Employee Theft in Hotels: Identification, Prevention, and Strategies

This report provides an in-depth analysis of employee theft within the hotel industry. It begins by defining the problem and highlighting its prevalence, then explores various types of theft, including theft of food and beverages, cash, and complimentary items, across different departments such as food and beverage, front office, and room service. The report identifies key motivations behind employee theft, such as financial difficulties, dissatisfaction with management, and lack of clear workplace policies. It further examines the consequences of such unethical practices, including financial losses, price increases, and decreased customer satisfaction. To mitigate these issues, the report recommends several prevention strategies, including the implementation of effective HR policies, the use of technological advancements, and thorough employee screening processes, ultimately aiming to assist practitioners in preventing workplace theft and safeguarding hotel resources. The report is contributed by a student to be published on the website Desklib.

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Employee theft in hotels
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3/31/2020

Employee theft in hotels 1
Executive summary
The aim of study reflects identification of rationalising and prevalence of
employee theft in hospitality industry with the purpose to help practitioners and
prevent workplace theft. Hotel industry reflects various type of theft like stealing of
food and preparing of additional food for personal use; theft of cash; complimentary
food and facilities; theft by the employees. Some of the motivation that has been
identified for this theft is personal grudges with management, dissatisfied
employment, lack of orientation communication with employees and financial
problem of employees. Petty theft reflects a small or unusual theft which is not
considered to be a real theft or is not considered a serious matter by the
organisation. Some of the strong attitudes concerning towards this issue are
regarding consequent price increase, financial loss and consumer satisfaction. The
recommended preventing strategies or tools in hotel industry include effective HR
policies, technological advances, and employee screening.

Employee theft in hotels 2
Contents
Executive summary.................................................................................................................1
Introduction...............................................................................................................................3
Employee theft in hotels.........................................................................................................4
Conclusion................................................................................................................................8
References...............................................................................................................................9
Appendix..................................................................................................................................10

Employee theft in hotels 3
Introduction
The aim of study reflects identification of rationalising and prevalence of
employee theft in hospitality industry with the purpose to help practitioners and
prevent workplace theft. Workplace thefts by employees are common to be identified
in today’s world. This report will consider hospitality workers to understand the cause
of theft or motivation for the employees to steal. For this various types of employed
tips would be considered to study in the report along with employees from various
departments and types of theft they could be most tolerant in hotel industry.
Hotel industry has reflected various opportunities and challenges for human
resource management where employee turnover, employee theft, unethical
practices, training are some of the major aspects or challenges identified. In hotel
industry there are various departments theft can be conducted like food and
beverage department, front office employees, room service department, Marketing
department, human resource department (Shen, 2015). Thus, various tangible and
intangible types of employee theft will be discussed in the report.

Employee theft in hotels 4
Employee theft in hotels
Employee theft is one of the difficult and costly unethical practices to control in
an organisation. This reflects stealing, unethical practices which might affect the
operations of the organisation, unethical behaviour practises and impact the
business of hotel industry overall. Theft is found at large pace in hotel industry which
could be studied through literature of prevalence of theft. Considering various issues
of HR like retention, recruitment and understanding other challenges in hotel industry
theft is one of the remarkable concerns in this organisation. However, it has been
identified that lack of interest is found for the organisation to search for theft in this
organisation due to the notion of petty theft. Petty theft reflects a small or unusual
theft which is not considered to be a real theft or is not considered a serious matter
by the organisation. Nevertheless, this petty theft could harm hospitality
management in long run as increase in unethical practices in the organisation will
reflect dissatisfaction among the human resource management team which will
eventually increase the employee turnover in this industry. Some of the strong
attitudes concerning towards this issue are regarding consequent price increase,
financial loss and consumer satisfaction (Dooley, Zhao, & Ho, 2017).
The literature presented various possible causes of theft in this organisation.
As per the study theft is directly linked to staff turnover, lack of trust among
management and staff, dishonesty in organisation and employees dissatisfaction
from job (Som & Aguenza, 2018). This reflected personal causes or motivation for
the employees to theft. As discussed, some of the major motivations are financial
problem of an individual. For instance an individual is financially weak and the
compensation or salary is provided by the organisation is also low, the individual will
try to compensate the salary amount with other products that he or she can take
from the organisation. These products are tangible in natures which are generally
including tips from consumers, small changes leftover in rooms, Food and
beverages, fraud in billing and vendor inventory system.
The types of Employees theft can be understand that every department. For
example considering the food and beverage department, chefs and other employees
are involved in this department which reflect theft of food and beverages. This

Employee theft in hotels 5
implies are tending to prepare that they are willing to have or steal the food by
reducing the quantity of the food for the consumers. This is one of the tangible thefts
which have been identified in hotel. Considering another department that is room
service employees, these include employees work cleaning the rooms, managing the
rooms and providing various facilities in the rooms. The major type of theft by this
department is theft of cash, products and services offered to customers. For instance
the cash available in the room at the time of room service can be steel by the room
service employee. Other than this the theft also includes theft of product and
services and facilities that are offered to the customers. For example, there are
various amenities like shampoos, bathing soaps, lotions, towels, room slippers, and
other bathing kits that has been part of the marketing Strategy. Other than this there
is some food that is complimentary for the customers like coffee, sugar, mineral
water bottles. The theft is done through these products and room service employees’
theft these products. Therefore the major impact of this type of theft is directly on the
customer satisfaction (Dimitriou, An analysis of the key determinants of hotel
employees' ethical behavior, 2018).
Another department include marketing department, the theft is either tangible
or intangible through this department. There are various marketing activities
considered in the case of discounts, coupons and passes that are for loyal
customers and to retain the customers. These include theft marketing passes are
steal by the employees and given to their personal social group. Moreover the
discounts can be altered by the employees in case of their known ones, who would
be consumer to the hotel as well (Bonaccio & O'Reilly, 2016).
Considering finance department or inventory control department, one of the
major frauds could be through vendor payment and fraud of check payments. There
have been some responsible employees which are considering the vendor
payments, cash inward an outward are considered to be controlled by some of the
employees (as shown in appendix). These are the Business area or activities with
the theft could be at higher pace and may largely intact the financial reports of the
company. For example there is various inventorying purchased in hotel industry,
especially with regard to food and beverages raw material. It is possible for the
employees to steal either the product directly from the inventory or manipulate the
bills and checks for the personal benefit (Hicks, 2019).

Employee theft in hotels 6
Other than this the intangible theft by employees in hotel industry includes
absence of the employees. Lack of time provided at the job, spending time without
doing any work at Jobs is one of the intangible thefts by the employees. There are a
large number of employees and managing each employee towards working in the
hotel industry is very difficult by human resource team. This reflects increase in theft
of employee working hours. This may not be identified; scene or tangible in nature
but this is one of the unaccounted losses for the company as company is paying
salaries and compensation to the employees for service they offered for a minimum
working hours. In case they are not available for working where the employees are
within the organisation and part of the working hours has been manipulated, this can
impact productivity and efficiency of hotel (Schaufeli & Taris, 2015).
The major motivation for employees to theft or not only their personal
problems or financial problems as discussed previously, it also include the problem
offered by the organisation which include lack of strict policy towards theft by the
management. In case there is no strict rule or policy the leniency among the
employees will be hired this is one of the reason that employees are easily able to
steal or theft in the workplace. Some of the employees are found to be stealing
unknowingly as they are not clear if the act conducted by them is part of theft or not.
Therefore there must be a particular guideline an orientation to the employees and
organisation to make them realise what is theft according to the workplace in hotel
industry.
Other than this reason the personal grudges are also found that is lack of
communication or lack of Comfort among employee and its superior. The personal
grudges are one of the major reasons that the employees are behaving on ethically
and conducting employed kept under particular supervisor. Supervisors are generally
responsible to answer to management, which reflect challenges due to this
employed theft and in ability to question subordinates (Dimitriou & Ducette, An
analysis of the key determinants of hotel employees' ethical behavior, 2018).
Another is the reason as mentioned previously also, employed dissatisfaction
within the workplace. In hotel industry the dissatisfaction is quite high due to high
workload, unethical consumer behaviour towards the employees, which reflected in
job stress, frustration and employee theft activities within the organisation. Therefore

Employee theft in hotels 7
this reason could be understand after understanding the type of theft conducted by
room service employees that is stealing cash or change from consumers travelling
bag while cleaning the room.
Other than understanding the motivation of employees towards stealing and
theft in the organisation, it is important to teach some preventing strategies for the
organisation so as to decrease this issue and prevent the organisational resources
from employee’s theft. Therefore some of the recommended preventing strategies or
tools in hotel industry as presented by literature include effective HR policies. Since
one of the major cause of theft is in appropriate communication between employees
and management that is lack of communication related to the policies of the
organisation which has impacted leniency among the employees. It is recommended
to the company to have appropriate HR policy which will clearly define be acted of
kept by employees in the organisation and the consequences for each theft act.
Another recommendation to employers is to provide training and development
programmes, this will include ethical training to be included as part of orientation
training program within the organisation. This will influence the attitude of employees
towards the organisation and considered the ethics so that theft by employees is not
conducted and Lindy. Moreover this will influence the employee’s values towards the
organisation and workplace, which will eventually help the organisation to prevent
Employ unethical practices (Weil, 2018).
Another recommended strategy is technological advances. For instance just
towards theft of towels must be identified through technological advancement and
pass on with the additional cost paid by the guest or by the employees in case of
theft conducted by employees. Modern technologies have been identified and
implemented by some of the international hotels.
Employees screening is another recommended strategy in order to prevent
this unethical behaviour. It is important that the initial level of recruitment process of
HR to check the criminal background of the employee and analyse the past
behaviour from the previous experience. Especially in case of cash standing position
is the credit check must be done prior to recruiting the employees at such position.
Other than this inventory checks, cash check and crosschecking of all the bills must
be conducted by different employees (Allen, 2017).

Employee theft in hotels 8
Conclusion
From the report the concluding points include theft to be in unethical practice
that has been identified common and increase the time in hotel industry. Hotel
industry reflects various activities to be performed and various type of theft can be
conducted in the hotel. For example in case of food and beverage department
stealing of food and preparing of additional food for personal use can be done. Other
than this theft of cash is one of the common activity conducted in hotel industry
specially in case of room service employees that is stealing customers cast from
their backs. Other than this complimentary food and facilities provided to the
customers can be theft by the employees for their personal use. Some of the
motivation that has been identified for this theft is personal grudges with
management, dissatisfied employment, lack of orientation communication with
employees and financial problem of employees.

Employee theft in hotels 9
References
Allen, D. (2017). Recruitment and retention across cultures. Annual Review of
Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 153.
Bonaccio, S., & O'Reilly, J. (2016). Nonverbal behavior and communication in the
workplace: A review and an agenda for research. Journal of Management,
42(5), 1044-1074.
Dimitriou, C. (2018). An analysis of the key determinants of hotel employees' ethical
behavior. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 34, 66-74.
Dimitriou, C., & Ducette, J. (2018). An analysis of the key determinants of hotel
employees' ethical behavior. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management,
34, 66-74.
Dooley, B., Zhao, J., & Ho, T. (2017). Hotel crimes: An unexplored victimization in
the hospitality industry. Security Journal, 30(4), 1097-1111.
Hicks, M. (2019). Why the urgency of digital transformation is hurting the digital
workplace. Strategic HR Review, 18(1), 34-35.
Schaufeli, W., & Taris, T. (2015). The job demands‐resources model. The Wiley
Blackwell handbook of the psychology of occupational safety and workplace
health, 155-180.
Shen, H. (2015). Critical success factors for leading hotel brands in Asia: a case
study of Banyan Tree. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 7(3), 19.
Som, A., & Aguenza, B. (2018). Motivational factors of employee retention and
engagement in organizations. IJAME, 1.
Weil, D. (2018). Creating a strategic enforcement approach to address wage theft:
One academic’s journey in organizational change. Journal of Industrial
Relations, 60(3), 437-460.

Employee theft in hotels 10
Appendix
Figure 1: Cash theft (Weil, 2018)