By The Numbers – Labour Theft In The Hospitality and Retail Industry

Here is an interesting statistic that I recently learned, and while it is an American statistic I’m almost certain in would apply to Canada as well. According to the American Payroll Association, a recent survey of workers showed that employees admitted to stealing on average 4.5 hours per week from their employer through extended breaks, as well as early clock ins and late clock outs.

Now, let’s break these numbers down and put them into perspective. 4.5 hours per week comes to a total of 234 hours per year. That’s an additional 6 weeks of vacation time! These are hours that employees are being paid but not producing. That is a lot of time that is stolen from businesses.

Even more eye opening let’s equate that to a dollar amount. Let’s take a hypothetical business in Alberta that has 20 employees making the minimum wage of $8.80 per hour. Employees have been clocking in a few minutes early, taking extended breaks and clocking out later than scheduled.

Financial Loss To The Business

4.5 hours * $8.80 = $39.60 per employee per week

$39.60 * 20 employees = $792 productivity loss per week

$792 * 52 weeks = $ 41,184 extra wages per year paid out

That equates to 2.25 additional employees on the payroll.

Fortunately, there are affordable technologies that are available to employers to help enforce scheduled hours. TimeForge is a solution that integrates with the restaurant POS system Dinerware that can enable employers to create employee schedules through web based technology. It can be set to require a management approval for an employee to clock in early or late for their shift or breaks.

Even better employees can login online and set their availability, see their schedule, pick up shifts and message internally. They can even set reminders through text messaging, Facebook and e-mail about upcoming shifts. Management can use the Auto Scheduler and create schedules within minutes and have it e-mailed to the organization. Owners or managers can login online and see who is clocked in, and what their gross sales are in real time.

Now assuming that with TimeForge you can save 45 minutes per employee of those lost hours what does that do to your bottom line?

45 minutes times 20 employees is 15 hours.

15 hours * $8.80 = $132.00

$132 * 4 weeks = $528

The monthly cost for TimeForge for twenty employees integrated with Dinerware is about $100 USD.

Monthly savings = $428

Annual savings = $ 5,136.00