The shocking statistic that reveals Britain is a nation of workplace cheats

Lock up the stationery and nail down the keyboards – staff are helping themselves to office ‘freebies’

“Anyone who claims not to have taken something from work is lying, even if it is only a paperclip,” says Anna, not her real name.
She has run her own businesses, worked as an auditor at others, and was employed by a number of big businesses throughout her decades-long career. And even she is among the growing number of profligate employees who have stolen from their workplace.
Some 38pc of British workers have taken pens or pencils from their office, 22pc have siphoned off notepads, while 18pc have taken a pack or two of printer paper home, according to a 2018 YouGov survey. But 50pc of people found the theft of the latter “a serious matter”.
In July, a manager at one of Tesla’s gigafactories in Germany brought a meeting with the trade union representing workers at the 12,000-strong factory to a halt with a rant about the levels of petty theft allegedly taking place at the site. The manager moaned that 65,000 coffee mugs had gone missing – enough for every employee to take home five each, he claimed.
The problem of pilfering employees is one that blights businesses everywhere. Reports of employees cheating their workplace, known as “insider threat”, rose 14pc last year, according to Cifas, a fraud prevention service. Around half of these were employees stealing devices for their own use or to sell on to others for profit.
It also included “polygamous” working, where employees have a second job that they do at the same time as their main one on work time. The increasing preponderance of working from home means some people have realised they can work two full-time jobs at the same time, through careful management of their calendars. 
Others have managed to work remotely abroad, effectively going on holiday without taking annual leave. One employee secretly worked from Spain for a month earlier in the summer.
“As the uncertain economic climate and cost-of-living pressures continue to create financial challenges, some employees are being driven to commit dishonest conduct,” says Duncan McLellan, senior fraud intelligence analyst at Cifas.
It’s the way we work, too – and the lack of oversight as a result of changing work patterns. “Coupled with hybrid working – which can make supervision difficult for employers – these factors provide enticing opportunities for individuals to exploit the companies they work for,” adds McLellan.
Anna recalls working at an advertising company where theft was rife. “We had so much champagne in stock that if we wanted a bottle, we took one home. If we wanted to spend some holiday money, we may take foreign petty cash to help with our trip.” 
Given the scale of petty theft going on, the idea of “borrowing” stationery from the business’s communal cupboard, then, was small fry. “It was no issue if we wanted a fancy lunch, we would expense it,” Anna recalls.
As Anna left to set up her own business, she continued the same attitude – even when it was her company footing the bill. “Business owners can be the worst, as they know where to hide things,” she says.
Her company credit card used to have a £4,000 per month limit on it – far more than her personal account – so Anna would combine the two to take advantage of the larger credit limit. “I included some of the cost of a £10,000 birthday trip to New York for my sister through my business, as we did business in New York,” she adds.
Her actions ramped up over time. While working as a teenager at a bakery, she and her co-workers would encounter unusually large numbers of broken or damaged baked goods while on shift. The company had a rule that any imperfect items couldn’t be sold, but could be eaten or taken home by staff. Any link between the policy and the increasing number of broken biscuits and fat rascals was simply a coincidence, recalls Anna.
“It starts with a few Biros, but then it becomes something bigger,” says Peter Taylor, a fraud investigator and consultant.
He helped investigate a case of a worker in charge of his company’s stationery orders. He started stealing paper, pens and ink cartridges for himself, then began ordering additional ones for his friends. Then he started ordering equipment that the business never had, and never would use, specifically to sell on online marketplaces.
“He was basically doubling his income every month with his cottage industry stationery suppliers,” says Taylor.
Most employees aren’t exploiting their workplace to that extent, but many are happy to keep schtum if a business overlooks something to their benefit. 
Sarah, who also asked to use a pseudonym for fear of being caught, used to work at home in the mid-2000s. Her employer let her take an office chair home. Two years later, she left the company, and 18 years later, still uses the chair, which her firm never asked for back. 
While she didn’t deliberately hide the fact she possessed the chair, she didn’t shout loudly when leaving the business – rationalising that if the business cared about it, it would ask her.
Tackling the issue is a tricky one for businesses, says Rachael Tiffen of Cifas. “You need to think about what people have access to when you’re employing them. If you decide not to screen the cleaner because they’re not in charge of public funds, grants or budgets, fine – but cleaners have access to the building when everyone’s gone.”
Stealing usually happens for a reason. “We talk about a triangle of fraud,” adds Tiffen. “You have to have the motivation. You have to have the opportunity. And then you have to have the rationale for it.”
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