Dunkin Donuts' Employee Surveillance Cut Thefts Up to 13%

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/dunkin-donuts-employee-surveillance-cut-thefts-up-to-13/256152/


Surveillance cameras in a Dunkin Donuts are highlighted in pink. Image: Megan Garber.


Surveillance technology isn't just for the FBI and local law enforcement. Corporations see all kinds of potential for combining cheap recording equipment with other types of data collection.

For example, fast food joints, or "quick service restaurants," as they are known in the trade, lose up to seven percent of sales to employee theft, according to the National Restaurant Association. Now, these retailers are fighting back with surveillance systems that allow them to keep track of their employees every move and punch of the register. Already, 90 percent of retailers monitor their staffs with video cameras, but combining the visuals with data from the register makes these systems much more powerful.

"The earlier use of video as a loss prevention tool meant spending hours reviewing footage in order to identify possible culprits," a whitepaper from March Networks, a maker of retail surveillance equipment explains. "Newer video surveillance systems correlate transaction data directly with associated video clips, while the latest business intelligence tools tag certain types of transactions which are most often linked to fraudulent activity."

One example, which I spotted in the March/April issue of the trade magazine Connected World, comes to us courtesy of Dunkin Donuts. After standardizing its point-of-sale systems across thousands of stores, they decided to employ one of these "loss-prevention solutions." Here's how it works, according to Connected World's article:

'By integrating the POS front-of-house system with a loss-prevention system from March Networks, franchisees can search video of employees conducting order/sales transactions when they suspect theft. Managers can look up videos based on specific search criteria, and then view the videos as well as the dynamic keystrokes [the employees entered]. "This is a very powerful tool to reduce theft in restaurants," Sheehan explains. "We have seen savings between 2-13 percent of sales."





*** we have made the unthinkable very comfortable.

[Fumesucker]

1. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Who will watch the watchers?

A problem so old it has a Latin phrase to describe it..

[Justice wanted]

2. And history has shown that that phrase to be a true one. When people start asking that question

people become more aware.

[xchrom]

3. nobody? we're that comfortable with this sort of thing.

does that ever change? i'm not hopeful.

watch and see if defenders of this sort of thing show up.

[Ikonoklast]

8. Stealing is wrong. Stealing from one's employer is stealing from your co-workers.

Less profit due to 'shrink', less money to be bargained for in pay for everyone.

What is the difference from having a supervisor monitor an employee's every move in person, or a digital recording of that employee handling transactions?

Should not that employee perform their duties in an honest fashion, regardless of the circumstances?

As a former union shop steward I can tell you that my union would not stand up for thieves.

You get caught stealing: you were on your own. The business reps would not waste their time defending a thief caught dead-to-rights.

[xchrom]

9. i assure you. no one is defending 'Stealing'. nt

[Ikonoklast]

10. What, then, is the difference between direct visual supervision of employees behavior while on

the clock by a manager, and a digital recording of them as they perform their duties?

If you are not stealing, neither one would affect you.

If you are...

[xchrom]

11. I do think this kind of surveillance is wrong. Nt

[Ikonoklast]

16. You are arguing a matter of form, more than function.

Employee shrink can destroy a business, and one or two dishonest people in a small store can end up throwing everyone out of a job

I have no use or love for thieves, whether they be the employer, or the employees.

[Fumesucker]

20. Evidently massive theft at the top of the operation by officers is impossible to find and prosecute.

While every penny and every moment scratching your ass by the line employees is scrutinized by that same management.

If an organization is designed from the top down to be honest it goes a long way toward making employees honest.

Even just a moderately experienced employee learns to foul up the system a manner that cannot be blamed on them if they are unhappy with the way they are treated. I'm not even talking anything illegal and quite often not even immoral.

Here's an example, a friend of mine worked for the railroad, long term guy, he was doing maintenance items that were beyond his job description just because he knew they needed to be done and the the people who were supposed to do it were mostly or entirely skipping it. He was helping the company out because they treated him decently.

Management started the beancounter limbo to see how low they could go and my friend quit doing the extra maintenance, one item of which was draining the water out of the air tanks that pressurized the sand reservoir to put sand in the locomotives (for traction). Five giant tanks full of wet sand had to be shoveled out by hand, a process that cost over a million dollars. This was only one of several expensive incidents the railroad suffered due to one person just sticking to the their job by the letter.

Was what my friend did (or did not actually) illegal?

How about immoral?

You cannot inspect quality in, it has to be there from the beginning of the process, so much of our corporate culture these days revolves around dishonesty and now they are trying to inspect in honesty at the bottom of the pyramid that's dishonest at the top.

[baldguy]

21. The corporatocracy will outsource it to India, just like everything else.

[hedgehog]

4. Maybe it would be cheaper to pay a decent wage?

[hobbit709]

5. Bingo!

[no_hypocrisy]

6. I worked in a boutique ice cream parlor in the Hamptons in the 70s.

My boss cut down on theft by simply telling all employees that they could help themselves to candy, fudge, and/or ice cream as long as no customers were in the store. Sure enough, we all indulged the first few weeks, and then cut down, and then cut out all products after about a month. I got so inured, so tired of ice cream (especially working with it day in and day out) that it took me three years after the job to begin eating it again. BTW, the salary was fair for the job.

[nobodyspecial]

15. I'm sure part of the problem

is having friends and family come in and eat for free or not charging for the more expensive items purchased. Many restaurants allow an employee meal.

[no_hypocrisy]

18. In that respect, we paid back our employer by making friends and families understand they had to pay

Being straight with your employees gets reciprocity.

[RagAss]

7. "Time to eat the donuts."

[Brickbat]

12. Why not for ALL Dunkin Donuts employees? You know, the ones in sales, and marketing, and the legal

department, and HR? Because I bet they could reduce time theft by at least 13 percent. Putting video cameras on cubicles and keystroke trackers on the computer would surely reduce time spent on e-mail, Facebook, online shopping and office sports pools. It would reduce time spent chit-chatting on Monday mornings, and those lazy Friday afternoons where people "organize their files" to while the time away until 5 p.m.

Dunkin Donuts, you are sitting on a GOLD MINE of potential efficiency! Put videos on ALL THE EMPLOYEES and see how much more productive they could be!

[xchrom]

14. +1

[joeybee12]

13. You're right...we've become numbed to all this...knr

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. So who's watching Wall Street employees?

[SomethingFishy]

19. You know, I find fast food companies doing this hilarious as

they throw away more fucking food than employees "steal". I believe the standard is 15 minutes, anything older than that get tossed.