The typical office is full of valuable items which we might like to have at home. Whether it’s a box of pens for writing shopping lists, a printer/scanner or a state-of-the-art laptop, there are plenty of things that would look great in a home office, never mind on our office desk. Fortunately, many office workers choose to leave all that valuable stuff where it belongs, right?

While the majority of workers are honest and can resist the temptation to help themselves to office equipment and tech free of charge, there are a few bad apples that own up to taking advantage of a five-finger discount. It seems that the problem of white-collar crime may be on the rise, much to the dismay of many business owners and senior managers.

Disregard for the rules

A recent survey of office workers across the UK about whether or not they had pilfered any office equipment revealed more than a few startling findings, especially when trustworthiness of employees was concerned. The main question was whether they would replace any office equipment lost or stolen in their possession, something just 20% of respondents said they would do.

As the large majority answered ‘no’ to this question, highlighting just how big a problem it is, many bosses may need to start addressing the situation sooner rather than later. More pressingly, when it came to security in the office, just 28% said they had security cameras on their premises, while only 17% had locks on doors. 4% said they used alarmed chains.

Stealing more common?

When it came to actually stealing something from the office, no matter how small that item may be, over 50% said they had never stolen a thing. 13% said they had stolen something worth £5 or under, while fewer said they had stolen something worth between £6 and £50. Alarmingly, 6% of people in the survey said they had stolen something worth over £51, which could include expensive tech.

15% claimed that if they attempted to steal something from work, they would get away with it. This stat on its own shows that security and trust need to be tightened up across the business world.

[Source: Seareach]

Talking of crime, you might like this recent previous post on TheEmployable on job scams 5 ways you can avoid them!

This was a guest post for TheEmployable