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Insights Kroger Jumpstarts Collaboration among Its Solutions Providers The Hidden Cause of Employee Theft and How to Cure It Winning the Talent Wars in the New Hybrid Workplace
Absorb Chaos and Return Order The Role of Asset Protection
at 7-Eleven with Art Lazo November–December 2021 V20.6 | losspreventionmedia.com
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Contents
November-December 2021 Departments
12
6 Editor’s Letter
The Role of Asset Protection at 7-Eleven with Art Lazo
8 Editorial Board 9 Vendor Advisory Board 10 Retail Sponsors 22 Interviewing
Absorb Chaos and Return Order
An Industry That Is Flourishing By Jack Trlica
I Did It, But… By David Thompson, CFI, and Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP
By Jim Lee, LPC and Jack Trlica
24 LPM Excellence
LPM Magpie Awards Featuring Bob Caruso, Metro One, and Sgt. Richard Rossman, Broward County Sheriff’s Dept.
26
All Together Now Kroger Jumpstarts Collaboration among Its Solutions Providers
34 Certification
Even LP Veterans Can Learn from Certification Featuring Scott Pethuyne, LPC, Zebra Technologies, and Robert Sanchez, CFE, CFI, LPC, Dollar General
46 Technology
End-to-End Encryption Doesn’t Guarantee Internet Privacy By Tom Meehan, CFI
By Garett Seivold
48 Retail Community
Working Together for Safer, More Successful Communities By Stefanie Hoover, CFI
38
50 Ask the Expert
The Hidden Cause of Employee Theft and How to Cure It
Controlling Shrink in the Grocery Industry Interview with Jason DeVinney, Checkpoint Systems
51 Ask the Expert
Four Simple Key Control Best Practices Interview with Cita Doyle, LPQ, InstaKey
60 Cybersecurity
Global Cyber Warfare and the Possibility of a “New” World War By Tom Meehan, CFI
By Jeanet Wade
63 Solutions Showcase NGS Riot Glass
52
68 Supply Chain
Winning the Talent Wars Hiring and Retention for the New Hybrid Workplace By Bruce Tulgan
November–December 2021
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Securing the Supply Chain against Cyber Disruption By Dr. Mike Lloyd
70 People on the Move 74 Marketplace 76 New Product Spotlight 81 Annual Index 82 Parting Words
LossPreventionMedia.com
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EDITOR'S LETTER
Jack Trlica, Editor-in-Chief
An Industry That Is Flourishing T
Whether you are on the retail side of the desk, the supplier side, or a piece of the business that is transitioning into asset protection, we encourage you to join us in this exciting journey that is retail loss prevention.
he past two years have been a roller coaster ride for the broad economy as well as our niche loss prevention industry. Not only has the business of retail had to pivot and change with the pandemic, so too did the business of serving retailers with the technology and programs necessary to manage those changes. Solutions providers had to change how they communicated with retail buyers, how they demonstrated their software, and how they partnered with existing clients to continue to serve their needs—often from a long distance. By most accounts, the industry not only survived the downturn, but in more cases than not, actually flourished. From the magazine’s perspective of providing informative content for our loss prevention readers as well as a venue for advertisers to promote their products and services to LP buyers, we too transitioned rapidly and successfully. The year 2021, our twentieth anniversary of publishing the magazine, was one of our best. Creatively, we redesigned the print magazine to be more contemporary and readable, which was very well received. Not only was the magazine filled cover to cover with outstanding editorial content from our many contributors, but it also provided considerable
November–December 2021
up with greater market share in the end. We expect this will hold true again. With that said, we are forecasting an even stronger 2022. We have exciting plans to continue to expand both our print and digital channels. We plan to continue to widen our editorial content beyond the traditional topics we’ve addressed during the past two decades to new topics Every recession or that asset protection and economic downturn retail operations organizations are finding important to the has proven that ongoing evolution of retail. We are already writing more on those companies cybersecurity, the Internet of that continue to Things, risk management, and market themselves the supply chain, and we are on the lookout for what the next during economic important topics may be. uncertainty end up Whether you are on the retail with greater market side of the desk, the supplier side, or a piece of the business share in the end. that is transitioning into asset The magazine’s success is protection, we encourage you directly attributable to the twenty to join us in this exciting journey years of trust and credibility that is retail loss prevention. that has built the LP Magazine After having spent over thirty brand as well as the foresight of years associated with this our many advertising partners industry, I can attest that it who resisted the temptation to continues to be an interesting, pull back and, instead, trusted exciting, challenging, and us to carry their message to close-knit community. the industry throughout the Thanks to everyone who has pandemic. Every recession or supported our twenty-year economic downturn has proven journey. Join us for the next that those companies that twenty. Who knows where retail continue to market themselves loss prevention will be in the during economic uncertainty end next decade and beyond? thought‑leadership content from our sponsoring partners. So too, our digital channels were packed with original and thought-leadership content in the form of daily e-newsletters, website posts, audio and video podcasts, whitepapers, and live and on-demand webinars. All this content was shared with our social media connections as well.
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Ray Cloud Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, Ross Stores
Scott Draher, LPC Vice President, Loss Prevention, Safety, and Operations, Lowe’s
Scott Glenn, EDJ, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection, The Home Depot
Barry Grant Chief Operating Officer, Photos Unlimited
Robert Holm Director, Global Safety & Security McDonald’s
Seth Hughes Director, Asset Protection, Risk & Safety, Internal Audit REI Co-op
Frank Johns, LPC Chairman, The Loss Prevention Foundation
Mike Lamb, LPC Consultant
Michael Limauro, LPC Executive Leader, Asset Protection, Whole Foods Market
David Lund, LPC Vice President, Loss Prevention, DICK’S Sporting Goods
John Matas, CFE, CFCI Director, Global Fraud, Risk, and Compliance Operations Etsy
Randy Meadows Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, Kohl’s
Melissa Mitchell, CFI, LPC Director, Loss Prevention, MAPCO Express
Dan Moren Senior Manager, Starbucks
Richard Peck, LPC Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention The TJX Companies
Joe Schrauder Vice President, Asset Protection, Walmart Stores
Tina Sellers, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection, Rite Aid
Hank Siemers, CFI Vice President, Global Retail Security, Tiffany & Co.
Mark Stinde, MBA, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection, The Kroger Co.
Pamela Velose Vice President, Asset Protection, Belk
November–December 2021
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VENDOR ADVISORY BOARD
Rex Gillette
Vice President of Sales
2120 Crown Centre Dr. Ste 200 Charlotte, NC 28227 | 704-365-5226 office Editor-in-Chief Jack Trlica JackT@LPportal.com
Rick Snook, PSP, LPQ
Executive Editors James Lee, LPC JimL@LPportal.com
Tony D'Onofrio
Business Development Manager, Retail
CEO, Global Retail Business Unit
Stephen B. Longo
Vice President of Client Relations
Merek Bigelow MerekB@LPportal.com Managing Editor Digital Courtney Wolfe CourtneyW@LPportal.com
Angie Druley
Vice President, Retail
Vice President, Strategic Initiatives
Kris Vece, LPQ
Editorial Director Jacque Brittain, LPC JacB@LPportal.com Retail Technology Editor Tom Meehan, CFI TomM@LPportal.com
Stuart Rosenthal
Vice President Sales
Brad Campbell President/CEO
Senior Writer Garett Seivold GarettS@LPportal.com Contributing Writers Read Hayes, PhD, CPP Walter Palmer, CFI, CFE Ben Skidmore Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP David Thompson, CFI
Jim Paul
Director of Sales
Chief Operating Officer Kevin McMenimen, LPC KevinM@LPportal.com
Kim Scott
Director of Marketing
Director Of Digital Operations John Selevitch JohnS@LPportal.com Special Projects Managers Justin Kemp, LPQ Karen Rondeau
Ken Kuehler
General Manager
Design & Production SPARK Publications info@SPARKpublications.com Creative Director Larry Preslar Advertising Strategist Ben Skidmore 972-587-9064 office, 214-597-8168 mobile BenS@LPportal.com Subscription Services New Or Change Of Address LPMsubscription.com or circulation@LPportal.com
President
Ned McCauley Director of Sales
Robb Northrup
Director of Marketing Communications & Support
Cita Doyle, LPQ
Vice President, Sales & Marketing
Rhett Asher
Vice President, Strategy
Stacy Dean Stephens
EVP and Chief Client Officer
Idan Koren
Vice President of Marketing
Postmaster Send change of address forms to Loss Prevention Magazine P.O. Box 92558 Long Beach, CA 90809-2558
Terry Sullivan, LPC President
Loss Prevention aka LP Magazine aka LPM (USPS 000-710) is published bimonthly by Loss Prevention Magazine, Inc., 2120 Crown Centre Dr. Ste 200, Charlotte, NC 28227. Print subscriptions are available free to qualified loss prevention and retail professionals in the U.S. and Canada at LPMsubscription.com. The publisher reserves the right to determine qualification standards. International print subscriptions are available for $99 per year payable in U.S. funds at circulation@LPportal.com. For questions about subscriptions, contact circulation@LPportal.com or call 888-881-5861. Periodicals postage paid at Chalrotte, NC, and additional mailing offices.
© 2021 Loss Prevention Magazine, Inc.
Mark Berger
Scott Pethuyne, LPC Sr. Analytics Solution Consultant
Gene G. Cronin
Medeco XT Product Line Manager
Loss Prevention, LP Magazine, LP Magazine Europe, LPM, and LossPreventionMedia.com are service marks owned by the publishers and their use is restricted. All editorial content is copyrighted. No article may be reproduced by any means without expressed, written permission from the publisher. Reprints or PDF versions of articles are available by contacting the publisher. Statements of fact or opinion are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the publishers. Advertising in the publication does not imply endorsement by the publishers. The editor reserves the right to accept or reject any article or advertisement.
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November–December 2021
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November–December 2021
Absorb Chaos and Return Order
EDITOR’S NOTE: Art Lazo is vice president of asset protection at 7-Eleven. He has held various operational and loss prevention roles at other retailers, including Toys“R”Us, Home Depot, Circuit City, and Sears Holdings as well as retail consulting companies. JIM: As the VP of asset protection at 7-Eleven, what keeps you up late at night?
The Role of Asset Protection at 7-Eleven with Art Lazo By Jim Lee, LPC, and Jack Trlica
November–December 2021
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ART: Safety and security because with the amount of locations we have and the amount of transactions we complete, the opportunity for different things to occur in our store environment is immense. The safety of our employees, the safety of our franchisees, and the safety of customers that come into our stores is really top of mind for me, and it is the thing with the most impact that we must deal with. JIM: At 7-Eleven, does associate safety and customer safety take a greater realm of responsibility than shrinkage?
LossPreventionMedia.com
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November–December 2021
FEATURE Absorb Chaos and Return Order
The safety of our employees, the safety of our franchisees, and the safety of customers that come into our stores is really top of mind for me, and it is the thing with the most impact that we must deal with. down, we saw incidents go up. For a while, as we went through 2020 and folks generally were not out, we saw a dip in incidents, but the severity of those crimes was up. JACK: Going back to store safety and security, are there any specific technologies you can talk about that you use for identifying known criminals or someone carrying a weapon?
ART: Absolutely. I think in any of the roles that I’ve had in my career, I’ve always been responsible for safety, security, cash handling, and, of course, shrink and loss control. With this role, that whole safety and security piece is far and away number one, and how we mitigate those situations and how we support the stores and our employees is top of mind for my directors and the AP team out in the field. It is usually the first thing we talk about when anybody in my November–December 2021
organization has an audience with operators or franchisees. JIM: With that in mind, would you say that crime is on the upswing? If so, what would you attribute that to? ART: We have definitely seen crime on an upswing since the pandemic, dependent on what part of the country you’re in. We saw increases in a lot of the urban areas, like Chicago, Manhattan, LA, and Dallas. Even as some of the store traffic went
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LossPreventionMedia.com
ART: We have tested and used many technologies with varying success in the past and currently in our stores. Suspect identification and threat detection are included in some of the things we have tested and continue to explore. In many of our robberies, cigarettes are included in what gets taken from the store, so we have been using GPS packs that are put in cigarette packaging that have provided a lot of success. We’ve even expanded that to cash packs, which I didn’t necessarily think would be effective, but using GPS in a cash pack has been very effective for us as well. When it comes to the other technologies within the CCTV, we’re looking on expanding. We’re always upgrading our camera systems to higher resolutions, more memory, or more retention. We’re also looking at other ways to be less conspicuous about some of the safety and security features at a store. We’re also testing a product right now that is a totem that
stands out in front of the store. It has cameras on it and screens and can communicate via cell—either calling a monitoring center or a roaming patrol. It can monitor dwell times on the front apron when we’re looking at folks that are loitering, and it can alert or help the store operator manage the situation going on outside. It’s also a bit of a disruptor. We are testing some of these devices currently, and it’s only been a few weeks, but we’re already getting a lot of good feedback on them. JIM: In our July-August issue of the magazine, we included you in an article devoted to store communications. You’ve done a lot of work on that and instituted some new programs. Can you talk about how that came about and the value of that digital program? ART: As we went through 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic set in, being an essential business, we had folks out in the stores and franchisees supporting their communities. We started a daily call, and it was a cross-functional call with everybody—operations, logistics, asset protection, human resources—and we were discussing all the different issues that were coming in from the field. One of the things that was identified as we were dealing with physical security issues in the stores is that because we did have some stores that were closed while other stores stayed open overnight, one of the issues was how to better communicate with nearby stores when a store had a critical incident occur, whether it was a robbery or anything else that could potentially make its way to a neighboring store. Born out of that was the thought process of using the
technology that we already had in stores. That article [“Getting the Word Out”] featured our Seven Alert program, which is an automated process that, as calls are made into our asset protection hotline when an incident occurs in a store, a notification to nearby stores is automatically sent out to the handheld devices used by store associates for ordering, very much like an Amber Alert would go to a cell phone. JIM: Have you been able to determine how effective it has been? ART: The feedback has been very positive, and folks are saying, “Yeah, we can iterate this.” Right now, we’re tweaking what that range should be for the notification. When we were doing the manual alerts, we would only have time to communicate with five, maybe seven, stores.
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Some of the things COVID-19 helped us understand was that, as a business, we had the ability to move way faster than we’d been moving beforehand. In terms of decision-making and addressing issues, we became much more agile. The other thing that came out of COVID-19 was the importance of teaching, training, and talking about de-escalation. November–December 2021
FEATURE Absorb Chaos and Return Order
Our interaction with the franchisees is to consult and support their operations. We have a subcommittee of franchisees that works on how we can bring more awareness to safety and security issues, test programs, enhance training, and better get the message out to franchisees on how to effectively deal with the safety and security issues in the stores. franchises differently than company-owned stores? ART: No. Our interaction with the franchisees is to consult and support their operations. When it comes to security, we work together daily on identifying and addressing issues together. We actually have a subcommittee of franchisees that work on how we can bring more awareness to safety and security issues, test programs, enhance training, and better get the message out to franchisees on how to effectively deal with the safety and security issues in the stores. JIM: Did asset protection play a role during the Speedway acquisition?
But with this digital system, we can automatically get a 10-, 20-, or 30-mile radius, and notify every store within that range. JIM: All your programs serve both company-owned and franchise stores equally, correct? What’s the split November–December 2021
on company-owned and franchises? ART: With the acquisition of Speedway, we have about 6,000 corporate stores and 8,000 franchise stores. JIM: In terms of safety or crime, do you treat
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LossPreventionMedia.com
ART: Yes, and it’s still going on today and will continue to happen over the next few years as we bring these businesses together. Really, we looked at how Speedway addressed asset protection, safety, and security at all levels—how that all matches how we do things, and then coming away with what our program will be moving forward. It’s really an opportunity to take the best of both worlds and see what they were doing that would work really well, apply what we’re
doing that we think would work really well, and coming away with the best-case scenario between the two programs. JIM: You have one of the most state-of-the-art (no pun intended) command centers in all of retail. How does it work? What do you focus on? What do you see as the overriding benefits of that command center? ART: We took the opportunity to centralize a lot of what we do from both investigation and business-continuity perspectives. At the Central Investigation Center, we monitor social media and have a software platform where we monitor business-continuity things like hurricanes, fires, or civil unrest, which helps us understand where all of our assets are. And if, for example, we have a hurricane that’s bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard, we can see where it’s projected to land and which operation zones could be impacted. Then we start our process of notifications for conference calls, where we get all the different functional groups together to talk about preparation, what we’re doing during the event, and then recovery afterward. Also, within that Central Investigation Center, we do a lot of investigations of the regular incidents that happen in the stores, often supporting law enforcement. During times of civil unrest, we will use the screens that we have to identify and support stores that need video surveillance or review during things like any riots or severe weather where personnel may have left the store. There have been occasions where we’re monitoring stores, and somebody comes through
the windows, or there’s a weather event that damages the store. We can identify things like that from the video and get the right support out there to deal with any issues. It’s really kind of the heartbeat and support for the organization. JIM: It truly is a store support command center, wouldn’t you say?
Tim Hall
ART: Absolutely. That mentality of store support is really what we continue to reinforce here in Irving, Texas, making sure that everyone understands that everything we’re doing here is to support the team out there on the field. JIM: Are your people in the support center and corporate offices still predominantly working from home offices? ART: It is currently kind of a hybrid situation. About 60 percent of the team is here working at the store support center, and the rest are either fully remote or doing a hybrid schedule where they come in once or twice a week. I give a lot of credit to the organization as a whole for being able to work through an environment where you had to make such big adjustments. I think we as a company learned a lot going through that process and that will forever change how we look at the business and how we look at the roles that support the stores. JIM: You’ve been very proactive in developing LP technologies and different programs at 7-Eleven. Which of these are you most proud of?
Davina Stevens
Bruce Couling
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Davina Stevens, Director of AP, Analytics and Inventory Audits • Leads the AP analytics function for 7-Eleven • Manages all reporting functions, AP operations support, and inventory audit process • Creates reporting to identify exceptions and support investigations Bruce Couling, Director of AP, Corporate Operations • Leads AP for 6,000 corporate stores in the US • Has six direct reports that support six operational zones across the US and Canada • Drives shortage controls in all store formats including 7-Eleven, Stripes, and Speedway Brent Smerczynski, Manager of AP Operations • Project management for pilots and AP programs • Manages AP awareness programs • Supports QA process for new franchisees
Brent Smerczynski
ART: One is our Operation Chill program, which has been in place for a long time. One of the things that I stress with the
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Tim Hall, Director of AP, Franchise Operations • Leads asset protection for 8,000 franchise stores in the US • Has six direct reports that support six operational zones across the country • Works very closely with the SVP of operations to drive the AP program
November–December 2021
FEATURE Absorb Chaos and Return Order
Operation Chill is what we call the free Slurpee coupons that we give out every year to law enforcement, so they can take those and go interact with people in the community. They give coupons for free Slurpees to kids that they see doing good things, like helping someone or wearing a helmet while riding their bike. Our law enforcement partners love it, and we get great feedback. Operation Chill is what we call the free Slurpee coupons that we give out every year to law enforcement, so they can take those and go interact with people in the community. They give coupons for free Slurpees to kids that they see doing good things, like helping someone or wearing a helmet while riding their bike. Our law enforcement partners love it, and we get great feedback. Operation Chill is something that continues to evolve, but it is one of the key programs that we use. Another thing we have done to support law enforcement and our stores is creating a centralized way to deal with all requests for video or other information to support an incident investigation. The Central Investigations Center responds to thousands of requests a year to quickly provide video support to law enforcement. field team is our engagement with local law enforcement, particularly through these last couple of years with everything that’s happening in the world. We fully support our law enforcement partners, and we in asset protection will act as a conduit to bring folks together. When I came into this role, I November–December 2021
wanted to really emphasize the need for establishing and maintaining strong local partnerships with law enforcement. The field team has accountabilities associated with how consistent they are in having quality meetings with the agencies that serve the communities we operate in.
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JIM: Were there any unusual or significant lessons that you learned from the pandemic? ART: Some of the things COVID-19 helped us understand was that, as a business, we had the ability to move way faster than we’d been moving beforehand.
In terms of decision-making and addressing issues, we became much more agile. I had mentioned earlier that we were involved in these daily calls on supporting the field, and that gave an opportunity for the zone vice presidents to bring up any issues they were having. There was so much emphasis on solving issues that the decision-making process was much faster. Now that we’ve demonstrated that we can act with that speed, it’s something we want to continue to do. The other thing that came out of COVID-19 was the importance of teaching, training, and talking about de-escalation. I see a lot of folks in the industry really trying to land the message of how to de-escalate situations. There’s a lot of emotion out there, whether it’s politically or locally within a store. You
have customers on both sides of any given issue, and we have folks out there that are trying to work in stores who are dealing with some of this conflict. It was a very challenging environment to work in, and I think landing that message was one of the things that worked out very well, and it is something we continue to drive within our training and communications program. JACK: How do you try to manage loitering and homelessness in and around your stores and parking lots? ART: The loitering and vagrancy issue is a huge challenge. We do use some technology in dealing with that, whether it’s music or noise devices, which can have mixed effects. But then sometimes those don’t work, because depending on
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where the store is situated, our neighbors could be impacted by loud noises or other things we’re using to deter folks from hanging out on the apron. I think back to our relationships with law enforcement, coupled with our desire to drive awareness around de-escalation. In areas where we have law enforcement that will go and interact by the store and have a general presence, we see much better results. It’s a very challenging area of the business and is something that we’re consistently looking for other ways to help manage. JACK: A few years ago, credit card theft at fuel pumps was a hot topic. Is that still an issue? ART: Skimmer activity is something that we still deal with. Not all areas have been
November–December 2021
FEATURE Absorb Chaos and Return Order
The Chief Administrative Officer Rankin Gasaway, who I report to now, has really helped me in the last couple of years as I grow as an executive. One of the things he mentioned to me once that really resonated with me was that our role is often to absorb chaos and return order. That comment really put into words what my approach has been my whole career.
able to make the switch over to EMV [chip-and-pin] as quickly as we would like, so we do still see that pop up in certain areas of the country. We work very closely with our management to find ways to continue securing the pumps, and we’re hoping that gets better here very soon as we continue to upgrade equipment and upgrade the security around the pumps themselves. JIM: Let’s back up a bit and talk about you personally. How did you get started in loss prevention? ART: I got into retail just out of high school. My first real job was with Toys“R”Us as a store employee. My original goal was to get into law enforcement and become a police officer because I was interested in the problem‑solving aspect of solving crime. Along the way at Toys“R”Us, I went through the ranks and got into management. One day I ran across a person I knew that worked for the company and had keys to everything in the building. I asked my manager who he was, and he told me it was the “loss prevention guy.” It just clicked that this might be something I would really be interested in doing. I continued my career growth November–December 2021
JIM: Besides Stinde, is there anyone else you would describe as a personal mentor for you?
folks was more with a quiet strength, and that’s what I always strive to do. The Chief Administrative Officer Rankin Gasaway, who I report to now, has really helped me in the last couple of years as I grow as an executive. One of the things he mentioned to me once that really resonated with me was that our role is often to absorb chaos and return order. That comment really put into words what my approach has been my whole career. Throughout my career, people have said to me, “How are you so calm when you hear about a serious incident?” My response is that no matter what my reaction may be, we still have to deal with what we have to deal with. That’s a power that I always like to strive to have and to convey to those who work with me—and to provide that to the folks that we support, whether it’s operations, HR, or anybody else. When something is presented to me or my team, I want the organization to know that we’ll be able to handle it, provide good direction, provide good support, and be the calmest group in the room.
ART: I would say that a lot of my leadership style I get from my father. He worked in management most of his career, and the way he led
JIM: Thank you, Art, for your time with us. Best of luck to you and the team at 7-Eleven. I think it’s time for me to have a Slurpee.
in operations, moving from store to store within the company. One day I went to deal with a loss prevention issue where I suspected an employee was stealing video games. I called the LP guy and sat through my first LP interview. I didn’t have any solid evidence, but I knew exactly who it was based on some circumstantial evidence. I presented what I had to the LP person, and he offered to have me sit in as the witness. He didn’t seem too concerned with my lack of evidence. Watching that process and how that worked, and to see this suspect then admit to a huge amount of theft, I just thought it was very cool. At that point, I was sold. I was going to be in loss prevention in some way. Mark Stinde was the person who conducted that interview. I conveyed to him my desire to get into loss prevention, and within a couple of years I got my first opportunity to join the team and move into this industry.
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INTERVIEWING
Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP
Roman Samborskyi / Shutterstock.com
David Thompson, CFI
Thompson is the president and partner of Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, providing investigative interview and interrogation training to a global audience. He has served as a subject-matter expert in developing curriculum and providing consultation to investigators, attorneys, and the academic community. He can be reached at dthompson@w-z.com. Sturman is the CEO and senior partner of Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates and has led this international training organization for over a decade. Sturman has provided training for WZ for a variety of clients over the last twenty years. He is also a member of ASIS International’s Retail Loss Prevention Council. He can be reached at 800-222-7789 or at ssturman@w-z.com. © 2021 Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, Inc.
I Did It, But… I
As in any interview, strategy and preparation are paramount in ensuring for a productive conversation without any presumptions being made. Although any investigation may have its potential for excuses, there are few types of cases that seem to consistently encounter the same issues.
n a recent LPM column, we discussed the importance of understanding what success looks like in an investigative interview. Although obtaining a confession from a guilty subject may be one of the possible successful conclusions of an interview, it goes far beyond hearing somebody say, “I did it.” Discussing the elements of the act, substantiating details of the confession, and showing intent are all part of a reliable confession. As in any interview, strategy and preparation are paramount in ensuring for a productive conversation without any presumptions being made. Although any investigation may have its potential for excuses, there are few types of cases that seem to consistently encounter the same issues. Policy violations and employee relations issues are among the most common sources of these explanations from the subject. Each of these conversations must be strategized to allow the interviewer to logically flow through the conversation without creating resistance from the subject. In a dialogue format, the interviewer will create a structured approach allowing the subject to freely share
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information. First, starting with the initiation of rapport, the interviewer should introduce their general role at the organization. After this, a series of structured questions, falling into a logical flow of topics should direct the subject to the primary issue. These topics and the sequence of questioning will differentiate with each case as it relates to the subject’s level of knowledge, their potential explanations, and the available evidence.
“I wasn’t trained.” One of the most common obstacles when identifying intent in a loss prevention interview is determining whether the employee intentionally defrauded the
discount away to friends who are not entitled to such a benefit, but it is yet to be determined whether this was done with intent to defraud. One of the difficulties with this interview is the subject may acknowledge to the use of their discount, but simultaneously may claim that they were unaware this was inappropriate behavior. At this point, the interviewer is now in a difficult position of either believing the subject (who has an incentive to lie) or having to prove to the subject that they were in fact aware of their actions. Logically, we would think to just ask the subject if they are aware of the discount policy before making any accusations. The problem
One of the most common obstacles when identifying intent in a loss prevention interview is determining whether the employee intentionally defrauded the company or, rather, they weren’t trained appropriately. company or, rather, they weren’t trained appropriately. The most common violation may be related to the abuse of an employee discount or a loyalty rewards program. Evidence may suggest that the employee is giving their
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with this approach is that the guilty party, aware of their wrongdoing, has an incentive to lie to the interviewer if confronted with this question at the beginning of the conversation. Instead, using a concept such as
the Participatory Method, the interviewer should strategize the conversation in a way that provides the least amount of resistance, allowing the subject to tell the truth about their level of training before introducing the employee discount. After the development of rapport, the interviewer may begin the discussion by having a dialogue about the general job duties of the employee. Within this section, the subject may discuss how they are alerted to their schedule, the process of clocking in and out, and how they are assigned tasks throughout the day. The interviewer may then transition into specific tasks on the job, including their role in performing transactions on the register. During this topic, the interviewer may ask about the refund process, how change is obtained, and how to void a sale. At this point in the interview, there should be minimal resistance from the subject as the topics are of no concern. This allows the subject to freely discuss their level of knowledge and provides the interviewer some insight into the subject’s level of training awareness. Now, when the interviewer starts to ask more specific questions about the employee discount, it does not appear out of context. A well-trained employee, who has been forthcoming during the entire conversation, is now more likely to be truthful about their knowledge of the discount policy. Prior to ever making an accusation, an interviewer is now more well informed as to the level of training and awareness this associate has.
“Somebody else must have done that.” An employee is suspected to be sending emails with discriminatory language and visiting inappropriate
websites on their company device. The investigation yields minimal evidence, other than a report that shows this activity on the employee’s device. In this case, we have another example of potential legitimate explanations from the employee where the interviewer may be tasked with assessing the credibility of their excuses. Instead of relying on this evaluation, the interview should be strategized to properly vet each potential explanation as legitimate. As in our earlier example, if the interviewer first begins the conversation by confronting their employee on the primary issue,
transition into a dialogue on company-issued laptops and the policies surrounding their use and access. If the employee acknowledges that they have never given out their password, and they always maintain control of their device, they have begun to eliminate the alternative explanations for the evidence that exists.
Strategize and Prepare These types of explanations or excuses from a subject illustrate the importance of preparation as well as open-mindedness from the investigator. It is possible that the interviewee is lying about their level of involvement or knowledge of wrongdoing,
A thorough investigation should include preparation time for the interview process. Within these strategy sessions, interviewers should identify all potential reasons for how the evidence could be explained away. It is with these excuses that a more comprehensive investigation can be done, and a strategic interview process be structured. they will see immediate resistance and create an incentive for dishonesty. Instead, in a rapportbased approach, the interview should logically flow the conversation to obtain as much reliable information as possible. Discussing the general job duties of the employee and then transitioning into a conversation on company‑provided resources creates this pathway. The interviewer can then ask questions gauging the employee’s knowledge on company resources such as cell phones, vehicles, and credit cards allowing for an open and truthful discussion. Once appropriate, the interviewer can then
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but it is also likely that they are telling the truth. In these cases, instead of termination or prosecution, we should be looking at options of retraining and operational improvements. The purpose of the interview is to obtain reliable information, and this investigative approach does just that. A thorough investigation should include preparation time for the interview process. Within these strategy sessions, interviewers should identify all potential reasons for how the evidence could be explained away. It is with these excuses that a more comprehensive investigation can be done, and a strategic interview process be structured. November–December 2021
Using a concept such as the Participatory Method, the interviewer should strategize the conversation in a way that provides the least amount of resistance.
LPM EXCELLENCE
LPM Magpie Awards
Applauding Excellence Excellence in Leadership
Robert “Bob” Caruso Chief Business Development Officer, Metro One LPSG
Excellence in Partnerships
Sergeant Richard Rossman
Broward County Sheriff’s Department
The LPM “Magpie” Awards offer a means to celebrate industry accomplishments recognizing the loss prevention professionals, teams, solution providers, and law enforcement partners that demonstrate a stellar contribution to the profession. Please join LPM in celebrating the accomplishments of our latest honorees.
“True leadership is not in the title you hold, it’s found through the respect and trust you earn from your team and peers,” said Caruso. “It’s being humble and reflecting inward to ask yourself what’s the greatest thing you can do for others. It’s relating to people by treating them the way you want to be treated. The title doesn’t make the leader—it is your integrity and how you conduct yourself.” With more than forty-two years’ experience in loss prevention, Caruso feels that working with people has been his greatest calling. “Being able to have teaching moments and then passing
them along to others—whether in life or business, has been my greatest joy. These are the things that feed my soul and allow me to be a better version of myself. Without it, any job would be mundane. Being able to pass the ‘fire in your belly’ allows us to have a more enriched outcome. This has allowed me to mentor and help others, and I believe it to be the most important part of my job.” Caruso has many important lessons to share with those looking to move up in leadership roles. “Learn all you can about the business in its entirety,” he said. “Only
when you understand the entire job and the role you handle, will you find success. Understand everything is a teaching moment, and there is always room to learn and grow. Never stop learning—be humble and open enough to learn from everyone regardless of their stature. Build synergies with your colleagues by sharing knowledge. Always do the right thing, especially when no one is looking. Have integrity—your word means everything. Above all else, always be a good human being. Be kind, have compassion, and never forget where you come from no matter your successes.”
“Partnerships are built with mutual respect, trust, two-way communication, and understanding we can achieve much more working together rather than as separate entities,” said Rossman. “Differing opinions need to be valued, with the understanding that partnerships between the public and private sectors need to respect how each works, supporting one another to achieve our common goals.” As a third-generation law enforcement officer, there was never any doubt in Rossman’s mind that his career would take him into law enforcement. “With more than 225 years of service between my grandfather, father, uncles, cousins, and myself, our family has always
been dedicated to serving the South Florida community,” he said. “I’ve been with the Broward Sheriff’s Office for more than twenty‑five years. A majority of that time—twenty-three years—has been in investigations. I’ve been a sergeant overseeing investigations for the past nineteen years, which is exactly where I want to be. I’ve made the choice to remain a sergeant for the duration of my career. I feel it gives me the greatest opportunity to mentor, teach, and have a significant impact with the troops in the field.” Rossman currently serves as president of the Florida Law Enforcement Property Recovery Unit (FLEPRU) and vice president for the Coalition of Law Enforcement
and Retail (CLEAR). When navigating these partnerships, he feels sharing perspective is essential to meaningful success. “Law enforcement agencies must navigate the judicial system, adhering to rules of evidence, search and seizure, and their agency’s policies and procedures to build and successfully prosecute cases,” he said. “By the same respect, law enforcement needs to understand what’s important to retailers. Retailers are looking for transparency, open dialogue, and realistic timelines for case closures. Law enforcement also needs to understand and respect the resources and knowledge their retail partners can offer to investigations, working together to find meaningful results.”
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Best Wishes this Holiday Season. We look forward to working with you in the New Year!
Love, ThinkLP
All Together Now Kroger Jumpstarts Collaboration among Its Solutions Providers
T
here is no shortage of forums where issues related to loss prevention get discussed and dissected. First, industry events are ubiquitous. There are the big shows that address retail issues broadly and smaller ones that zero in on specific asset protection challenges. Significant ones, like organized retail crime or the supply chain, spur their own associations and groups that hold their own meetings and conferences. More narrowly focused events are also plentiful, if you want to do a
November–December 2021
deep dive into open-source intelligence investigations, for example. And the number of online seminar invites can clog inboxes. Additionally, large vendors will occasionally bring together their clients to swap success stories and share advice for getting optimal value from products and services. From a research perspective, the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) enjoins vendors and end users in pursuit of validating solutions and laying the foundation for future LP breakthroughs.
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Gearstd / StudioADFX / Nata-Lia / Shutterstock.com Photo Illustration by SPARK Publications
By Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer
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November–December 2021
FEATURE All Together Now
Read Hayes
Ned McCauley
November–December 2021
intersect and to brainstorm untapped synergies. The goal was to give everyone a better understanding of the Kroger asset protection ecosystem and to generate ideas as to how providers might work together to provide even more value for Kroger. “We have excellent partnerships but want to get to exceptional partnerships,” said Larson. “The sessions helped map out areas that could be worked on and put it in the hands of providers to take away, so they can dialogue with one another and build better solutions.” He’s not sure, but Larson thinks Kroger is the first to try this approach. “I’ve never heard of a company doing this before, where they bring all their providers together to strategize on building a better ecosystem.”
Mapping Better Solutions Read Hayes, PhD, CPP, director of the LPRC, identifies five zones of influence where it is possible to apply treatment to impede retail theft. The shelf point/product asset, for example, is the first zone that can be influenced to deter crime. But it expands out from there, into zones 2 through 4—the category area, the interior, and then into the parking lot, and finally zone 5, the public/cyber sphere. The model connects retail security to theft prevention and sales promotion by highlighting how measures in each zone can make “green shoppers” feel more at ease and “red shoppers” more uncomfortable. The zone model provides a useful way to appreciate the whole of a company’s security posture and to suggest how
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different components do—and could—work together. During the brainstorming day of the event, providers chimed in to indicate how they thought their solution could help in each of the various zones. “This forum lends itself to open discussions around the most acute problems facing the retail market,” said Sensormatic’s Ned McCauley. “Combining this with the LPRC’s framework around zones of influence and applying the scientific method to testing allows for great opportunities to learn.” The hope was to forge a clearer, more comprehensive picture of the Kroger security puzzle. “We gave them time to reflect and strategize on how the pieces fit together,”
Gearstd / StudioADFX / Nata-Lia / Shutterstock.com
Kevin Larson
But here may be a new one—possibly the first of its kind. Kroger is the nation’s largest supermarket by revenue, ranked 23 on the Fortune 500 ranking, and only six companies in the nation employ more people. At that scale, it’s natural for the company to have relationships with a who’s who of service providers—Sensormatic, Axis Communications, Zebra, Appriss Retail, and on and on. “We oftentimes find ourselves having dialogues with solution providers, including about how they might work with others, but this was an idea to bring everyone together to have an open conversation about what each does for us at Kroger,” explained Kevin Larson, senior manager of corporate asset protection, transaction monitoring. Kroger’s AP Director Tom Arigi and VP of AP Mark Stinde, MBA, LPC drove the show, but it was Larson who was tasked with “herding the cats” and pulling off the event. For one-and-a-half days in late July, thirteen key solutions providers, including a couple going through an RFP process, gathered at a conference hotel to discuss their work with Kroger. “We wanted to get them all together so they could share what they do for us from a shrink standpoint and from a safety and security standpoint,” said Larson. In addition to vendor presentations, the LPRC’s Dr. Read Hayes guided an ideation session on the event’s second day, using its “zones of influence” model to discuss how the retailer’s various security layers
Kroger is the nation’s largest supermarket by revenue, ranked 23 on the Fortune 500 ranking, and only six companies in the nation employ more people. At that scale, it’s natural for the company to have relationships with a who’s who of service providers—Sensormatic, Axis Communications, Zebra, Appriss Retail, and on and on.
said Larson, with the hope that it might catalyze new collaborations that could ultimately benefit Kroger and beyond. “Coming together to collaborate as one team is not only for the betterment of Kroger but also for the industry,” he said. But how, exactly? Larson cited a collaboration example from zone 4—the parking lot. One of Kroger’s vendors, LiveView Technologies, supplies solar‑powered surveillance trailers deployed at 700 stores. They provide deterrence, record surveillance feeds, and keep a close eye on parking areas with 360-degree, pan-tilt‑zoom, and fisheye cameras. Separately, at 1,000 stores, Kroger
deploys technology from Gatekeeper that locks the wheels of shopping carts if they are pushed out of a store without going through the point-of-sale. But what if those two vendors could work together? Maybe the attempted theft of a cart could trigger an alert to the parking lot tower so it could train its cameras on the crime in progress? The companies are trying to figure that out, according to Larson, and that kind of real-world, creative problem solving is what Kroger is trying to catalyze more of. Attendees said main room discussions remained primarily conceptual, but that they may open the door to more creative approaches to addressing
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existing problems. Most participants were engaged and active contributors to the discussions, said attendees. They also noted that plenty of sidebar conversations took place—and will persist—and that they hold the potential for translating innovative ideas into useful action. “Be it a people service like we are or a technology company, no one service can sustain a safety or loss prevention program,” explained Frank Camerino at Metro One, a security officer provider. “Technology needs people, and people need technology. Now we just need to follow through and put actions together.” “In terms of breakthrough ideas, I think that comes down to further defining the
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Attendees said main room discussions remained primarily conceptual, but that they may open the door to more creative approaches to addressing existing problems.
FEATURE All Together Now
Retail is as competitive as ever. But there seems to be a growing acknowledgment that collaborating with a competitor can sometimes be better for both. In the world of LP, it’s evidenced by increased partnering on issues of joint concern, like organized retail crime (ORC) and counterfeiting.
David Studdert
Hedgie Bartol
priorities and the vendor ecosystem necessary to address the biggest problems,” said McCauley. “This is where the LPRC can help validate through test‑and-learn programs with fact-based conclusions.” LiveView Technologies’ David Studdert said he thinks Kroger’s event is a model for the industry and suggested both end users and vendors stand to gain from it. “We tend to get very siloed and lose track of the greater goals in security and safety. Having an open dialogue with other players in the space creates an environment for increased innovations,” he said. “It allows vendors to explore integration opportunities that usually fall away from their core competencies, which can increase the
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pace of innovation and technology advancement.” Camerino felt similarly. “It’s great for the industry if we can change the culture of vendors offering different solutions to talk together. We share a common goal and can help one another,” he said, noting that the event sparked ideas for Metro One. “It opened our eyes to how better we can perform with the help of technology. We also see the benefits we can offer to other vendors.” According to McCauley, that partnership approach was a key value of this unique event. “The big difference between this forum and others was the positioning of solution providers as collaborators and potential partners versus transactional vendors,” he
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said. “I commend Kroger for their creative thinking and expect the results will come over time as we zero in on the business priorities.”
Reflecting an Evolving Industry Although Kroger’s event was certainly novel, it was perhaps inevitable, seeming to reflect the burgeoning power of end users, the nature of technology today, and, hopefully, a furtherance of enhancing retail collaboration for the common good. Retail is as competitive as ever. But there seems to be a growing acknowledgment that collaborating with a competitor can sometimes be better for both. In the world of LP, it’s evidenced by increased partnering on
issues of joint concern, like organized retail crime (ORC) and counterfeiting. At the enterprise level, it’s reflected by the increase in the number of shop-in-shop formats, like Kohl’s plan to add Sephora stores, and other new partnerships, like Home Depot’s decision to utilize Walmart’s GoLocal delivery service for fast delivery of orders to its shoppers. So why not solutions providers? “We floated a few trial balloons to see, if we tried something like this, if people would be interested,” said Larson. “We recognized that we do have solution providers that are playing in the same space, but we believed it was time to break down some walls.” When Axis Communications learned of Kroger’s idea,
they were all in, according to Hedgie Bartol, LPQ, LPC. “Honestly, I think everyone felt it was long overdue—to sit down in the same room, talk through issues, and educate each other on what we have to offer outside of a sales meeting,” he said. Bartol said there is always going to be a need to “protect the secret sauce” but that even competitors may have complementary solutions. “When you start to peel the onion, you find there are ways for many of us to work together.” That loss prevention is a close community surely helped, and Larson said the reception he got to the idea was overwhelmingly positive. He received several pre‑meeting requests to know who would be in attendance and that some attendees had already reached out to other providers before arriving in Cincinnati. “They came locked and loaded,” Larson said. On-site, attendees seemed fully committed to embracing the goal of the event, according to Larson. “There was no hesitation to be in Company A and presenting to Company B. They knew the overall mission, and they had the attitude of ‘let’s try to come together.’” While everyone accepted the invitation, it wasn’t always absent reservations. “We were guarded because some of the solution providers are also competitors. At the same time, we felt confident about our knowledge and potential to help solve problems,” said Sensormatic’s McCauley. It helped, he said, by who was making the ask. “In the case of Kroger, Mark Stinde and team have a reputation for collaboration and
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rewarding solution providers that think strategically, which made the forum attractive and worth the risk.”
A Hard Shift in Technology The event reflects a hard shift that technology has undergone toward interoperability and the victory of open standards versus proprietary technology. As retailers and other companies have embraced migrating from an ad hoc security style to a more enterprise-wide structure, their selection and implementation of technology has followed, bending toward off-the-shelf applications and restricting purchases of customized and proprietary security technology. In security surveys of years’ past, end users would frequently cite “lack of interoperability of devices/technology” as an industry problem. Now it’s rare for the choice to even make it onto an industry questionnaire. “The days of siloed technology are gone, and many times solution providers have technologies that can support one another,” explained Bartol. “I think it’s key to sit down and have an open conversation with one another and share about what you’re really trying to solve. The sum of the whole is greater than the parts.” Many of today’s security solutions and equipment act as platform technologies—RFID, analytics, video—or else have nodes that allow them to tap into other tools to expand capabilities. This infrastructure connectivity provides building blocks that can be connected and interwoven to create an end-to-end solution. Still, while APIs (application programming interfaces)
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The days of siloed technology are gone, and many times solution providers have technologies that can support one another,” explained Bartol. “I think it’s key to sit down and have an open conversation with one another and share about what you’re really trying to solve.
FEATURE All Together Now
The blending of the practitioner and vendor community is perhaps another reason why an event like Kroger’s was bound to happen. Asset protection executives are moving more regularly into the sales world, creating even more fertile ground for collaboration.
Rhett Asher
Tony Sheppard
facilitate the ability of products and services to communicate with one another, they cost money—and nothing really happens until a customer requires it. Brainstorming is a terrific way to spark ideas, but attaching money to a problem or a priority will always be the fastest way to turn them into concrete solutions. The blending of the practitioner and vendor community is perhaps another reason why an event like Kroger’s was bound to happen. Asset protection
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executives are moving more regularly into the sales world, creating even more fertile ground for collaboration. “My initial reaction was that it’s a great idea, because retailers have always looked to their vendors as partners and as solution providers, and this is a continuation and advancement of that,” said ThinkLP’s Rhett Asher. “It’s something that has really morphed as more security practitioners have transitioned from the retail world to a solution provider
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role where they are able to bring a ton of extra value to end users.” Tony Sheppard, MSM, LPC, is one of those executives, recently joining ThinkLP after nearly two decades at CVS. During his tenure, he says he took joint meetings with a few solution providers, but never the kind of open, freewheeling gatherings like Kroger recently hosted. For an integrated software platform and information hub like ThinkLP, the more people that come to the
The moment you realize the dollars wasted on rekeying locations with a locksmith...
table the better, according to Asher. But he sees value across a customer’s vendor base. “I do think it’s a great idea [for end users] to identify synergies between providers and how solutions might come together, but it’s also good for solution providers to have a better understanding of what other vendors do and what possibilities exist for how they might work with you and enhance what you can offer.”
Changing Attitudes on Both Sides Last, just as retailers have ceded control to customers in recent years, the event may reflect a shifting in the power dynamic between end users and suppliers. “There is the age-old attitude of ‘I own the customer,’ and ‘don’t talk to my customer,’ but Kroger is saying, ‘none of you own me. I drive this boat,’” said Bartol. But is it for everyone? Kroger clearly has the size and sway to hold such an event. But could the model work for others? Should other retailers consider gathering its key vendors together to shake hands, discuss roles, share ideas, and forge new alliances? McCauley suggested that a lot depends on the retailer and its reputation, and whether they have the standing necessary among the vendor community and a history of good partnerships. But being Kroger-size may not be necessary, according to Rhett Asher at ThinkLP, who thinks smaller retailers could also benefit from taking a page from Kroger’s playbook. “From a practitioner’s standpoint, it makes a lot of sense as a way to try and improve your business by getting solutions to work together.” Bartol agreed. “I absolutely think it’s something that could be beneficial to other retailers, of all shapes and sizes.” Overall, the first-of-its-kind event was regarded as successful by both Kroger and its vendor participants. “We feel it was an outstanding event, and something that we might do on an annual basis, because the needs of the business are ever-changing,” said Larson. It held value for participants by illuminating potential synergies and for sparking ideas—as well as for getting people back together. Although the industry doesn’t lack events, the pandemic has sidelined them for nearly two years. That absence made Kroger’s in-person get-together Garett Seivold is even more enjoyable, senior writer for and its social aspects a LPM. A trained journalist, he has renewed pleasure, noted spent the majority Axis’ Hedgie Bartol. “It of his career writing was great to be able to about security, risk be buddies again, and to management, supply again be able to share chain, and loss prevention topics. He can be reached at GarettS@LPportal.com. hugs and handshakes.”
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November–December 2021
CERTIFICATION
The Loss Prevention Foundation (LPF) is a leader in educating and certifying retail loss prevention and asset protection professionals by providing relevant, convenient, and challenging educational resources. The LPF is dedicated to elevating the industry through its accredited LPQualified and LPCertified courses. For more information, visit losspreventionfoundation.org.
Even LP Veterans Can Learn from Certification S
ome veteran loss prevention professionals may think certification is for someone new to the industry. It is, but it’s not exclusive to the LP novice. Individuals with ten, twenty, even thirty years of experience can benefit from the wide-ranging subjects covered especially in the LPC coursework. Here are two experienced LP professionals who recently earned their certifications with their views on why they chose to get certified, and the benefits they received.
Scott Pethuyne, LPC Senior Analytics Solution Consultant Zebra Technologies LPCertified in April 2021
Scott Pethuyne
At this point in my career, I felt that LPC certification was the right choice to both formalize and reinforce my knowledge of the loss prevention industry.
Scott Pethuyne, LPC began his career in loss prevention in 2008 working for Tween Brands as a front desk loss prevention officer. He quickly found the world of exception reporting and analytics and over the next few years moved through analyst and investigator roles, including leading asset protection analytics for Ascena Retail Group and leading asset protection analytics, operations, and safety and security for DSW/Designer Brands. In April 2020, Pethuyne made the transition to Zebra Technologies to work
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Some veteran loss prevention professionals may think certification is for someone new to the industry. It is, but it’s not exclusive to the LP novice. Individuals with ten, twenty, even thirty years of experience can benefit from the wide-ranging subjects covered especially in the LPC coursework. on the Zebra Prescriptive Analytics solution. “At this point in my career,” said Pethuyne, “I felt that LPC certification was the right choice to both formalize and reinforce my knowledge of the loss prevention industry. I also knew that it would be a signal of my commitment and passion for loss prevention to others in the industry.” Speaking of the LPC course, Pethuyne explained, “The LPC coursework is very thorough, clearly communicated, and detailed, but it isn’t overly burdensome. It most certainly requires a commitment from the learner that makes the certification a significant accomplishment. Anyone who is currently considering obtaining their LPC shouldn’t think twice. The LPC course provides a wealth of critical knowledge and provides the opportunity to display your commitment to the industry.”
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Pethuyne had some thoughts for young LP professionals just starting out in their career. “Loss prevention professionals need to be adaptable and willing to evolve. As the world in general, and retail specifically, continues to change, LP professionals can only benefit from pursuing further education like the LPC course and looking ahead to what’s next to further their own careers as well as the interests of their employers.”
Robert Sanchez, CFE, CFI, LPC
Regional Asset Protection Manager Dollar General LPCertified in June 2021
Robert Sanchez, LPC was working a civilian job with a sheriff’s department in 1994 hoping it would Continued on page 36
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Robert Sanchez
It had been a while since I had taken any type of formal classes surrounding the loss prevention industry, so when I was offered the opportunity by Dollar General to take the LPC course, it was a no brainer.
be a springboard into law enforcement, when he was offered the opportunity to join the asset protection team at a part-time job he was also working. Not really knowing what that meant, but assuming it would entail catching shoplifters, Sanchez took the position. Afterall, he wanted to be a police officer, so it fit right in with his plans. That job, however, led Sanchez into an AP manager-in-training role, and he never looked back. Over his twenty-seven-year career, he has held LP roles with Montgomery Ward, Tuesday Morning, PacSun, and now Dollar General. When Sanchez was asked why he decided to pursue his LPC certification at this time in his career, he explained, “It had been a while since I had taken any type of formal classes surrounding the loss prevention industry, so when I was offered the opportunity by Dollar General to take the LPC course, it was a no brainer. There’s a saying I like that goes, ‘I am the wisest, smartest person in the world because I am the first to admit I don’t know everything.’ I think it’s important to keep challenging what you know and what you think you know. I’m smart enough to realize that I don’t know everything there is about LP, so the LPC course was the perfect fit for me.” Sanchez added, “Things are constantly changing, especially in retail. Certification shows that you are at the forefront of understanding these changes. It shows that you are motivated to continue learning and investing in yourself and in your career. Remember, you have a unique fingerprint. One that no one before you has ever had and no one after you will ever have. Make sure you leave the best imprint possible in all you do.”
November–December 2021
Newly Certified
Following are individuals who recently earned their certifications. Recent LPC Recipients Scott Boyd, LPC, LPQ, Fanatics Shane Coover, LPC, Albertsons Omar Couceiro, LPC, Target Todd Egan, LPC, At Home Stores James Harvey, LPC, Publix Scott Manley, LPC, Bealls Justin Porter, LPC, LPQ, H-E-B Florentino Posada, LPC, James Avery Craftsman Stephen Schlesing, LPC, Lowe’s Kenneth Smith, LPC, Big Lots Matthew Smith, LPC, Kittery Trading Post Fernando Vallecillo, LPC, Walgreens Tanner Webb, LPC, Bashas’ Recent LPQ Recipients John Austin, LPQ, Target Robert Brown, LPQ, Axis Communications Kyla Burnhaueser, LPQ, Giant Food Stores Maggie Burns, LPQ, TJX Lucas Cummins, LPQ, Home Depot Chad Garbrick, LPQ, The GIANT Company Michael Graham, LPQ, Giant Martins Matthew Hausch, LPQ, Walmart Holly Hunt, LPQ, Dyson Jesus Lopez, LPQ, ALTO Dawn Louder, LPQ, Giant Martins Timothy Maldonado, LPQ, FleetPride Dillion Morningstar, LPQ, TJX Scott Rudesill, LPQ, ALTO Grant Rugar, LPQ, TJX Jose Salas, LPQ, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Lourdes Saldana, LPQ, ALTO Mark Sliwa, LPQ, ALTO Charles Smith, LPQ, Giant Martins Christina Strunk, LPQ, Giant Food Stores Kala Stufft, LPQ, The GIANT Company Samantha Vargas, LPQ, TJX
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The Hidden Cause of Employee Theft and How to Cure It By Jeanet Wade
T
here are many ways your employees can steal from you. From the “borrowing” of office supplies to overreporting of hours to embezzlement of money, divulging protected information, or selling intellectual property, there’s no one with greater opportunity to help themselves to your company assets. And those losses, even the minor ones, add up. In fact, an article from CompareCamp that provides an astonishing mash-up of statistics on employee theft states that small thefts add up to 5 percent of revenue while inventory losses are as high as 43 percent of revenue in the US. That doesn’t even factor in misuse of benefits, over reporting hours worked, or other fraudulent acts, such as sale of data or company information.
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dencg / Nadezhda79 / Tom Wang / StudioADFX / Nata-Lia / Shutterstock.com
FEATURE Curing Employee Theft Here’s what the author said is the bottom line: “Potential global loss from fraud and employee theft is $2.9 trillion annually. It is also estimated that 33 percent of corporate bankruptcies in the US are linked to employee theft.” Yes, you read that right. That’s trillion with a T. Every single year. And about 7,500 bankruptcies (there were 22,780 company bankruptcies reported in 2019) are caused in part or entirely by employees stealing from their employers. I won’t quote that article further because one, you can read it yourself, and two, it gives me a headache just thinking about all the businesses being impacted by employee theft when so much of the loss could have been prevented. Now, when I say that the loss could have been prevented, your mind probably goes to security measures, both physical and digital, and management oversight. But while those are important, and this article isn’t intended to devalue diligence and reasonable security measures, those aren’t your first line of defense in reducing loss due to occupational theft.
The first thing you need to consider when evaluating a plan for loss reduction is, believe it or not, the needs of the humans who work for your organization. Before you shake that off as irrelevant, too vague, too undependable, too hard to measure or manage, or just too “touchy-feely” for your company culture, consider the two aspects of any crime—motive and opportunity. Security and management oversight are focused on reducing opportunity and recovering losses. So, if someone is tempted to defraud the company, these measures may deter them, and if someone attempts a theft or succeeds in their efforts, these measures may result in apprehending the thief and mitigating the damage. What security and oversight cannot do is address the “motive.” Motive, of course, precedes opportunity. Without motive, crimes aren’t as likely to be committed, even when opportunity presents itself.
Addressing Motive We tend to think of motive in terms of greed, desperation, or just
THE FIRST THING YOU NEED
to consider when evaluating a plan for loss reduction is, believe it or not, the needs of the humans who work for your organization.
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thoughtless pilfering. But studies show that for many employees who, when surveyed, admit to defrauding their employer, the motivation is discontent, feeling unappreciated, or simply a lack of engagement, loyalty, or connection to the company. How many of your employees have either committed significant wrongdoing or been aware of a wrongdoing and haven’t reported it? KPMG Forensic polled 3,500 US employees for its Integrity Survey 2013 report. According to that report, 73 percent responded to that survey that in the last twelve months they had either committed or observed a serious offense. So, what is the motivation for employees to commit crimes against their employer or look the other way when they know the company is being harmed? In the 1940s, criminologist Donald R. Cressey studied the root causes of company fraud. He found that most of the nearly 200 convicted embezzlers interviewed stole because of financial pressure. However, he also found that there were two other determining factors for whether or not these employees went through with plans to steal from their employers: One, they had to have some belief that they were going to be able to get away with the crime, and two, they had to have a belief that their actions were justifiable. In his book Occupational Fraud and Abuse by Joseph T. Wells, the former FBI agent and white-collar crime expert who founded the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, published what he called the “crime triangle.” The three points in this triangle were opportunity, pressure, and rationalization.
Universal Human Needs Humans are fascinating. One thing that makes them so intriguing is their ability to hide their motives even from themselves and to create narratives to explain subconscious beliefs and emotions. The thing is that humans have natural needs that are pretty much universal. They need to feel heard and seen, they need to have a sense of belonging, and they need to know their contributions matter. There isn’t a human alive who doesn’t have those needs. And when those needs aren’t met, we feel uncertain, insignificant, threatened, even violated. That’s because those needs are wired into our brain settings and DNA as vital to survival. The interesting thing about this is that most of your employees don’t know they have those needs, or they believe they “shouldn’t” need these things from their teams and leaders. So they won’t tell you that their rationalization for a crime includes, “I didn’t feel like I mattered or that I belonged.” In fact, they probably don’t even realize that it’s true. Albert Pujols, the three-time MVP who left the St. Louis Cardinals for the Angels after three World Series appearances and two World Series wins, was highly criticized for leaving his team and a town that nearly idolized him. It was widely assumed that his motivation was the hefty salary package offered by his new team. However, years after that decision he gave an interview refuting that common perception and stating that it was the leadership of the Cardinals team that caused him to make the move. It wasn’t money, he insisted, he’d had another offer that was
even higher than the Angels, and he didn’t take it either. He wanted to go where the team management appreciated him and his contribution, and he felt that was not true in St. Louis. While this is only one anecdotal story, there are thousands of similar tales and plenty of studies that come to the same conclusion. For many people, having their human needs met is often more of a motivation than any amount of money.
Feelings and Engagement Influence Behavior And studies show that our feelings have more to do with behavior than temptation. In an article titled “Why Employees Commit Fraud” the Journal of Accountancy summarizes one of the studies referenced in the article by saying, “The researchers concluded the most common reason employees committed fraud had little to do with opportunity, but more with motivation—the more dissatisfied the employee, the more likely he or she was to engage in criminal behavior.” When we talk about employee satisfaction and engagement, we usually turn to Gallup’s “State of the American Workplace Report.” No matter what year’s report you happen to reference, their findings are all disheartening. Generally, you can expect to learn that only about one-third of the employees surveyed are considered engaged, about half are disengaged, and the remainder are actively disengaged. Those actively disengaged or dissatisfied employees can be a real threat to your security and your bottom line. One Gallup report estimates that actively disengaged employees cost US companies between $450 billion to $550 billion each
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year in lost productivity and goes on to say about those disengaged employees, “They are more likely to steal from their companies, negatively influence their coworkers, miss workdays, and drive customers away.” Typically, when companies make employee satisfaction, retention, productivity, or engagement a focus, they turn to nurturing activities. And they may see a temporary bump in morale, but unless there are systemic changes made in conjunction with these activities, the increase in engagement is likely to be short-lived and may even backfire. That’s because, before we can nurture people to excellence or even engagement, we must meet their natural, universal needs as human beings. Nature—our instincts, brain function, and what Kathy Kolbe, theorist and founder behind the Kolbe Conative Assessment tool, calls “MO” or modus operandi—is at the core of our most deeply ingrained beliefs and behavioral patterns. Nurture—the activities of coaching, engagement, and motivation—cannot take root until we’ve accounted for nature.
6 Facets of Human Needs The bridge between nature and nurture is to understand and provide what humans need in order to be fulfilled or “self-actualized” as part of a group dynamic. In my book The Human Team, I refer to these as the 6 Facets of Human Needs™. This framework allows business leaders to dependably assess their team health and create processes and structures to meet these human needs and increase employee engagement and satisfaction. The truth is that you actually have three powerful tools to keep people November–December 2021
FEATURE Curing Employee Theft
SECURITY AND MANAGEMENT
oversight are focused on reducing opportunity and recovering losses. What security and oversight cannot do is address the “motive.” Motive, of course, precedes opportunity. Without motive, crimes aren’t as likely to be committed even when opportunity presents itself. from even thinking about stealing from you. I call them “Connection, Consideration, and Contribution.” These are just three of the 6 Facets of Human Needs, but we’re going to focus on these, as they are most relevant to preventing the disconnection, dissatisfaction, and malcontent that often leads to occupational theft and fraud. Remember that I said that all humans need to feel heard and seen, need to have a sense of belonging, and need to know their contributions matter? You probably nodded your head because you probably recognized those needs in yourself and the other humans around you. Well, that’s pretty much what Connection, Consideration, and Contribution are about. Here’s what happens when those needs are met and when they aren’t and some tools for using this framework to meet the needs of your
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teams, increase productivity, and decrease risk of employee theft and fraud.
Connection As humans, we are basically herd animals, wired for connection and belonging to understand ourselves and to feel safe in the world. When people feel disconnected, excluded, or alienated in a group setting, they are likely to develop a “me versus them” belief system that can easily degenerate to seeing the company as an adversary. But when they have a sense of connection, they see themselves as part of the company and identify the success of the company with their own level of success. The effects of connection go far beyond psychology or self‑reporting studies. Research on the neurological changes in the brain brought on by connection or by
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“othering”—the process of identifying yourself or others as part of the “in group” or the “out group”—show that the areas of the brain activated by feeling “othered” or disconnected are the same as those activated by physical pain. On the other hand, feeling connected or part of the group resulted in an increase in oxytocin, the love hormone, or “cuddle chemical,” which bonds us to people and promotes human connection. Meeting your teams’ need for connection is more than building personal bonds. In fact, having individuals who feel connected to some of their teammates but not to the company as a larger idea is likely to result in subgrouping, which can increase feelings of othering and lead to destructive behaviors. To have a true sense of belonging, the humans on your team need to feel connected at several levels. Yes, they need to feel connected to each other. They need to have a sense of community and that a win for the company is a win for all the members on the team. In order to connect with each other at that level, they also need to connect to the bigger concept of what the company stands for—the mission, values, and culture—what beliefs and ideals hold you all together. And finally, they need to connect to the company’s place or space. In human evolution, geographic spaces were critical to belonging to the tribe, and that sense of being connected through sharing physical space is still wired into our DNA. The truth is that most people don’t harm people or things they feel connected to or a part of. Of course, there are exceptions—desperation or disregard for others are factors that can certainly override
those norms. But you can certainly reduce the number of employees who would be able to rationalize harming the company just by increasing their level of connectedness to the company.
Contribution One of the most important things we can do as business leaders, both in terms of creating healthy, productive teams and mitigating risks of employee theft, is to acknowledge the human psyche’s need to contribute and reward those contributions. Have you ever found yourself sitting in a meeting, mind wandering, toes tapping, trying to figure out your purpose for being in the room or on the call? How engaged were you, and how much attention did you give to the proceedings of the meeting? If we want healthy, engaged, loyal teams, we have to allow them to contribute at the highest level of their capability. Anything less and, as you probably noticed if you reflected on the scenario above, they begin to disengage. And that disengagement isn’t confined to the context of that single meeting. People who feel insignificant or undervalued will either disengage, leading to lack of connection and resentment, or in their desire to be significant and a part of the project or objective will disrupt those who are currently contributing at a higher level. Either outcome leads to business loss and increased risk. To make sure everyone feels their contributions are meaningful and valued, ask yourself the following questions: ● Is everyone on your team serving at their highest and best? ● When setting expectations,
are you achieving mutual agreement? ● Does each team member have a voice at the table? Do you have the right voices at the table? ● Is each individual continually learning and then applying new knowledge to the team or organization? ● Does the team member feel they are contributing meaningful work? Do they like their job and/or role? ● Have you established guidelines for working as a team? Finally, pay attention to the size of your teams. Smaller teams increase engagement and allow greater contribution from everyone included. Studies show that small-team intimacy triggers oxytocin and increases empathy. It’s probably the reason that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos goes by the two-pizza rule. If you can’t feed a team with two pizzas, he says, it’s too big.
Consideration Every human wants to be valued, and we know when we aren’t. A person who senses that they are unappreciated, inadequately compensated (and not all compensation is monetary), or treated unfairly in any way is going to be tempted, consciously or not, to balance the books so to speak. And that’s the key to consideration, that we begin by recognizing and respecting the unique human being, that we apply the “Platinum Rule” of treating them the way they want to be treated, and that we reward contributions appropriately, which can range from a high five, a public thank you, a small gift or card, or a monetary reward, such as a raise. When people aren’t having their need for consideration met, they feel like a “non‑entity,” no more individual or important than a robot or a cog in the wheel. Their self-esteem plummets, and because, historically,
HUMANS HAVE NATURAL NEEDS
that are pretty much universal. They need to feel heard and seen, they need to have a sense of belonging, and they need to know their contributions matter. And when those needs aren’t met, we feel uncertain, insignificant, threatened, even violated.
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FEATURE Curing Employee Theft
ONE GALLUP REPORT
estimates that actively disengaged employees cost US companies between $450 billion to $550 billion each year in lost productivity and goes on to say about those disengaged employees, “They are more likely to steal from their companies, negatively influence their coworkers, miss workdays, and drive customers away.” unimportant members of the tribe weren’t as likely to be protected by the tribe, their biological sense of safety is threatened. And when our significance and survival feel threatened, it’s easy to rationalize a preemptive strike or to bond with other discontented people in the “tribe.” To meet the need for consideration, build a culture where people are seen as unique and valuable human beings before they’re categorized for their skills and capabilities. Make sure leaders and managers are getting to know the people whose success they’re responsible for. Small gestures like knowing which baseball team someone follows or what college their kids go to will go a long way toward establishing your consideration for them as a human being. November–December 2021
Showing genuine consideration for the people on your teams has actually been shown to be more motivating and to build greater loyalty than even monetary incentive programs. And it’s certainly more cost effective than trying to recoup losses from employee theft, fraud, or underperformance.
The Bottom Line When you contrast the beliefs and emotions of someone who feels connected to the people they work with, the company they work for, and the mission and values the company represents, to someone who feels disconnected or even excluded from the groups and structures in the workplace, it’s obvious that it’s easier for the employee with less sense of belonging to rationalize wrongdoing.
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The same is true when you think about the employee who knows they are considered to be inherently valuable as a human being as well as an asset to the team versus someone who feels like a “plug and play” robot or a cog in the wheel. And certainly, it’s hard not to understand that someone will be more protective of the success of the company when that success represents their own contributions and those contributions have been validated and valued. The employee who feels disconnected or excluded, like an unimportant cog in the machine whose contributions are minimal or unappreciated, can easily rationalize looking the other way when they see unethical or even illegal behavior. And they’re more likely to rationalize committing those acts themselves. On the other hand, the person who feels as though they belong and play a vital role in something bigger than themselves, who feels like they are seen, heard, respected, and rewarded for their contributions, actually identifies as a part of the company. They feel any harm done to the business as personal to themselves. The bottom line is, when you put your focus on team health, risk mitigation is just a welcome byproduct.
Jeanet Wade is a Certified EOS® Implementer and the founder of the consulting firm, the Business Alchemist. As a facilitator, teacher, and coach, Wade helps companies implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a set of business concepts, principles, and tools that help business owners and executives run more successful businesses.
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TECHNOLOGY Tom Meehan, CFI Mott Jordan / Shutterstock.com
Meehan is retail technology editor for LPM as well as chief strategy officer and chief information security officer for CONTROLTEK. Previously, Meehan was director of technology and investigations with Bloomingdale’s, where he was responsible for physical security, internal investigations, and systems and data analytics. He currently serves as the chair of the Loss Prevention Research Council’s (LPRC) innovations working group. Meehan recently published his first book titled Evolution of Retail Asset Protection: Protecting Your Profit in a Digital Age. He can be reached at TomM@LPportal.com.
End-to-End Encryption Doesn’t Guarantee Internet Privacy T
Although many people would prefer that their messages stay private, in some cases, end‑to‑end encryption might be necessary for someone’s safety, such as journalists, law enforcement officers, and other high-profile targets.
he internet has given us unprecedented access to information and each other, but that can come at a cost. Despite the widespread use of end-to-end encryption, which is one of the most effective ways to send secure messages, that still doesn’t guarantee that a text sent via an encrypted messaging app will stay private. In early September 2021, the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica released a report about how Facebook could potentially view the private messages of 2 billion WhatsApp users, despite having end-to-end encryption built into the application. One of the most secure systems of communication, end‑to‑end encryption scrambles messages that are “unlocked” by cryptographic keys that only the sender and recipient have. This ensures that the messages are not read or modified by an unauthorized person. On the consumer side, one of the biggest appeals of messaging apps with end-to-end encryption, like WhatsApp and its competitors Signal and Telegram, is the promise of privacy. Although many people would prefer that their messages stay private, in some cases, end‑to‑end encryption might be necessary for someone’s safety, such as journalists, law
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enforcement officers, and other high-profile targets.
Privacy Is No Guarantee But that’s the thing about internet privacy—it’s impossible to guarantee it. The issue with Facebook isn’t that it violates its own commitment to end-to-end encryption, but that people other than the sender and recipients can read a message at all. In their report, ProPublica explains that WhatsApp employs over 1,000 moderators who review messages flagged by users
like data about the sender and their account. Although these monitoring procedures are an integral part of any successful messaging platform, it goes to show that end-to-end encryption still does not guarantee true privacy.
Free Apps Are Not Free But we’ve seen the recent events with WhatsApp before. A free app might not cost you money to download, but they’re usually never truly free. For example, Facebook and many
A free app might not cost you money to download, but they’re usually never truly free. For example, Facebook and many other social media platforms are free to use, but they make money by collecting data about its users and selling it to companies. as possibly abusive, which are automatically reported to the company. The moderation team also monitors messages for spam, disinformation, hate speech, potential terrorist threats, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), blackmail, and “sexually oriented businesses.” Once these messages are up for review, WhatsApp then gains access to more than just the one reported message, including information that isn’t encrypted,
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other social media platforms are free to use, but they make money by collecting data about its users and selling it to companies, which then use the data to learn more about consumers and create targeted products and marketing campaigns. We can go back even further with the beginning of Google in the late ‘90s, which was originally an advertising and data company. Google spent years indexing the internet to
make it easy to search, which gave them access to their own users. With this information, Google could accurately predict where and how a product or service would sell, getting more accurate with every search query. This is what enables companies to learn about consumer behavior to target potential customers, “retarget” existing ones, and predict future sales trends. These targeted paid ads can be as subtle as changing the order of your search results or as obvious as a paid ad banner on your screen.
which is fully open source (meaning it can be examined for vulnerabilities by security researchers), and Telegram, which has a “secret chat” option that encrypts messages and bypasses cloud backup. When it comes to sharing information online, whether it’s in a public social media post or a secured message sent with end-to-end encryption, there
provide personalized shopping recommendations and notify you when it’s time to drive to an appointment. That’s not to say that an online user like you or me should stop using mainstream platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, or Google. Instead, what’s important is to be aware of why these services are free to use. Social media platforms
As with so many other breaking news about privacy on social media, the issue isn’t that total online privacy isn’t impossible to reach; it’s that Convenience Over Privacy the average user, whether it’s a business or a As with so many other consumer, prefers convenience over privacy. breaking news about privacy on social media, the issue isn’t that total online privacy isn’t impossible to reach; it’s that the average user, whether it’s a business or a consumer, prefers convenience over privacy. Google might collect every single possible point of data about you, but it can also
will always be at least some risk. This is not unique to the recent report about WhatsApp’s content moderation protocol, and as we continue to figure out how to balance user privacy with consumer demand for convenience, we can expect some obstacles along the way.
require users to agree to their terms of service, which typically covers “loopholes” like flagged messages and content moderation. For users who are looking for more secure messaging apps with end-to-end encryption, some popular options include Signal,
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RETAIL COMMUNITY Stefanie Hoover, CFI giggsy25 / Shutterstock.com
Hoover is AVP strategic accounts and business development at ALTO USA. She is a member of the ASIS Retail Council and IAI Midwest Chapter Executive Board, and has over twenty years’ experience in retail loss prevention. She can be reached at shoover@alto-us.com.
Working Together for Safer, More Successful Communities W
Cristian Lopez
hen it comes to complex societal issues, passion—and tension—run high. You don’t even have to look past social media to see how intense the debate can be. But sometimes the passion can become unfocused and negative, producing no results other than making the poster feel better. Raging against “the way things are” is unproductive. When passion is directed, channeled, and funneled in a way that helps the larger community, our society reaps the benefits. Cristian Lopez, the CEO of ALTO US, is passionate and focused. Below he describes how retailers can tap into local resources to harness the power of partnerships.
Stewards of Our Communities As the stewards of security personnel and protocols, many asset protection and loss prevention teams find themselves responsible for a whole new frontier—the communities outside of their locations’ walls. After all, reckoning with the factors that introduce and sustain crime, violence, and vandalism can have a substantial impact on brand reputation, reported incidents, and overall shrink. Take, for example, stores located in a community with a large population of people experiencing homelessness. Local businesses are often faced November–December 2021
with a difficult balancing act—serving these neighbors with dignity and respect but having the tools to act if issues arise.
Being the Bridge Unmonitored, makeshift encampments may provide temporary relief for those seeking shelter, but they can also harbor illegal activity and result in unsafe conditions for the surrounding community. For one retailer in California, members of an encampment put themselves in significant danger by illegally tapping into a source of electricity. Another retailer reported an increased incidence of petty theft, but the incident escalated to assault when a store manager confronted the group. Encampments in abandoned buildings and vehicles can also pose risks to local law enforcement, members of the community, and even the individuals who take residence inside them. However, in the absence of active threats, pressing charges on these individuals doesn’t solve the problem. It creates tension among neighbors and often isn’t a permanent solution. Instead, forward-looking businesses are acting as the bridge to a better future. Our partners have found success working closely with community organizations,
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local governments, and police precincts to bring services and support to people experiencing homelessness. With open dialogue and aid at their fingertips, people are able to break the cycles of homelessness, addiction, and untreated mental health crises without entering the courtroom.
Finding the Bandwidth But what does that mean for local loss prevention and store teams, regional leaders, and national decision-makers who are already stretched to their limits as they struggle to stay fully staffed in a tough labor market? Finding—or creating—the bandwidth to manage these time-intensive projects is hard when you’re only one organization. Instead, teaming up with like-minded businesses, officials, and aid groups can make the process more manageable. When working as a team, it’s possible to make a positive change over time, rather than playing an endless game of Whac-A-Mole. There’s also more time to focus on more immediate fixes like updated security schedules and streamlined incident reporting. This work is hard, but the return on that investment is worth the effort. It’s time we came together to create safe, thriving communities for businesses and neighbors.
JOIN OUR RESEARCH & RESULTS COMMUNITY The Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) conducts evidence-based research and provides a collaborative environment to develop crime and loss control solutions to improve the performance of its retail members, solutions partners, and entire retail industry. Our research and team/individual development tools provide you with the necessary resources to combat theft, fraud, and violence.
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ASK THE EXPERT Interview with Jason DeVinney Maxx-Studio / Shutterstock.com
DeVinney is the business development manager for Checkpoint Systems supporting grocery retailers with shrink, sales, and inventory improvements driving ROI with technology such as EAS and RFID hardware, software, and labels. With more than twenty-five years of retail experience with CGPs, LP professionals and retail merchandising teams, DeVinney has successfully deployed chain-wide programs for some of the largest retailers in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He can be reached at jdevinney@checkpt.com.
Controlling Grocery Shrink What’s the grocery industry look like?
What are the high-theft categories in grocery?
Grocery sales in the US is big business and contributes heavily to the US economy. According to the USDA, the US grocery market had revenues of over $688 billion in 2018 from a large grouping of over 115,857 grocery retailers. Stores range from the largest US retailers to countless local mom-and-pop stores. An incredible 92.2 percent of all spending in the US on food and drink occurs in what are categorized as grocery stores (supermarkets and smaller independent grocers). Convenience stores make up the next highest proportion, a mere 4.5 percent. The remaining 3.3 percent is spent in specialized food stores.
Meat is a major shrink item and is increasing over the last year in both prepackaged meat and meat packaged in the store. Another major contributor to shrink is wine and spirits with liquor being the main driver with product often defensively merchandised and locked in a glass cabinet or behind the counter. Based on Checkpoint’s annual survey with major US retailers, top shrink categories include health and beauty, cosmetics, and over-thecounter drugs. Grocery retailers have the unique challenge of carrying a variety of high-shrink items like fresh meat, fish, and seafood, while combating shrink on personal care items such as teeth whitening, body wash, shaving, and fabric-care products. Retailers have found that visible tagging will reduce shrink and increase sales on these high-theft items.
What’s shrink look like? When comparing grocery retailers to the overall retail industry, we find grocery has some of the lowest margins in retail while also experiencing higher shrink. The negative impact on the grocery retailer and the shopper is significant.
The 2020 National Retail Security Survey revealed shrink was at an all-time high, accounting for 1.62 percent of a retailer’s bottom line, costing the industry $61.7 billion. Prior to the economic downturn, total shrink consumed 3.1 percent of a typical grocer’s revenue, much higher than any other retail sector according to the Food Industry Association (FMI). Now more than ever, grocery retailers have a major opportunity to combat shrink and positively impact the overall value proposition to shoppers while increasing net profits. November–December 2021
Is launching EAS difficult? EAS success in grocery is easier than ever based on two major developments. First, improved radio frequency (RF) technology that has enabled increased detection at the entry/exits and instantaneous deactivation at the pointof-sale allowing automated deactivation by the cashier or at self-checkout. Second is merchandise protection where
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essentially anything in the store can easily be protected at source with a RF label that is product and package agnostic. According to FMI, average shrink is 3.1 percent of a grocer’s revenue and item‑level shrink can be 4 to 5 percent for high-risk items. Launching a merchandise protection program will keep high-shrink products on the shelf and available for sale. The result is increased profits and improved shopping experience.
How long is the ROI for EAS systems? Based on a recent Checkpoint survey, 90 percent of North American food retailers utilizing EAS systems recognized an ROI in the first twelve months, and 100 percent by the eighteenth month. The ROI is driven largely due to shrink reduction on a select list of high-risk, high‑volume products with the shared objective of increasing profits via greater on-shelf availability (OSA). In speaking to food retailers, shrink reduction can be recognized from 10 to 40 percent on protected items, improving OSA, thereby making the product available to customers for purchase. Retailers are demonstrating that everyone wins with EAS, from the shopper to the consumer goods manufacturer to the grocery retailer.
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Interview with Cita Doyle, LPQ Doyle is the vice president of sales and marketing at InstaKey Security Systems and is responsible for consulting and educating leadership in loss prevention on mechanical key system best practices. Her tenure at InstaKey has spanned nearly two decades, and during that time she has had the privilege and satisfaction of supporting the advancement of loss prevention one key system at a time. Doyle has been recognized by the International Association of Interviewers as a “remarkable woman” in regard to her commitment to the industry, and she’s received the LPM Magpie Award for Excellence in Partnerships.
Four Key Control Best Practices K
ey control can be a complicated balancing act due to managing many moving parts and pieces while also keeping stakeholders happy. While technology continues to evolve, much of the security foundation of loss prevention remains in the physical controls of locks and keys. Every facility uses some level of physical keys to keep products, employees, and the location secure. This makes key control practices the bricks that establish the strength of your security foundation. However, key control tends to be a forgotten area resulting in higher than expected costs. We asked one solution provider for her take on the importance of addressing these programs and what best practices she recommends.
What type of key system is most beneficial for retailers? Restricted key systems because they cannot be duplicated without your authorization. The key blanks themselves aren’t sold on the open market. Using nonduplicable keys prevent the opportunity for duplication and is the most important practice for your keyed security. You need to be confident that the keys distributed to others can’t be copied and are the only ones that exist.
How important is it to track keys? Tracking is critical, because they are a company asset that
grants access to the most valuable areas and products. Since restricted keys can be confidently distributed, retailers should educate key holders of their importance and the key control policies surrounding them during key issuance. Use signature acknowledgments capturing their comprehension of this asset. Track who has keys, what they open, and audit them consistently. If an employee leaves, ask that they return all their company assets including keys. You can then be assured that the keys returned from a transitioning employee are the only keys they had. By tracking these “key transitions” regularly, you can virtually eliminate the need to change locks after the employee departs. Lock changes then become the exception instead of the norm.
When should I change my locks? If using a restricted key program, only if a critical key is lost or unaccounted for should you change your locks or “rekey.” If you do not have a restricted key program, you should rekey upon keyholder turnover. Make sure to implement a simple and cost-effective rekeying process and educate your employees on the procedure—where to look, what to do, who to call, and what to expect. Both prevention and protection begin with planning and preparation, so develop
simple guidelines that direct the employees to save time and expense. We’ve seen indepth training provided for so many other areas and initiatives on much more difficult programs, but key systems are regularly overlooked. Utilize products like interchangeable cores or user-rekeyable locks, so authorized employees can do it themselves without the need for locksmiths. Many lock systems are simple technology, so maximize on areas where the employees can control the outcome and manage costs.
Where should I start with evaluating my lock and key program? Assess the current workflow process, field feedback, and resulting rekeying costs. Remember to also add in the management of inventory, resources, paper records, spreadsheets, or stand-alone software solutions in use that can be hidden costs. You may be surprised with what you discover. Look to simplify the program management through technology by using a cloud-based key tracking software designed to track all aspects of the lock-and-key program at every organizational level (or by store, district, region, organization, etc.). It’s important to have your data available to quickly and accurately address a keyed security breach immediately while also being able to monitor your overall program costs.
LPM | 51 | November–December 2021
If using a restricted key program, only if a critical key is lost or unaccounted for should you change your locks or “rekey.” If you do not have a restricted key program, you should rekey upon keyholder turnover.
Winning the Talent Wars Hiring and Retention for the New Hybrid Workplace By Bruce Tulgan
E
mployers are facing more severe talent shortages than they have seen in decades. While the particulars differ, the evidence of talent shortages is widespread: Voluntary unplanned turnover—the ”quit rate”—is increasing. Pent-up departure demand—the “want to quit rate”—is also increasing. Open position and time-to-hire rates are increasing. Early voluntary departure of new hires—less than eighteen months—is increasing. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be understated. These short-term factors are responsible for some of the most acute staffing challenges occurring in 2021. Workforce burnout and depression, extended unemployment benefits, increased family care needs, and other post-pandemic disruptions are presumably short-term. However, there are also longer-term, lasting echoes that will transform hiring and retention for the foreseeable future. Trends toward remote work, flexible scheduling, and shorter terms of employment were pushed further by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Employers will have to contend with these transformations to the employer-employee relationship far beyond 2021.
November–December 2021
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LPM | 53 | November–December 2021
FEATURE
Globalization and technology. Globalization and technology have reached a point where the world is so highly interconnected and rapidly changing that adaptability has replaced stability as the strategic imperative. Job security is no longer a guarantee. Institutions must be flexible, so employers can no longer pretend to offer job security to even the most loyal employees. Individuals must fend for themselves and their families, so employees must be prepared to sell their work to the highest bidder.
are recalibrating their career ambitions and plans, opting—at least for now—for more life in the balance with work. Meanwhile, the supply and demand curve for employees promises to continue to be unforgiving to employers. By 2022, individuals born in 1990 and later will comprise greater than 33 percent of the North American workforce, with similar figures for Western Europe and Japan, and even higher percentages in parts of South America, Africa, and Asia. Organizations with high percentages of young workers will face an increasingly
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be understated. These short-term factors are responsible for some of the most acute staffing challenges occurring in 2021. Workforce burnout and depression, extended unemployment benefits, increased family care needs, and other post-pandemic disruptions are presumably short-term. Shorter terms of employment. Employer‑employee relationships become less and less long-term and hierarchical and increasingly short-term and transactional as new modes of work continue to emerge. First there was temping and part‑timing, now the gig economy. More flexibility. Employers have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that they must be even more lean, flexible, and adaptable (read: smaller real estate footprints and fewer permanent workers). Many employees, for their part,
November–December 2021
transactional workforce, not hesitating to request greater flexibility and other concessions in their working arrangements.
The Talent Wars are Costly When open position and time-to-fill rates are high, teams remain perpetually understaffed. There are five costs: 1. Sales realization opportunities are lost, and over-promised purchasers are ultimately disappointed due to unfulfilled orders for services and products.
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2. Current staff members become overcommitted as they seek to complete additional work for positions that remain unfilled. Overcommitment syndrome leads to mistakes, delays, relationship friction, diminished morale, and burnout. Combined, these factors ultimately contribute to increased turnover. 3. Overtime costs increase. 4. Perpetual understaffing workarounds become entrenched in bad habits. 5. New hires do not get sufficient attention in the onboarding and up-to-speed training processes. When good employees choose to leave, there are additional costs. Replacement costs. When you lose an employee, you will incur the costs of recruiting, onboarding, and up-to-speed training for a replacement. Lost return on investment (ROI) on talent development. You will lose (often to your competitor) the recruiting, onboarding, and up‑to‑speed training investment you have made in the departing employee. Disruption in workflow and relationships. There is usually an increased work burden on remaining employees. When a good employee leaves suddenly or not on good terms, the disruptions are greater. Diminished morale and copycat departures. When good employees leave, sometimes this triggers other unplanned departures. The instability caused by turnover also decreases team morale. Loss of bench strength. The greater your turnover among good employees, the less robust your bench strength of homegrown talent for other positions throughout the organization.
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Winning the Talent Wars
These costs make it highly important for employers to identify and mitigate the leading causes of voluntary departures among the best talent.
Top Four Causes of Early Departures There are four reasons most employees leave within two years of being hired. Buyer’s remorse. This results from the employer overselling the job to potential candidates. The newly hired employee is disappointed by the real conditions of the job as compared with representations or promises made during the hiring process. Remember, it is always better to leave a position unfilled than to overpromise and fill it with the wrong person. Inadequate onboarding or up-to-speed training processes. This occurs when the first days and weeks of a new hire’s employment are not rigorously scheduled with interactions, experiences, and assignments designed to make a connection between them and the new organization. That means clearly presenting and continuously reinforcing the mission, values, history, culture, people, and work. It is important to transfer ownership of at least one concrete task, responsibility, or project to every new hire. Hand-off to a disengaged or unsupportive manager. This is when the manager does not provide clear expectations, regular feedback about performance, resource planning, troubleshooting, problem‑solving, or give credit and reward for high performance. Limited flexibility. This could mean flexibility in anything from assignment choice, to schedule, to location
or workspace, to any other preferred work condition.
does not provide the guidance and direction to set them up for achieving their best work. Top Five Causes of Or, they may come to resent Mid-Stage Departures the manager for failing to recognize the great work they While hiring was postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic, do. An employee may also many employees were similarly perceive a manager’s lack of engagement as representative choosing not to leave their of how valuable they are to the jobs. As hiring continues to organization as a whole. favor potential new employees Limited flexibility. This post-pandemic, the pent-up departure demand will release, may be flexibility in anything from assignment choice, resulting in a wave of turnover to schedule, to location, among mid-stage employees. There are five leading causes or any other preferred for mid-stage departures, which work condition. Now that employees have seen it is will soon contribute to mass possible to achieve nearly departures if not addressed. Sustained overcommitment universal work-from‑home conditions, they are more syndrome with no end in sight. Chronic overcommitment skeptical of employers or managers who refuse to offer syndrome results in siege sufficient flexibility. mentality—when all incoming Lack of career path. The requests, assignments, and best employees will leave opportunities feel like an when there are no clear steps assault. This inevitably leads toward role/position growth or to burnout. career advancement. Disengaged or Relationship conflict. This unsupportive manager. could be cliques, ringleaders, When someone’s manager or other exclusionary social does not engage in regular, formations, or growing friction ongoing, one-on-one resulting from a lack of clear conversations about the work communication when it comes with them, they will stagnate. to collaborative work. They may feel their manager
Post-pandemic, there are longer-term, lasting factors that will transform hiring and retention for the foreseeable future. Trends toward remote work, flexible scheduling, and shorter terms of employment were pushed further by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Employers will have to contend with these transformations to the employer‑employee relationship far beyond 2021.
LPM | 55 | November–December 2021
FEATURE Winning the Talent Wars
Six Steps to Gaining a Strategic Staffing Advantage in 2021 and Beyond There are six steps essential to gaining a strategic advantage as an employer in the talent wars of 2021-2022 and beyond: 1. Define a clear value proposition. 2. Build and maintain a supply chain of applicants. 3. Be very, very selective. 4. Stay in close dialogue between hiring and day one. 5. Structure onboarding and up-to-speed training. 6. Turn every manager into a chief retention officer.
a positive contribution to the mission. Every employer value proposition is based on a balance of eight factors that employees value most. We call these the dream job factors. Performance-based compensation. How much is baseline pay and benefits? Are they comparable to your competition? Are there clearly defined opportunities to learn more based on extra-mile effort and results? Supportive leadership. Is there an immediate manager who provides regular guidance, support, and direction? Will
While hiring was postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic, many employees were similarly choosing not to leave their jobs. As hiring continues to favor potential new employees post‑pandemic, the pent-up departure demand will release, resulting in a wave of turnover among mid-stage employees. STEP ONE: Define a Clear Value Proposition For each role, you need to frame a clear value proposition. The employer side of the transaction is always the same—employers want to get as much of the highest priority work done as well as possible, as fast as possible, with the least possible cost or friction. The employee side of the transaction is more complex and variable—employees want to earn money, have favorable working conditions, and make
November–December 2021
they make expectations clear and provide regular feedback and recognition? Role and responsibilities. What is the nature of the actual work itself? Is it difficult, repetitive, or tedious? Or, is it interesting and valuable? Is it mission driven? Does it have positive, meaningful results? Location and workspace. Is the work done in a particular place in a specific geography? Or can the work be done from anywhere? Sometime? All of the time? If there is a particular place, is it pleasant?
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Scheduling flexibility. Is the job full-time, extra time, part-time, flex time? Is there any ability to set one’s own schedule? Occasional scheduling accommodations? Training and development. Are there formal and informal opportunities to build new, relevant knowledge and skills? Is there a chance to become a deep subject matter expert? Or to build a wide repertoire? Relationships at work. Is the workplace welcoming and inclusive? Are there opportunities to build productive and mutually supportive working relationships with colleagues, leaders, clients, or decision makers? Autonomy and creative freedom. Is it clear what exactly is up to employees and what is not? What is required in every job? What is allowed? Where do employees have discretion in how they complete their work? Very few, if any, employers can provide every employee with optimal choices in all the dream job factors. But you have to offer something. The less you offer in one category, the more you must offer in another. One job may offer only heavy lifting with very little autonomy or creative freedom. Then the question will be simple: What do you offer? Scheduling flexibility? Location flexibility? Supportive leadership? COVID-19 has changed how we work. If the dream job factors weren’t a part of your organization’s repertoire prior to the pandemic, they probably are in some shape or form now. If not, it’s time to take action. STEP TWO: Build and Maintain a Supply Chain of Applicants Depending on your optimal staffing mix, you may build your staffing supply chain using a
mix of internal professionals, expert external partners, and technology. Who internally on your team is responsible for attracting applicants from appropriate talent pools? Is it hiring managers themselves? Are they winging it, all alone? Or are they supported by staffing and recruiting professionals from HR? Who is responsible for framing the attraction message? Preparing the materials? Delivering the materials? Explaining and answering questions? There are two goals—to make the process as simple and easy for the applicant as possible and to diversify your sources of hiring as much as possible. STEP THREE: Be Very, Very Selective The biggest mistake hiring managers make is continuing the “attraction campaign” until the candidate has accepted the job, and sometimes until the new employee is already at work. They are so desperate to get someone in the door, they make promises they cannot keep or hide the downsides of a job. We call this “selling candidates all the way in the door.” Do not overpromise in the attraction process. That leads right to the number one cause of early voluntary departures for newly hired employees—buyer’s remorse. It is better to leave a position unfilled than to fill it with the wrong person. You need a fast and rigorous selection process using all the current best practices—online prescreening, aptitude and personality assessments, behavioral interviewing, job previews, and phased-in hiring (sometimes called probationary hiring).
STEP FOUR: Stay in Close Dialogue Between Hiring and Day One If there is lag between hiring and day one for a new hire, it is important to keep that person engaged in the meantime, and set them up for a solid start. Maintain a high level of communication during the intervening time, not just from human resources or some other anonymous corporate office, but from the hiring manager and the team the employee will be working with. Have key people on the team reach out and schedule one-on-one conversations.
Picture the United States Marine Corps and their onboarding and up-to‑speed training program for new recruits. For thirteen weeks, recruits undergo intensive training, acquiring the physical and mental skills and sense of shared mission required to do a superior job. The Marine Corps doesn’t pay much, and the job is both difficult and dangerous. Yet, they are able to recruit 40,000 new Marines every year, with a washout rate that is so low it can hardly be measured. You do not need obstacle courses or
There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to hiring and retaining talent—this is more true today than ever before. Employers must commit to defining a clear value proposition, engaging with each and every new hire fully, investing in their training and development, and building a culture of strong leadership. If they don’t, someone else will. STEP FIVE: Structure Onboarding and Up-to-Speed Training New hires almost always walk in the door with a spark of excitement. The question is—do you pour water on that spark or gasoline? If you want to ignite the spark, focus on them from the moment they walk in the door. Day one is the most important day; then week one, and then months one, two, and three.
firing ranges in your own organization. What matters is replicating the intensity, the connection to mission, the feeling of shared experience and belonging, the steady learning, and the constant challenge. It means taking new employees seriously from day one, and every other day after that. The longer you sustain that intensity, the better.
LPM | 57 | November–December 2021
FEATURE Winning the Talent Wars
By far, the most important factor is the investment in systematically training and requiring managers to engage, guide, direct, and support employees in their day-to-day experience at work. In manager-directed workplaces, manager buy-in, support, engagement, and facilitation are the keys to the success of any workplace flexibility practices intended to benefit employees. STEP SIX: Turn Every Manager into a Chief Retention Officer Managers with the greatest control over turnover—that is, when low performers are removed or guided toward improvement by the manager, and high performers want to stay—do the following: ● They are highly engaged, so they know what’s going on with the work at all times and make better decisions as a result. ● They are in a regular, ongoing dialogue with every direct report, spelling out expectations every step of the way. ● They build authentic rapport by talking about the work, planning and providing regular feedback, troubleshooting, problem‑solving, scorekeeping, and recognition. Organizations with the greatest short, intermediate, and long‑term retention rates among high‑performing
employees are not just those with the policies and programs to support the kind of dream job flexibility employees want. By far, the most important factor is the investment in systematically training and requiring managers to engage, guide, direct, and support employees in their day-to-day experience at work. In manager‑directed workplaces, manager buy‑in, support, engagement, and facilitation are the keys to the success of any workplace flexibility practices intended to benefit employees. Without manager-led execution, these programs risk becoming irrelevant at best. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt in hiring and retention for years to come. Employers will have to work much harder to attract, hire, train, and retain the best talent today. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes—this is more true today than ever before.
November–December 2021
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Employers must commit to defining a clear value proposition, engaging with each and every new hire fully, investing in their training and development, and building a culture of strong leadership. If they don’t, someone else will.
WINNING THE TALENT WARS RECRUITING AND RETENTION FOR THE NEW HYBRID WORKPLACE 2021 - 2022 EDITION
EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is adapted from the whitepaper titled Winning the Talent Wars: Hiring and Retention for the New Hybrid Workplace, which is available on the author’s website rainmakerthinking.com.
Bruce Tulgan is a best-selling author, an adviser to business leaders all over the world, and a sought-after keynote speaker and management trainer. He is the founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking, a management research and training company. He has authored numerous books, including the best-seller It’s Okay to Be the Boss, Not Everyone Gets a Trophy and his newest book from Harvard Business Review Press, The Art of Being Indispensable at Work.
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CYBERSECURITY Tom Meehan, CFI Jozsef Bagota / Shutterstock.com
Meehan is retail technology editor for LPM as well as chief strategy officer and chief information security officer for CONTROLTEK. Previously, Meehan was director of technology and investigations with Bloomingdale’s, where he was responsible for physical security, internal investigations, and systems and data analytics. He currently serves as the chair of the Loss Prevention Research Council’s (LPRC) innovations working group. Meehan recently published his first book titled Evolution of Retail Asset Protection: Protecting Your Profit in a Digital Age. He can be reached at TomM@LPportal.com.
Global Cyber Warfare and the Possibility of a “New” World War T
Ransomware attacks have become much more common. As more hackers enter the “business” of ransomware, they tend to target smaller businesses that are more vulnerable to cyberattacks and more likely to pay the ransom to regain access to their systems.
he idea of a third World War seems like something in the far distant future, to be explored in books and movies rather than in real life. However, with the growing prevalence of cyberattacks, many of which come from government bodies, the potential of cyber warfare might push us much closer to the brink of war than we realize. Hackers use ransomware to encrypt their victims’ data and lock them out of their networks. Then, the hackers offer victims a key in exchange for a ransom that can run into hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, usually paid in cryptocurrency to make it near impossible to trace the ransom payment. Sometimes victims regain access to their data without any issues after paying the ransom. However, the real concern is for organizations that pay the ransom, only for hackers to delete their data or leak sensitive data like customer information, credit card numbers, social security numbers, and classified corporate or government data to the dark web for other bad actors to exploit.
Today’s Biggest Cyber Threat Ransomware has become a popular type of cyberattack in recent years, with ransomware gangs operating around the world in countries like Russia, China, and North Korea. These cyber gangs November–December 2021
even offer “ransomware as a service,” selling their malware on the dark web for anyone to use— and business is booming. As hundreds of headlines proclaim just how profitable ransomware can be (like the announcement that Colonial Pipeline paid nearly $5 million in ransom to recover its stolen data in May of this year), more bad actors are drawn to the ransomware business in pursuit of a quick profit. As more hackers enter the “business” of ransomware, they tend to target smaller businesses that are more vulnerable to cyberattacks and more likely to pay the ransom to regain access to their systems. The widespread use of cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, has made it even easier for hackers to receive ransoms as well. According to a recent report from cybersecurity firm Sophos, the average cost of recovering from a ransomware attack has doubled, increasing from $761,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021 and becoming higher than the ransom itself. Another company, Chainanalysis, found that ransomware attacks led to at least $350 million in ransom payments in 2020, a 311 percent increase compared to 2019. However, it is difficult to estimate the full financial impact of these attacks because ransomware is highly underreported.
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A Pattern of Ransomware Originating from Overseas In June 2021, the FBI reported that they were investigating around 100 different types of ransomware, many of which trace back to actors in Russia. In fact, some of the biggest cyberattacks in history have happened in the past 12 to 18 months alone, and most of them came from hacker groups in China and Russia. Although these groups are usually not official state actors, both the Chinese and Russian governments have a reputation for ignoring international calls to crack down on cybergangs in their jurisdictions, essentially protecting these groups and sometimes even enabling their operations. In December 2020, SolarWinds, a major US information technology firm, discovered it was the victim of a massive cyberattack that targeted the company’s clients, affecting approximately 18,000 government agencies and businesses. A group of state‑sponsored hackers working with the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service, added malware to a legitimate software update that created a backdoor into the software, allowing the hackers to enter victims’ systems whenever they wanted. Some of the victims of the SolarWinds attack include parts of the Pentagon, DHS, the State Department, the Department of Energy, and the Treasury, along continued on page 62
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Some of the victims of the SolarWinds attack include parts of the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, the Department of Energy and the Treasury, along with major corporations like Microsoft, Cisco and Intel.
continued from page 60 with major corporations like Microsoft, Cisco, and Intel. Since the hack went undetected for months, the SolarWinds attack demonstrates the biggest concern about modern cyberattacks: that victims might never even realize they were hacked. Just a few months later, Chinese government hackers targeted Microsoft Exchange, an enterprise email software, to steal data from at least 30,000 organizations around the world, including government agencies, defense contractors, infectious disease researchers, and policy think tanks. Microsoft concluded that the attacks originated from China and appeared to be state-sponsored. On May 6, 2021, the Colonial Pipeline Company, which provides fuel to a majority of the Eastern US, was the target of a ransomware attack attributed to DarkSide, a Russian hacking group. The attack, which led Colonial Pipeline to shut down its 5,550-mile gasoline pipeline for a few days, likely came from a single password breach. Because the account reportedly did not use multifactor authentication, hackers only needed a username and password to gain access. On May 31, 2021, JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company, discovered a ransomware attack on its North American and Australian systems and shut down slaughtering at all of its US plants for a day. By June 3, JBS had fully restored global operations, avoiding an extended shutdown that could have further increased already high food prices and disrupted the global food supply chain. The company also revealed it had paid a ransom equivalent to $11 million to prevent the potential fallout of long-term disruption to their operations. Over Fourth of July weekend of this year, a Russian cybergang known as REvil/Sodinikibi deployed a ransomware attack on Kaseya, a US managed services provider, targeting the company’s virtual systems/server administrator (VSA) software in November–December 2021
demand for $70 million in bitcoin. The hack impacted approximately 1,500 small- to mid-sized businesses. However, hundreds of supermarkets in Sweden had to close because their cash registers were inoperative.
Foreign Involvement in Cyberattacks US cybersecurity efforts are usually focused on Russia, which organizes state-sponsored attacks while declining to prosecute cybercriminals, including ransomware hackers who target Americans. This trending behavior prompted US President Joe Biden’s first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva in June, where Biden gave Putin a list of sixteen areas of critical infrastructure that should be exempt from cyberattacks. It is important to note that the Russian hacking groups responsible for the attacks on the Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya this year have disbanded or otherwise disappeared, which might indicate some sort of government intervention. However, the US, along with NATO, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, has also condemned cyberattacks coming out of China. Compared to Russia, where the government isn’t usually involved in cyberattacks, many experts believe that the Chinese government works directly with criminal contract hackers to deploy cyberattacks for both espionage and personal profit. With the world distracted by other major global events, like the shifting political climate in many countries and the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been easy to ignore the growing threat of international cyberattacks. As ransomware becomes more sophisticated and more accessible, it becomes harder for government agencies to stay ahead of hackers, particularly if they have support from foreign governments.
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How Global Cyber Warfare Could Play Out Although it sounds far-fetched, it’s actually not unreasonable to expect that all of these cyberattacks are ramping up to the possibility of a third World War. In fact, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis, explores this very idea. In the novel, the Chinese government uses technology to defeat a US naval fleet and take control of the South China Sea, propelling the world into a new era of cyber warfare. The novel proposes the idea that the US and other developed nations have become so dependent on technology that we have become vulnerable to cyberattacks, which can be even more destructive than “traditional” war. A massive cyberattack might enable foreign governments to bring down entire military bases and government headquarters without ever stepping foot into the states. In an interview with Wired, coauthor Stavridis argues that the US and China could potentially “sleepwalk” into a real war, becoming so deeply entrenched in a cyberwar between themselves that they drag the whole world into it. One of the lessons of the book is that you never want to be the country that starts a war, but you do want to be the country that finishes it. The US didn’t start the previous World Wars, but by finishing them it has established nearly a century of global dominance. But if the US accidentally starts the next World War, even if it’s just a cyberwar, then what will that mean for its status as a global superpower? The growing trend of ransomware indicates a clear movement toward cyber warfare, where government bodies work with hackers to bring down critical infrastructure in other countries. As cybersecurity becomes a top priority for both private companies and government agencies, we should be aware of just how big of a threat hackers pose to our world today and tomorrow.
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SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE
NGS Never Board Up Again
Riot Glass from NGS protects your storefronts from forced entry, riots, bomb-blasts, windstorms, and seismic events without losing the visibility of glass.
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etail window and glass door security concerns have increased because of rioting, smash-and-grab theft, and natural disasters that have forced retailers to employ a strategy of board up, pull down, repeat. But a break in this costly cycle is available thanks to a new, “access denial” product category from NGS that gives retailers the option to never again erect a storefront wall of plywood. It’s become a common sight in advance of an approaching storm, election results, or court verdict—entire streets of shops shut down and boarded up—so frequent recently that the supply of plywood has run low at several points over the past year. Worried retailers often begin erecting barriers a week in advance to “get out in front” of events that may—or may not—materialize. One retailer NGS spoke with recently spent $2 million on wood alone in the last year, which they then just ended up taking down. NGS is a nationwide leader in retail window and glass door security film
applications, but it is their new Riot Glass® solution that provides retailers with always-there protection against direct assaults. The special sauce is that it’s a custom engineered protection solution but looks like a normal storefront.
A Substantial Advantage Over Roll-Down Shutters and Gates Riot Glass marks a substantial advantage over roll-down shutters and gates, which can be overwhelmed by rioters, are easily damaged resulting in costly repairs,
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require ongoing maintenance, and can give an unfavorable impression of a shopping area’s safety. Indeed, out of concern for the negative image from security shutters, some city councils like officials in Waukegan, Illinois have banned certain types of them. Riot Glass is a much more aesthetic solution to retail window and glass door security, which makes it much easier to get buy-in from multiple departments than something that is going to impact the design of the store. It’s not window film. To get technical, it’s a patented
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ArmorPlast® shield system made from a combination of polycarbonate and plastics that is anchored in a specially designed and patented framing system to existing windows and doors. It provides maximum glass protection against sledgehammers, crowbars, and projectiles. Even if the glass behind it is somehow damaged, rioters and looters still can’t get in. It has undergone and passed independent testing designed for Miami Dade hurricane code enforcement and is rated against human impact—and it’s currently undergoing even stricter blast-rating tests. Many retailers turn to plywood as a solution, but that doesn’t even have a rating. The ability of Riot Glass to suffer repeated, aggressive attacks— even shots fired directly through it—and still prevent forced entry, often comes as a surprise to loss prevention executives during demonstrations. It’s proving itself in the real world, too. There are retailers that have had their store hit five times, and they’ve never been breached or had to replace their glass.
summer, for example, when rioting caused losses topping $1 billion. And stores can lose money even when events don’t spiral out of control. According to an online platform that connects retailers with local contractors, some large retailers spent $31,000 per store to board up in advance of the election—for rioting that never happened. Instead of bearing the wasted expense of repeatedly adding protection—and then removing it—investing in Riot Glass provides constant security. A permanent
A Permanent Solution to Retail Window and Glass Door Security Once installed, Riot Glass is a fixed-and-forget-it solution to retail window and glass door security, but it does require retailers to alter their approach to the next hurricane, riot, or organized retail crime (ORC) eruption. A permanent solution demands a longer planning cycle than an incident response and remediation approach to store security. And high demand and supply chain complications are such that retailers should be mindful of the lead time for installations.
More Important than the Burglar Alarm System In an LPM feature article on after-hours protection, a chief security officer for a national restaurant chain said he thinks a lot of the latest security technology is helpful but warned that regardless of what gadgets may be in place, retail establishments with unprotected doors and windows are still vulnerable to “a good crowbar.” He said, “It’s been my experience that creating physical barriers is ultimately more important than the burglar alarm system.” In addition to better protection, cost-savings is a principal benefit. A hardened, layered approach to retail window and glass door security repels would-be looters and limits economic harm. The most costly civil disorder event in the nation’s history was last
on storefronts are on the door and around the door area. Using store remodels as an opportunity to make the upgrade is also a good idea, as is internal departments working together to strengthen the overall business case, including construction, design, real estate, and loss prevention. For example, for stores in coastal areas prone to weather events, Riot Glass allows real estate groups to meet code requirements, gives LP a 24/7 physical protection solution that is impervious to human error or maintenance failures, and eliminates the expense of shuttering stores and emergency glass service from the facility team’s budget.
About NGS solution also eliminates the handwringing and second guessing that arises from trying to gauge what impact a protest, celebration, or weather event will have on a specific store location, and if it warrants boarding up or not—and, if so, when is the right time to do it. As a maximum-security solution, Riot Glass is an investment, but stores can minimize the total outlay. To keep costs down, Riot Glass in conjunction with security film is a good option. Most of the attacks
NGS is a nationwide leader in Riot Glass, window film, graphics, and signage and provides glazing security, energy, and branding improvements for buildings. To learn more, visit filmsandgraphics.com/riot-glass/.
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SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE
Riot Glass New Unbreakable Storefront Replacement Glazing Provides an Innovative Invisible Board Up Alternative
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urricanes, windstorms, rioting and looting, burglary—these are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to storefront security threats. Glass doors and windows help retailers attract customers, but they are also a retail store’s most vulnerable points when it comes to forced entry and storm damage. That’s why it’s so important to ensure that you adequately reinforce your storefront glass against impacts of all types.
glass, so they don’t completely protect it from breaking because of high-force impacts. Roll-down shutters and storm panels are a great alternative to board ups when it comes to protecting your business during a hurricane or moments of civil unrest. However, hurricane shutters must be permanently mounted above your window glass and manually lowered into place before a storm, making them an
Issues with Traditional Storefront Glass Protection
inconvenient and impractical option for some retailers. Storm panels are basically the commercial version of plywood boards, so if you don’t get enough warning before a storm or a riot, you might not get them put up in time. Not only that, but they don’t provide any protection against unanticipated threats, such as burglary and smash-and-grab theft. Plywood board ups are the most time-tested method of securing storefronts against vandalism, rioting, looting, and storm damage. But, boarding up a retail store is a
Traditional methods of protecting commercial glass against impacts include installing bars and grates, using roll-down shutters or storm panels, or boarding up windows with plywood. These solutions provide varying levels of protection against forced entry and storm damage, but they all have certain disadvantages. Bars and grates may keep would-be intruders out of your store, but they are unsightly and hurt the curb appeal of your business. They also don’t fully cover the
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time-consuming, labor-intensive process—not to mention you need a lot of space to store all that plywood when it’s not in use. So, what can retailers use to protect their storefront glass instead of these traditional security solutions?
Unbreakable Storefront Glazing Fortunately, there is a solution for retailers looking to reinforce their
commercial glass against a full range of security threats—polycarbonate glazing shields. These glazing shields don’t actually contain any glass—and that’s precisely what makes them so strong. Polycarbonate is a type of plastic that is virtually unbreakable. Unlike other types of security glass on the market, impacts from bats, bricks, hammers, crowbars, rocks, and flying storm debris won’t even put a crack in a polycarbonate glazing shield. These protective shields can be retrofitted into or onto almost
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any existing framing system, without the need to remove and replace the existing glass. The polycarbonate sits in front of your glass doors and windows, protecting the glass panes from breaking and shattering inwards if it receives any type of impact. Polycarbonate glazing shields look, feel, and function just like traditional window glass, but create an invisible barrier that prevents would-be intruders from gaining entry to your business, protects your employees from flying shards of glass, and keeps your property secure during hurricanes and strong windstorms.
over to your business to board it up and secure it if there’s a storm on the way or if there’s an instance of civil unrest. If your business is located in a hurricane zone, consider the fact that you should board up your storefront at least two to three days before the storm is actually predicted to make landfall. In other words, you might be trying to do business for two or three days while your windows are completely covered, blocking out natural light, inhibiting views, and making your store look closed. That’s not good for sales. When you install polycarbonate glazing shields, they don’t change the appearance of your storefront, stop natural light from coming in, or cut off your views of the outdoors. This means you can go about business as usual, and rest easy at night knowing that your glass doors and windows are fully protected against all impacts.
This protective barrier not only saves you from needing expensive glass repairs and replacement, but they protect your merchandise and equipment from burglary, looting, and smash-and-grab theft.
ArmorPlast AP25: An Ideal Solution for Retailers
Invisible Board Up Unlike hurricane shutters, storm panels, and plywood board ups, unbreakable polycarbonate storefront glazing only requires a one-time installation. After that, your storefront glass is protected for life. That means you don’t have to be ready to drop everything and rush
ArmorPlast® is the proprietary line of polycarbonate glazing shields from Riot Glass® that is a patented framing system that blends seamlessly into your existing window and glass door framing for an undetectable appearance. The AP25 panels are far from run-of-the-mill polycarbonate. AP25 panels are a military spec material made to withstand 3,500 pounds per square inch impacts from sledgehammers and passed many laboratory tests including HP White
and Miami-Dade large missile impacts for hurricane-strength protection. For retail storefront security, Riot Glass recommends ArmorPlast AP25, the entry-level product in the line. AP25 provides virtually unbreakable containment-grade impact protection, meaning the only things that can penetrate it are bullets, which won’t even cause it to shatter or appreciably diminish in strength. AP25 is an incredibly cost-effective choice when you want an invisible board up solution that protects your storefront glass against all types of threats, including storm damage, rioting and looting, burglary, and smash-and-grab theft. In fact, it’s so strong that it’s even been given the nickname “transparent steel.” If you want an even higher level of security, the Riot Glass RG Series line also offers ballistic-grade glazing shields. These are rated according to the UL 752 ballistic resistance rating scale all the way up to UL 752 Level 8, meaning they can resist as much as a high-speed, multishot attack from an active shooter using an AK-47 rifle and firing .308 150-grain military rounds. Your storefront’s glass doors and windows don’t have to be its most vulnerable points any longer. Choose Riot Glass for top-of-the-line unbreakable storefront glazing and invisible board up solutions. With Riot Glass, you can rest assured that your business is protected 24/7 against a full range of threats, both man-made and from mother nature. For more information, please visit www.riotglass.com..
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SUPPLY CHAIN Dr. Mike Lloyd
tcly / Shutterstock.com
Dr. Lloyd has more than twenty-five years of experience in the modeling and control of fast-moving, complex systems. He has been granted twenty-one patents on security, network assessment, and dynamic network control. Before joining RedSeal, he was chief technology officer at RouteScience Technologies (acquired by Avaya), where he pioneered self-optimizing networks. Dr. Lloyd holds a degree in mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, and a PhD in stochastic epidemic modeling from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Securing the Supply Chain against Cyber Disruption S
Just like a physical chain, a supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Today’s issues are about networks of interdependence. We extract major economic benefits from modern supply chains, because each organization can focus on its core mission or specialty.
upply chains have existed as long as we’ve had commerce. We have proof of extensive supply networks even three-and-a-half thousand years ago with the discovery of a late Bronze Age Uluburun shipwreck. The rise of the internet started a revolution in these time-honored structures, bringing rapid change through improved communication. This produced major benefits—supply chains often became shallower but wider, with increased specialization and more participants in the global exchange. Many of these changes improved efficiency, agility, and for those skilled at adapting, presented new ways to outpace competitors. This all sounds great, but from a security perspective, it also created serious new headaches. Supply chains have become complex and fragile, and prone to disruption from cyberattacks. Just like a physical chain, a supply chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Today’s issues are about networks of interdependence. We extract major economic benefits from modern supply chains, because each organization can focus on its core mission or specialty. This narrowing November–December 2021
of focus is very effective, allowing each organization to be the best at whatever it does—making widgets, transporting them, or adding value by assembling parts made by other specialists. But this same narrowing of focus on just one aspect of a system means the system as a whole becomes fragile. For example, the person responsible for a large ship can do an amazing job protecting the assembled vessel and the dockyard,
large system built out of components is only as strong as the security of the weakest component supplier.
Security Costs Money Therefore, it’s not enough to allow suppliers to compete for price or customer satisfaction. Security costs money. If we just procure everything from the lowest bidder, we will get the (lack of) security we’re paying for. Security is like quality—you can’t just assume that a supplier
We extract major economic benefits from modern supply chains, because each organization can focus on its core mission or specialty. This narrowing of focus is very effective, allowing each organization to be the best at whatever it does, but this same narrowing of focus means the system as a whole becomes fragile. but the ship is composed of uncountable parts made elsewhere, under the control of other organizations. If an attacker can’t easily compromise the final ship, they can focus up the chain, compromising components that become part of the ship. This analogy plays out for other applications too—any
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delivering a good outcome today will do so tomorrow. The supply chain has had to face the challenge of repeatable quality through standards and audits. Organizations establish baselines of what it takes to make a quality, reliable product, then build their supply chains around those who can meet the
standard. The time has come for comparable efforts around cybersecurity and digital resilience across the supply chain. Unfortunately, while the approach to quality is a good guide to what is needed, the details in cybersecurity are quite a bit different. When an organization specializes in making a thing, or providing a service, they know all about that thing or service, and what constitutes high or low quality. In effect, each player in the supply chain is the expert when it comes to how to achieve quality. Their customers may know more about what specs or quality levels they want to get, but the supplier knows the details of how to meet the bar, where to optimize, and what works. On the other hand, security problems are abstract, complex, and often divorced from the details of the core mission of the organization. Malware, and defense against malware, is not core competence for any typical organization (except the few companies whose sole focus is making countermeasures). Common attacks that trick well-meaning people into doing foolish things online are based on human psychology and are not unique to any one company. This is why it can be challenging for specialized, optimized, efficient companies occupying a niche in a supply chain to also achieve high levels of security—it’s simply not their core competence. So how can this be addressed? The supply chain needs to be resilient against cyberattacks, without all the individual companies becoming world-class experts on the evolving cyber threat landscape. Having every company hire an expert just isn’t practical—there aren’t enough such people, even if all the companies could
afford to pay them. Instead, we need to focus on measurable standards and automation to validate compliance. Publishing more security advice hasn’t worked out well for the last twenty years. There are far too many guidebooks on what it takes to be secure. The core challenge is not that we have a problem figuring out how to make secure
having to embed a cyber expert in each company. This is where computers and machine reasoning can help. We can teach software what the rules are and how to tell a solid security infrastructure from one with as many holes as swiss cheese. With this automated assessment, the whole supply chain can mitigate those holes and step up to a
By now, we’ve learned a lot about how to make supply chains that are resilient to natural disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, and fires. To achieve the same resilience in an increasingly online world requires moving beyond questionnaires and checklists, to using technology to monitor all the technology our supply chains now depend on. systems. The problem is that doing the basics, consistently, and at scale, is extremely hard. This challenge is only amplified when spread across a modern, complex supply chain.
New Security Standards The DHS has established the ICT Supply Chain Task Force for critical infrastructure, and the DoD has published a draft of their Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. Both are attacking the problem head-on, essentially requiring that any participant in these vital supply chains must demonstrate their ability to follow basic security practices. This is a move in the right direction but won’t come cheap. The real challenge for all supply chains is to figure out how each company in the chain can demonstrate they follow fundamental best practices without
higher level of resilience against cyberattacks. By now, we’ve learned a lot about how to make supply chains that are resilient to natural disasters, such as floods, earthquakes, and fires. To achieve the same resilience in an increasingly online world requires moving beyond questionnaires and checklists, to using technology to monitor all the technology our supply chains now depend on.
LPM | 69 | November–December 2021
The real challenge for all supply chains is to figure out how each company in the chain can demonstrate they follow fundamental best practices without having to embed a cyber expert in each company. This is where computers and machine reasoning can help.
Aleksandra Bataeva/ ShutterStock.com
PEOPLE ON THE MOVE To stay up-to-date on the latest career moves as they happen, visit the Professional Development page on the LPM website LossPreventionMedia.com. To inform us of a promotion or new hire, email us at peopleonthemove@LPportal.com.
Professionals Advancing Their Careers Brent Smerczynski, LPC was promoted to corporate AP manager, operations at 7-Eleven.
Logan Gleissner is now business development manager with APG Cash Drawer.
Andy Rushing was promoted to LP market manager at Academy Sports.
Edmundo Velazquez, MA, LPC, CFI was promoted to director, enterprise risk-AP, North America at Aritzia.
Izabela Duarte is now a LP analyst at ADCOS Cosmetic Treatment (Brazil).
Lance Satterthwaite is now director of AP at Associated Food Stores.
Michael Jolley is now manager, business continuity and crisis management at ALDI USA. Daniel Croteau is now director of corporate security and LP services at Alimentation Couche-Tard (Canada). Jennifer Majano was promoted to director of operations at Allied Universal.
Justin Bul is now a corporate LP analyst and investigator at Bargain Hunt. Peggy Forbes is now a market LP manager at Barnes & Noble.
Hedgie Bartol, LPQ, LPC, is the new senior director of retail business development for Auror.
Chrystiano Calheiros was promoted to regional LP coordinator at Carajás Home Center (Brazil). Christopher Hobbs is now a regional LP advisor at Claire’s Accessories (UK). Daniel Calderon is now head of corporate security at Corona Chile (Chile). Brady Wakefield is now an ORC investigator at Carters. Emily Newman is now an AP analyst at Christian Dior.
Jeffrey McNeill is now an area profit protection manager at Bed Bath & Beyond.
Maurice Edwards is now chief risk and compliance officer at Comoto Family of Brands.
Jonathan Nix is now manager of AP investigations and supply chain at Belk.
Shahad Alshryoufi was promoted to senior LP specialist at Alshaya Group (Saudi Arabia). Julia Harnoy was promoted to human resources investigator; Adam Wollman, LPC, CPI was promoted to senior program manager, physical retail investigations; Chris Johnson CPP (UK), Ashley Nicholas, Gregory Nottingham, LPC and Jason Krongaard, LPC are now regional LP managers; and Chris Wilson is now senior investigations manager, Amazon Robotics at Amazon.
Justin Hallstrom, Bobby Agee, LPC, and Darren Zelaya are now district AP managers at Burlington Stores.
Victoria To-Dowd, CFI was promoted to director, corporate security and resiliency at CVS Health.
Sean Kecskes, LPC was promoted to regional AP manager at Belle Tire. Alyssa Verblaauw, LPQ is now a senior AP analyst at Big Lots. Jayson Sutton was promoted to senior VP of AP at Burlington Stores.
John Carro, CFI is now manager of AP central investigations at Bloomingdale’s.
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Jeremy Greenleaf is now regional manager, ORC and corporate investigations; and Rick Trego, Evelyn Miranda, and Daniel Churchill are now district AP leaders at CVS Health. Rodney Grant was promoted to digital online operations manager at David Jones (Australia). Michelle Wallace, LPC is now divisional AP manager for East Coast and Canada at David’s Bridal.
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Frank Cordoves is now a regional AP manager at Dollar General. Adelcione Gonçalves Brasil is now a LP auditor at Drogarias Globo (Brazil). Malachai Smith was promoted to LP supervisor at El Rancho Supermercado. Anastasia Ford Jones is now director of global security services at Facebook.
Amanda Pritters is now head of global security, retail at Facebook.
Xavier Ruiz is now a regional AP manager at Family Dollar. Mike Lugar is now manager of AP data analytics and reporting at Follett. Alaina Kring, CPhT is now senior director, LP field operations and compliance at Gabes. Scott Camerata is now a region LP manager at GameStop. Victor Arellano is now a district LP operations manager at Genuine Parts Company. Daniel Puente is now global e-commerce fraud supervisor, US and UK at Go City. Marvin F. Richburg, MBA was promoted to director, safety and AP at Goodwill North Central Texas. Paulo Santoro is now senior compliance analyst at Grupo Petropolis (Brazil). Lisa Capstick was promoted to country LP specialist and store auditor at H&M (Canada).
Alexander B. Kohler was promoted to senior manager of environmental, health and safety, Northern Division, and Michael Roop was promoted to distribution center regional AP supervisor at Home Depot. Matthew Bailie was promoted to director of AP operations and logistics at Hudson’s Bay Company (Canada). Carlo Greco is now manager of AP awareness and communications at Hudson’s Bay Company (Canada). Steve Carter is now operational loss manager at IDH Group (UK). Inmaculada Lopez Prieto was promoted to security and LP coordinator UK and Ireland at Inditex. Kevin O’Brien is now VP of business development at The Integritus Group. Natalie Devereux was promoted to fraud and forensics lead at JB HI-FI (Australia). Patrick Van Kuijk was promoted to senior territory retail profit protection manager (Netherlands), and Rachael Shaw was promoted to profit protection reporting and insight lead (UK) at JD Sports Fashion. Rodrigo Pipet is now a regional security manager LATAM at Johnson Mathhey (Argentina). Jacob Rothrock was promoted to multi-store LP manager, and Ariel Garnand was promoted to district LP manager at Kohl’s.
Camille Bauer was promoted to regional LP manager at Harbor Freight Tools.
Patrick Walsh is now an ORC investigator, and Michael Volin is now safety and risk manager at Kroger.
Mario Rivera and Eric Mayo were promoted to managing directors of LP, security, emergency preparedness at H-E-B.
Simon Taylor was promoted to head of global AP and retail operations at La Perla (UK).
Brent Kleinfelder is now a regional LP investigator at Lids. Christopher Sanjurjo CLSS, MA was promoted to fraud team leader, and Chad Linton is now AP manager at Louis Vuitton. Javier Martinez was promoted to senior security, LP, EH&S, and maintenance manager for México and LATAM at Grainger (Mexico). Lee Golding is now LP manager, EU and UK at Lovisa. Chris Kelly is now manager of investigations and ORC, Jeff Bucher, LPC was promoted to regional AP director, Amanda McHenry was promoted to online fraud investigator, and Darnell Akers was promoted to district AP manager at Lowe’s. Caiphus Palm is now an AP supervisor at Luxottica. Jessica McGowin, CFI was promoted to market leader, AP at Macy’s. Alezio Guimarães (Brazil), Tania Ruiz Luna (Mexico), and Adanelly Grimaldo (Mexico) are now LP supervisors, and Paola Ruiz is now PI and audit LP manager LATAM (Mexico) at Mercado Libre. Ken Velasquez, CFI, SMIA was promoted to regional LP manager, and Jeff Popovich is now a distribution center regional LP safety manager at Michael’s. Russell Bello is now a district LP manager at NAPA Auto Parts. Chris DiPasquale was promoted to Northeast market LP manager at Neiman Marcus. Ben Bradley was promoted to global executive protection program supervisor at Nike. Dan Berry is now a district AP manager at Nordstrom.
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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE Marc Polito is now LP manager at Nouvell Victoire/Office Depot (France). Greg Jobe, CPP, CFI was promoted to director, enterprise LP and safety, and Lindsey Rockoff, CFI was promoted to enterprise LP and safety manager at Office Depot. Allen Cade is now senior program manager, global security operations, policy and compliance at Peloton Interactive. Jeremy Lynch was promoted to senior director, LP and safety at PetSmart.
Shawn Zehel was promoted to director of LP client relations, and Vince Williams, CFE, CFI was promoted to director of LP operations and investigations, global supply chain and e-commerce at Pitney Bowes. Dan Hayward was promoted to profit protection and safety manager at Poundland and Dealz (UK).
now manager of ORC and special investigations at Rite Aid
Timothy Rout, LPC is now corporate AP analyst at Texas Roadhouse.
Elizabeth Sitas is now an area LP manager at Ross Stores.
TJX made the following changes: Grzegorz Holub was promoted to AVP of LP (Poland); Lewis Wright was promoted to AVP head of European central LP (UK); Vinnie England was promoted to European security operations manager (UK); Christopher Pospisil is now a national task force investigator for ORC investigations; Simon Chadwick (UK), Dave Moore (UK), and Chris Holmes (UK) are now regional LP managers; Shaun Hilton, LPC was promoted to field investigations manager; Zoi Rigsby, Jessica Djonne, Stewart Hodgins (UK), and Michael Winfrey are now district LP managers; Liliana Carioto was promoted to district LP supervisor; and Kevin Jones, LPQ was promoted to LP trainer.
Khristopher Hamlin is now VP of AP at Saks OFF 5th.
Quintin Alvarez was promoted to district AP manager at Saks OFF 5th. Jim Skawinski, JD is now a regional LP manager at SPARC Retail Group. Michael A. Fortune, CFI, CFE is now LP manager at Sportsman’s Warehouse. Katie Hultman, LPQ was promoted to senior fraud detection analyst at Staples. Jordan Garrick is now an area AP manager for BC at Staples Canada. Drew Kaplan was promoted to specialist 1, AP at Stop & Shop. Adrian Aguirre is now a regional LP specialist at Superior Grocers.
Andre Asprelli was promoted to regional AP manager at Price Chopper.
Janessa Heslegrave is now director of LP at Suzy Shier (Canada).
Sharon Costanza Jackson is now regional director of commercial development, integration at Prosegur. Jennifer Welch is now director of LP at Public Storage.
Barbie Andress, CFI and Stephanie Hunt, CFI are now regional LP managers at Republic National Distributing.. Trisa Gildard was promoted to VP of LP at Ross Stores.
Chuck Lindow, LPC, CFI was promoted to interim divisional AP leader; Anthony Quintero and Colin Gubernick are now regional AP leaders; and Evette Tate is
Bill Diakoumis was promoted to AP director; Jessica Smith, MS, CSMIE, CCIP was promoted to lead cyber security analyst; Gemma Charnock was promoted to fraud and profit protection engagement lead (Australia); Heather Gilbert was promoted to senior manager of corporate security; Debra Heap is now fraud, security, and investigations lead (Australia); Normesha Reynolds and Chris Nierman were promoted to AP business partners; and Alexandros Glitsos was promoted to lead cybersecurity analyst at Target. Shawn Abbott is now a regional LP manager at TBC Corporation. Rodrigo Sales de Oliveira is now a LP analyst at Telhanorte Tumelero (Brazil).
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Caio Roberto Perrone Silva is now risk management coordinator at Total Express (Brazil). Pete Guild is now a regional LP manager at Tuffnell’s Parcel Express (UK). Kevin Kenney, CFI is now an area LP manager at Ulta Beauty. Matt Cain, MBA, CFI was promoted to senior manager of investigations at Verizon. Zach Torres is now a regional AP manager at Victoria’s Secret. Eric Agurcia is now a regional LP manager at VF Corporation. Tom Zimmerman is now manager of AP analytics at Victoria’s Secret. Shant Wartanian was promoted to manager of special projects, AP and comprehensive loss; Carlos Gonzalez, LPC was promoted to major crimes AP manager; and Jake Crank was promoted to major crimes at Walgreens. Alec Haines and Nick Johnson, LPC are now regional LP specialists at Weis Markets. Bryan LeFebvre is now senior director, supply chain and AP at Z Gallerie/Sur La Table.
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OUR OWN WORST ENEMY? but privileges should be accompanied by controls, with segregation of duties for example,” said Hansen. As such, employee monitoring and recognizing threat indicators are key elements in safeguarding a company against the insider threat, along with educating nonsecurity managers about threat indicators. Often, activity a security professional would recognize as a threat, nonsecurity personnel don’t, noted one asset protection professional. “You need cyber-awareness training all the way up to the C-level,” added Ireland. Once triggered, an insider’s behavior will often reveal their activities if an organization has positioned itself to notice it. Carr said common indicators may include failing to follow security protocols, questionable downloads or data transfers, changes in computer and phone use, and printing off large amounts of material. Data security tools, improved by AI, are a necessary layer of protection against rogue insiders, said Ireland. “IT activity needs to monitor for anomalous activity. Why is she coming in and downloading documents at 3 a.m.?”
Alexander Softog / Shutterstock.com
temporary privileges extended to an employee while companies fill positions are never revoked, according to Sherri Ireland, CISSP, president of Security Exclusive, a cyber and physical security consulting firm. “It’s happened to me when I would oversee another department Life-Cycle Personnel companies who would like to while they were looking for a new hire,” Management For showcase their solutions in this section, she noted. “It’s really important to audit Knowing that insiders are disgruntled please contact LPM’s Media Strategist, Skidmore, at 972-587-9064 orto viamake sure your employees have access first and strike later,Ben experts focus on the email at BenS@LPportal.com. they require to do their jobs and nothing connection between them. Within the gap, more than that.” Organizations tend to they suggest opportunity. If managers, who do a good job advocating for the concept supervise technical workers and others in of “least privilege,” but they often do an unique positions to do harm, recognize incomplete job of auditing whether they performance and behavioral problems as a follow it, she warned. possible security issue—and communicate Security controls also tend to grow it as such—then retail organizations can lax around long-time employees, which better prevent incidents. runs counter to the actual threat. Several experts advised security “Major employee fraud typically occurs leaders to push their organizations to pay by employees with at least five years greater attention to concerning behavior section provides readers with information on select tenure,” said Ireland. Case in point: the by an employee This following a negative products andinclude services from eye-popping retail asset case protection a decadesolution ago when work-related event, to possibly providers. If your company isaconsidering new technology or Fry’s Electronics employee of twenty greater monitoring of the employee’s programs, please check with these vendors as well as the years was found guilty of embezzling $66 network activity. A company may not other advertisers throughout the magazine. million over four years. Or the arrest a few have the capacity to watch everyone’s years ago of a wireless retailer’s veteran online activity all the time, in which case chief operation officer who, for several it’s valuable to maintain awareness of years, held a secret consulting agreement employee dissatisfaction and troublesome with a financial services firm to provide it behavior to target proactive system with confidential information regarding monitoring. Targeted monitoring of sales, compensation, and product launches online activity by employees of concern AFA at the retailer’s 400PROTECTIVE locations. can prevent insider theft and sabotage by Ireland warned SYSTEMS, INC. immediately detecting technical precursor that insider theft is SINCE 1873 activity, they advise. often committed The reason behind insider activity is with security controls typically complex, according to Hansen. in •mind, citing Systems an There is often more than one motivation, Fire Alarm example of a retail perhaps a toxic mix of financial troubles, • Design, Installation & Service employee who a lack of loyalty, and perceived insufficient • UL Listed & FM Approved Contact LPM's stole just under recognition. He suggested security needs to Central Station Monitoring Media Strategist its investigation be equally layered to match it, by taking Malique Carr • Test & of Inspection threshold $50 a “defense in depth” approach. It starts Ben Skidmore at Services every day for fifteen with looking for indicators of trouble BenS@LPportal.com years before being caught. Malique Carr, during the hiring process—for financial, PhD, a psychologist and vice president personality, and other red flags—but must for TorchStone Global, a global risk extend to controls At AFA, we mitigation and security firm, similarly throughout the deliver superior warned that employee’s lifetime. levels of organizations must review service. posture against both theircustomer theft prevention One often insiders opt for the “low-and-slow overlooked risk is If youthat don’t believeand us, ask approach skim a little off the top” and when employees our customers! those that go for the big score. temporarily take www.afap.com “Employees need privileges to perform on roles during job (866) AFA-NATL their roles effectively and responsibly, vacancies. Too often, Sherri Ireland personnel management to rescreen MARKETPLACE and conduct enhanced monitoring for employees in higher-risk roles or who are starting to display concerning behaviors,” she added.
LP Products and Services Marketplace Market Your Company's Products and Services Here
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November–December 2021
AFA PROTECTIVE SYSTEMS, INC. SINCE 1873
• Burglar Alarm Systems • Design, Installation & Service • UL Listed & FM Approved Central Station Monitoring
At AFA, we deliver superior levels of customer service. If you don’t believe us, ask our customers! www.afap.com (866) AFA-NATL
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2020
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51
A lack of resources could compound
AFA PROTECTIVE SYSTEMS, INC.
• Design & Installation
during difficult times when everyone is struggling,” said Kelly.
AFA PROTECTIVE SYSTEMS, INC.
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If you don’t believe us, ask our customers!
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Breaking News | Events | Industry Updates | Webinars | Podcasts Education | Associations | Jobs People | Surveys ORCAs …And for Work-Life Balance There’s: Shopping Life Hacks | Recipes | Books | TV Movies | Music…and more channels on the way!
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LPM | 75 | November–December 2021
corporate they are in
SPONSORED CONTENT
NEW PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT
Product Spotlight New Solutions from Leading LP Suppliers
This New Product Spotlight section provides readers with information on new products and services from leading retail asset protection solution providers. If your company is looking for new technology or solutions, please check with these vendors as well as the other advertisers throughout the magazine. Visit the magazine website for more information about these new offerings.
Managing Omnichannel Returns with Appriss Engage Can Save Millions
GPS Supply Chain Management Today’s LP programs have expanded across all divisions of the retail world. LP teams need the proper tools to mitigate and investigate ORC, shrinkage, and fraud. 7PSolutions provides various tracking technologies, all operating on our RouteWatch platform, to ensure LP professionals have the visibility they need.
Engage returns optimization is a data-driven solution that enhances the consumer omnichannel returns experience to drive sales while reducing fraud and building loyalty. Rethinking how you manage returns presents a unique opportunity to increase profitability without adding stores or finding new customers.
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Introducing the NEW Gen6 ROD SYSTEM The 4-alarm Gen6 SR can be deactivated and released from where it connects to the product. Use the Gen6 alone on a fixture or on the NEW ROD SYSTEM. Mount on slotted bars, through slotted vertical posts, or under tables to keep everything neat and secure. It’s NEW! It’s REVOLUTIONARY!
CONTROLSPAN RFID Management Software CONTROLSPAN RFID software for real-time, item-level visibility and asset tracking automates the inventory tracking process. Combining cloud, mobile, AI, and IoT technologies, CONTROLSPAN provides retailers with up to 99 percent accurate, real-time visibility of their entire stock—streamlining omnichannel sales and enabling them to sell to the last unit.
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Still Investigating ORC Like It’s the 1980s?
Even Out Here, You’re in Control
Why waste tens-of-thousands of hours on manual investigations work when it can be automated today? The Detective Analytics Automated Investigations Platform and CMS automatically investigates, connects-the-dots, monitors ORC groups as they grow, links investigations across retailers, and has push-button investigation reporting to share with law enforcement in seconds.
Only Detex offers a delayed-egress solution for outdoor applications. For decades, Detex has led the way in innovating weatherized security systems that can handle the harshest conditions out there. Our system sounds an alarm and delays exit for 15 or 30 seconds. Plus, it’s configurable to best suit your application. bit.ly/detex-outdoor-delayed-exit
detectiveanalytics.com
LPM | 77 | November–December 2021
Save Money with Better Key Control
As Your People Return to Work, Reduce the Impact of Managing Their Vaccination Status
Get more than just locks and keys! InstaKey’s KeyControl Program is designed to harden security and save time and money. We do this with user-rekeyable locks (no locksmith needed), keys that cannot be copied, and cloud‑based key tracking software that provides the data and insights needed to manage it all.
Return-to-work by Everbridge helps organizations automate the process of bringing employees back to the store, office, or plant and stay compliant with regional regulations. Our software works with badge systems and security already in place, allowing your security and people teams to assess vaccination status seamlessly and without distractions.
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Track Keys and Reduce Spending SecurityRecords.com® is cloud-based key tracking software offering visibility and control over all aspects of mechanical key system management in a way that paper files, spreadsheets, and PC-based software can’t. Tracking keys to key holders improves operational compliance and allows organizations to reduce spending on materials through visibility into training opportunities.
Sherpa Tag: Tumbler Protection The Sherpa Tag is the only proven tumbler solution that is already deployed nationwide at major retailers. The patented design utilizes 4-alarm technology to stop even the most motivated shoplifters. Industrial Security Solutions’ custom-designed shrink solutions are guaranteed to exceed your expectations. Contact us today! bit.ly/2XV6GHE
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Spur Tag: Damage-Free Boot Protection The Spur Tag’s innovative design wrangles boot shrink without damaging the product. The solution allows the customer to try on the boot free of obstruction. The 4-alarm design utilizes a ratcheting cable and proximity sensor for security that is just as tough as the boots being protected. bit.ly/2XV6GHE
LifeRaft Announces Dossiers for Threat Management LifeRaft is releasing a new threat management feature to its unified security intelligence platform, Navigator. Dossiers will consolidate intelligence discovery, collection, and ongoing management of threat actors, specific events, or business entities. The new user interface focuses on ease of use and allows for simplified threat management and visualization. bit.ly/3brxaUc
Medeco Intelligent Key Cabinet (IKC) Text: The IKC takes key management to the next level by securely storing, distributing, and tracking every key in your facility. Know who has keys, which key they have, and when keys are returned. Alerts are sent for unreturned keys. Authorized personnel can retrieve keys without an administrator through multiple-factor authentication.
48% to 74% Savings on EAS Prosegur offers a broad selection of pre-owned EAS tags and systems from different manufacturers, including hard-to-find legacy equipment. Warranty is included, and we work to ensure your satisfaction by offering full service and support, just as if you bought a new product. bit.ly/3Cwz55Z
medeco.com/ikc
LPM | 79 | November–December 2021
Intelligence-Led Loss Prevention
Virtually Unbreakable Storefront Glazing for Forced Entry and Theft Prevention Riot Glass® offers a full range of retrofit retail security glazing products designed to fit over your existing storefront glass to keep your business secure 24/7. Riot Glass STOPS would-be intruders from gaining access to your property. It also minimizes the damage from forced entry attempts to avoid costly repairs.
Intelligence-led LP needs more intelligence from sensors. Digitizing the store has obvious benefits from enhancing digital shopping experiences to better serving green shoppers and helping identify and manage red shopper risk. The Sensormatic exit solution combines RFID, video, directionality sensors, and EAS to capture enhanced evidence of actual shrink events. bit.ly/3bhnJa6
riotglass.com
®
This New Product Spotlight section runs twice annually in LP Magazine.
Turn Data into Valuable, Actionable Insights Work smarter with ThinkLP Analytics, and get easy answers to hard questions. ThinkLP’s Analytics and EBR platform was created to help LP teams of every size and budget turn data into valuable and actionable insights. Run your team on ThinkLP’s central intelligence platform to automate your data discovery efforts. It’s simply awesome.
To add your product or service, contact Ben Skidmore at BenS@LPportal.com.
thinklp.com/loss-prevention-analytics
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ANNUAL INDEX January–February 2021 ORCAs in Action by Jacque Brittain, LPC, LPM Editorial Director (p. 22) What Now? Old Problems and New Priorities Await LP in 2021 by Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer (p. 32) A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Research by Read Hayes, PhD, LPRC (p. 44) March–April 2021 The Real Problem: Knockoffs Are Cheap but Exact a Heavy Price by Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer (p. 26) The Unexpected Spy: One Woman’s Journey Fighting Terrorism by Merek Bigelow, LPM Executive Editor (p. 40) Robotics: The Use of Autonomous Mobile Robots in Retail by Read Hayes, PhD, LPRC (p. 52) May–June 2021 Good for Business: Identifying and Maximizing the Value of Protection by Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer (p. 12) Workplace Violence Retail Policies by Kenna Carlsen, LPRC (p. 40) Leverage the Strength of Your Loss Prevention Journey by Jennifer Schaefer, MA, LPC (p. 52) July–August 2021 Getting the Word Out: 7-Eleven Upgrades Store Communications to Better Inform Associates by Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer (p. 28) Diversity & Inclusion in Retail by Jacque Brittain, LPC, LPM Editorial Director (p. 40) Alt-Tech Social Networks by Neil Spencer, LifeRaft (p. 52) September–October 2021 Kinks in the Chain: Trouble and Trends in the Flow of Goods by Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer (p. 26) Retail Evolution and City Transformation in the Post-Pandemic Economy by Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer (p. 40) Home Is Where the Retailer Is: The State of US Homelessness, Current Solutions, and Directions for the Future by Mackenzie Kushner, LPRC (p. 52) November–December 2021 All Together Now: Kroger Jumpstarts Collaboration among Its Solutions Providers by Garett Seivold, LPM Senior Writer (p. 26) The Hidden Cause of Employee Theft and How to Cure It by Jeanet Wade, Business Alchemist (p. 38) Winning the Talent Wars by Bruce Tulgan, RainmakerThinking (p. 52) Interviews by Jim Lee, LPC, and Jack Trlica Creating Value to the Enterprise with Keith White, Salesforce.com (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 12) Start with Safety with Meredith Plaxco, PetSmart (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 12) A Look Back at Twenty Years of Interviews (May/Jun 2021 p. 26) Helping Retailers Solve Problems with Brian Dodge, RILA (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 12) Moving the Needle with Technology with Rob LaCommare, Big Lots (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 12) Absorb Chaos and Return Order with Art Lazo, 7-Eleven (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 12) Ask the Expert One Year Later with Hedgie Bartol, LPQ, LPC, Axis Communications (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 50) How to Choose the Right LP Solutions Provider with David Hardeman, CONTROLTEK (May/Jun 2021 p. 67) Security Glass, Is It Worth It? with Brad Campbell, Riot Glass (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 50) Controlling Grocery Shrink with Jason DeVinney, Checkpoint (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 50) Four Key Control Best Practices with Cita Doyle, LPQ, InstaKey (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 51)
Certification Certification Not Just for LP Practitioners with Lou Dilorenzo, LPC, Allied Universal, and Mike Downs, LPQ, AFA (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 41) Seize Any Opportunity to Learn with Josh Crippen, LPC, Whole Foods, and Greg Depuy, LPQ, Meijer (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 36) Home Depot LP Professionals Share Their Insights on Certification with Alex Kohler, LPC, and Stacey Hutchens, LPQ (May/Jun 2021 p. 36) Thoughts on the LPF Courses and the Industry with Daniel Jones, LPC, Fanatics, and Kyrie Bock, LPQ, ALTO USA (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 36) Certification for Those Outside the Industry with Andrew Luther, LPC, Tractor Supply, and Brandon Kinney, LPQ, IOBSE (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 36) Even LP Veterans Can Learn from Certification with Scott Pethuyne, LPC, Zebra Technologies, and Robert Sanchez, CFE, CFI, LPC, Dollar General (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 34) Cybersecurity by Garett Seivold E-commerce Grows and Risk Follows (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 54) In Search of a Better User Experience, Retailers Create Cyber Vulnerabilities (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 60) Ransomware Thrives in Retail with Focus on COVID (May/Jun 2021 p. 58) How Internet of Things Security Is Impacting Retailers (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 60) Global Cyber Warfare and the Possibility of a “New” World War by Tom Meehan, CFI (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 60) Editor’s Letter by Jack Trlica Beyond a New Look (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 6) Seven Retail Imperatives (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 6) The Convenience Economy (May/Jun 2021 p. 6) Summer Reading (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 6) The Pandemic Is Still Affecting Retail (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 6) An Industry That Is Flourishing (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 6) Interviewing by David Thompson, CFI, and Shane Sturman, CFI, CFE Who Tells Lies? (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 20) You Call That a Success? Think Again (Mar/Apr 202 1 p. 22) How Am I Supposed to Rationalize This? (May/Jun 2021 p. 22) The Rules of Engagement (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 22) Liar, Liar! Why Aren’t Their Pants on Fire? (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 22) I Did It, But… (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 22)
LPM Excellence LPM Magpie Awards Roger Greene, Marshalls/TJX, and Caroline Kochman, NASP (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 52) Paul Jaeckle, LPC, Meijer Stores, and Jessi Dudley, LPRC (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 24) David Lund, LPC, DICK’s Sporting Goods, and Kevin Lynch, LPC, Johnson Controls (May/Jun 2021 p. 24) The Hall 2020 Award Winners (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 24) John Liesching, CVS Health, and Nathan Bandaries, Albertsons (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 24) Bob Caruso, Metro One, and Sgt. Richard Rossman, Broward County Sheriff’s Dept. (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 24) Parting Words by Jim Lee, LPC Thinking about This and That (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 66) Groundhog Day (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 74) Hard Times (May/Jun 2021 p. 74) Welcome Back (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 82) Reflecting on the Past 20 Years (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 82) Building on What We Do Best by Jacque Brittain, LPC (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 82) Retail Community by Stefanie Hoover, CFI We’re in it Together (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 26) Battling the Beast of ORC (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 60) Working Together for Safer, More Successful Communities (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 48) Supply Chain Supply Chain Fraud and Prescriptive Analytics by Scott Pethuyne, LPC, Zebra (May/June 2021 p. 34) 21 Million US Jobs Depend on Imports (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 50) Securing the Supply Chain against Cyber Disruption by Dr. Mike Lloyd, RedSeal (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 68) Technology by Tom Meehan, CFI Misinformation, Censorship, and Big Tech (Jan/Feb 2021 p. 30) What You Need to Know about the Cyber-Espionage Attack Linked to Russia (Mar/Apr 2021 p. 48) What Retailers Need to Know about the Global Chip Shortage (May/Jun 2021 p. 48) The Link Between ORC and Human Trafficking (Jul/Aug 2021 p. 48) Fake Vaccination Cards Spread as Delta Variant Ramps Up (Sep/Oct 2021 p. 48) End-to-End Encryption Doesn’t Guarantee Internet Privacy (Nov/Dec 2021 p. 46)
Statement of Ownership Publication title: Loss Prevention. Filing date: 10/1/21. Issue frequency: bi-monthly. No. of issues annually: 6. Mailing address of office of publication: 2120 Crown Centre Dr., Suite 200, Charlotte NC 28227. Mailing address of headquarters: same. Name and address of publisher, editor, and managing editor: Jack Trlica, same address as above. Corporate owner: Loss Prevention Magazine, Inc., 2120 Crown Centre Dr., Suite 200, Charlotte NC 28227. Stockholders: Jim Lee, 10433 Pullengreen Dr., Charlotte, NC 28277; Jack Trlica, 7436 Leharne Dr., Charlotte, NC 28270. Publication title: Loss Prevention aka LP Magazine. Issue date of circulation data below: July-August 2021. Avg. No. Copies No. Copies of Single Each Issue During Issue Published Preceding 12 Months Nearest to Filing Date Total no. of copies 13,935 13.753 Outside county paid/requested subscriptions 11,405 11,763 In-county paid/requested subscriptions 0 0 Other paid/requested distribution outside USPS 1,965 1,990 Requested copies distributed by other mail classes through USPS 0 0 Total paid and/or requested circulation 13,374 13,753 Outside county nonrequested copies 560 0 In-county nonrequested copies 0 0 Nonrequested copies distributed by other mail classes through USPS 0 0 Nonrequested copies distributed outside the mail 0 0 Total nonrequested distribution 560 0 Total distribution 13,934 13,753 Copies not distributed 1 0 Total 13,935 13,753 Percent paid and/or requested circulation 96% 100% Electronic copies requested 13,537 8,921 Total print and electronic requested 25,911 22,674 Total distribution print and electronic 26,471 22,674 Percent paid and/or requested both print and electronic 98% 100% Name and title of publisher: Jack Trlica, Editor and Publisher Date: 10/1/2021
LPM | 81 | November–December 2021
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PARTING WORDS
Jacque Brittain, LPC
Building on What We Do Best I
Cargo theft spiked during the pandemic, with greater focus on “pilferage” thefts targeting specific goods rather than full truckloads, emphasizing faster turnover of stolen goods and lowering risks.
n the past twenty-four months, we have faced events that have redefined the business of retail and the face of loss prevention. Change has brought new challenges but also different perspectives on old problems. Cargo theft spiked during the pandemic, with greater focus on “pilferage” thefts targeting specific goods rather than full truckloads. Counterfeit goods pose threats from lost sales to brand protection as markets are flooded with false and inferior products. And organized retail crime (ORC) is climbing to new heights, with brazen thefts and massive cases. Management of illicit goods has grown more sophisticated, aided by the Internet and online marketplaces that bring stolen products directly to customers. ORC is now a national conversation among retailers, law enforcement, and legislators. Multimillion-dollar cases have become commonplace, peeling back the onion of sophisticated criminal operations that thrive on poorly written laws, overworked retail investigators and law enforcement agents, and public ignorance of the problem. But positive steps are November–December 2021
being taken to address these concerns and move us in the right direction.
Finding Solutions When we look at those who are the best at what we do, we can point to many things that they do well. The qualities of leadership, the attributes and skills that set them apart, the knowledge and experience that support strong decision‑making, and the adaptability that comes with an open mind immediately come to the forefront. But it’s what we do best that will have the greatest impact on our results moving forward—working together. Partnerships, teamwork, communication, networking, collaboration—all real words with real meaning, and words we can all get behind. It doesn’t mean we have to agree on everything—and we won’t. But we need to share ideas, find common ground, and spread that message to others.
One-Two Punch Right now, there’s a basic one-two punch that will help put some of these problems on the ropes. The INFORM Act is important legislation that will require online marketplaces to collect and verify basic seller
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information, and for sellers to provide that information to consumers. Basic transparency and verification requirements will not hurt legitimate businesses but will make it harder for bad actors to deceive consumers. It will also provide retail investigators and law enforcement with an important tool to track and prevent illicit sales. Joining the Buy Safe America Coalition is a step in the right direction. Organized retail crime associations (ORCAs) assist law enforcement, retail investigators, and prosecutors with the identification, investigation, and prosecution of those involved in ORC. By working together and sharing information, these associations have opened doors to improve legislation, enhance investigations, and build cooperative partnerships. These organizations need our support. Even if joining simply means expanding your network, we all need to make sure the ORCAs are successful. If experience has taught us anything, it’s that we are at our best when we work together. Pick up the phone. Make a call. Join a group. Stay informed. Network. Build on what we do best and be a part of the solution.
ODS is now part of Protos Security!
Protos’ mission is to provide differentiated, best total-value solutions that deliver a worldclass service to our customers. By joining with Off Duty Services, Protos can provide: • Security guarding and off duty police through the largest national managed services provider network. • An expansion of capabilities with a proven network of off duty police services. • High-quality service backed by technology driving program flexibility.
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Inventory data + Shrink events = Shrink Visibility An enterprise-wide loss protection system that delivers visibility into the four levels of shrink did not exist — until now. Shrink visibility takes loss prevention efforts to the next level by providing retailers with easy access to real-time insights and by differentiating between actual shrink and other forms of inventory distortion. For more information, please visit sensormatic.com.