Posse Assembles to Track Workplace Thieves

Crime Doesn’t Pay: Dishonest employees soon may have no place to hide in England. An effort is under way to enable companies to share information about workers who have lost their jobs for theft, forgery, wanton property destruction or other charges leveled by their employers. Spearheading the initiative is Action Against Business Crime, a joint project of Britain’s Home Office and a number of services and retail organizations. The group says it’s working to create a database, called the National Staff Dismissal Register, to collect information about people whose dishonest behavior resulted in their getting fired. That information “is shared with other members of the register who are able to access the national system to search for details of an applicant,” thus helping reduce losses and recruit more efficiently. The effort is in response to staff theft and fraud that costs retailers an average of nearly £500 million ($1 billion) annually. Workers in the U.S. have been struggling for a few years with similar concerns about malfeasance by employees at all levels of their organizations.