sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense to “lock it up”. So, we have to work with our employees on work-arounds that do make sense for the business, and still protect our profits. Give your associates sound direction that makes sense to them, and they’ll trust your judgment.
Build Awareness
Once loss prevention is established as part of the team, whether at the store level or above; then that door can swing wide open. That means communications are going both ways, and awareness-building can be accomplished. The level of awareness in the stores is directly linked to one thing above all: “How good is the relationship between LP and everyone else?” If managers and employees don’t trust, respect, nor like the loss prevention person or people, then you can preach all you want, and it will not be heard. I have often said that people don’t work for companies, they work for people. If your employees see you as credible, respectable, and reasonable, then they will be open to your ideas. They’ll listen to you. Once you establish that, you can have very high awareness levels because your employees will help you “spread the word” about loss prevention programs.
One of the most gratifying things I’ve seen or heard in a store was when I overheard an employee telling a newly hired employee about the loss prevention programs in their store. She said, “Joe knows what he’s doing, and since we started doing this, we haven’t seen nearly as many thefts.”
That’s a buy-in, and it’s priceless. As long as I have a few of those employees in every one of my stores, I don’t have to worry much about whether my programs are being communicated to the other employees. This is achieved by communicating to your employees, not only the specifics of the program, but the “why”. Why does one thing work over another? Why do we do one thing in one store, but something different in another? Why should I care whether or not the store is profitable? Loss prevention has to be able to credibly answer these questions, along with many more, and you just can’t do that through a closed door.
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