Small Workplace Thefts Add Up to Big Losses

Corporations don't have feelings." "No one got hurt." "If my company's going to cut my benefits, it owes me." Those are among the excuses, workplace experts say, that employees use to justify stealing things from their employers—a practice whose frequency has nearly doubled in the past 16 years, according to a new report. The theft of noncash property jumped from 10.6 percent of company fraud cases in 2002 to 21 percent in 2018, according to Report to the Nations: 2018 Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE). "Generally, people like to think of themselves as basically good, and so they need to have some justification for the crime that allows them to preserve their self-image," said Art Markman, professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the Fast Company article "The Psychology Behind Why People Steal Their Coworkers' Stuff." "One way to do that is to see the company as doing wrong to them in some way. If they feel poorly treated at work or underpaid, then they can justify the crime as a way of balancing the scales."