It is said that businesses, small, medium and large corporates averagely lose 8% of their earnings to employee fraud. A research by Pwc indicates that 56% of fraudsters are from inside. Every business no matter the size is susceptible to this phenomenon, which could make small to medium sized businesses crumble like a pack of cards. Large corporates if they can, would cut their loses and sweep it under the carpet. In the next few posts we would look at this phenomenon and how your business or company could contain it to minimal levels. Of course it would be great to define what fraud is in this context. Occupational fraud is defined as an employee’s misuse or abuse of his position for his own enrichment by intentionally misappropriating or misusing company assets and also indulge in acts to conceal them.
Here are some facts you need to know. First know that every staff could commit fraud and this means from the top level management members to the last man on the floor. In fact a research work done by recording the fraudulent activities of 100 companies observed that 37% of reported culprits were managers. It is also worth knowing that an estimated 58% of organisations do not recover a dime and that just about 10% are able to recover their losses (sometimes excluding the cost of the recovery). It is therefore highly probable that you recover only partially if anything at all. So the best approach is prevent employee fraud from happening. The first point is to ensure you have a practical system that controls it and 2. Someone is actually responsible for its application. No need having a policy that is sleeping.
The next discussion would be on the frameworks on how employee fraud generally happens and how businesses (small and large) could control it. Thank you for making a date on ghana talks business. You can get the audio free and more on ghanatalksbusiness.com, Get on our social media platforms and lets get this conversation going.
Author: Yaw Korankye Antwi
