July - August 2016

JULY–AUGUST 2016 | V15.4 LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

LOSS PREVENTION MAGAZINE THE AUTHORITY ON ALL THINGS ASSET PROTECTION

DATA ANALYTICS

PYRAMID UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS HAPPENING IN YOUR STORES

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TABLE OF CONTENTS 6 EDITOR’S LETTER

Ongoing Contributions from LP Professionals

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By Jack Trlica

8 ON THE WEB 10 RETAIL SPONSORS 12 INTERVIEWING

Data Analytics Pyramid

To Record or Not Record: Part 2

Understanding what is happening in your stores

By David E. Zulawski, CFI, CFE and Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP

24 CERTIFICATION

By Johnny Custer, LPC, CFI, Sears Holdings

The Benefits of Certification for College Graduates

Interview with Marcy Smith, LPQ, Weis Markets

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26 ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT

2016 National Retail Security Survey Key Findings

From Corporate Security to Restaurant Loss Prevention and Safety

By Richard C. Hollinger, PhD

35 FUTURE OF LP

Bridging the Gap between Cyber Crime and ORC

By Tom Meehan, CFI

36 STRATEGIES

Transitioning Analytics When Stores Become Showrooms

The career of Rob Holm of McDonald’s

By Shannon K. Stilwell, CPP, CFE, Sysrepublic

By James Lee, LPC, Executive Editor

46 EVIDENCE-BASED LP Go Big or Go Home

By Read Hayes, PhD, CPP

48 PARTNERING WITH RETAILERS

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Law Enforcement, Retailers Meet at Fusion Center

Amplifying Risk in Retail Stores

By Dave DiSilva

54 MY TURN

Developing Your Own Loss Prevention Professional Brand

By Kevin J. Thomas, CFE, CFI, CBCP, PGA TOUR Superstores

The evidence to date on making thieves think twice

58 PERSPECTIVES

By Adrian Beck, University of Leicester

How Do Successful LP Leaders Lower Shrink? By Leading

By Brent Onan, USS

60 DIGITAL DIALOGUE

“All Thumbs” Has Taken on New Meaning

By Jacque Brittain, LPC

61 PRODUCT SHOWCASE 62 CALENDAR 63 PEOPLE ON THE MOVE 64 ADVERTISER DIRECTORY 65 VENDOR SPONSORS 66 PARTING WORDS

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Supply-Chain Shortage Control

Three steps to ensure sufficiency in your supply-chain facility

Thinking About Things I’ve Been Thinking About

By Erik Nelsen, JCPenney

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By Jim Lee, LPC

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EDITOR’S LETTER

Ongoing Contributions from LP Professionals

O

ne of the “secrets” of the success of this magazine from the beginning has been the contributions of so many loss prevention professionals. Fifteen years later, it is still the case.

Here are just a few of the insights offered by your peers in this issue alone.

Data Analytics Pyramid

“Data is the future of our industry. A single data-friendly LP professional can both identify and address leading indicators of loss for a significant grouping of stores, with no need for airfare, travel, or company car. Identification and correction of these leading indicators driven by this single analyst could rival the internal and external apprehension total for a comparably sized span of control with a full staff of loss prevention associates.” Johnny Custer, LPC, CFI, Sears Holdings, page 15

The Benefits of Certification for College Graduates

“When taking this job right out of college, I didn’t have any LP experience and very little knowledge of the field. I had the college degree to get me in the door, but no experience. Right away I had to soak up as much as information as quickly as I could. Once I began studying for the LPQ, things began to click, and I would have those ‘ah-ha’ moments on a regular basis.” Marcy Smith, LPQ, Weis Markets, page 24

From Corporate Security to Restaurant LP and Safety

“It’s not the size of my organization I focus on; it’s really about the value my organization brings to the company and to our stakeholders.

McDonald’s is not in the security business; we’re in the hamburger business. Therefore, we need to be good students of the business and be seen as true business professionals first, subject-matter experts second.” Rod Holm, McDonald’s, page 27

Bridging the Gap between Cyber Crime and ORC

“ORC can be difficult to define because it falls under many different definitions depending

LOSS PREVENTION MAGAZINE

on where you are reading it. For the purpose of this discussion, ORC is defined as groups of people engaged in illegally obtaining merchandise in substantial quantities through both theft and fraud for the purpose of resale. Cyber crime is defined as crime conducted via the Internet or some other computer network. The two have both similarities and differences.” Tom Meehan, CFI, Bloomingdale’s, page 35

Supply-Chain Shortage Control

“The responsibility of a supply-chain loss prevention professional, broadly speaking, is to execute priorities that preserve assets, at least those within the loss prevention purview. Fulfilling this directive, and thus promoting effective and efficient supply chains, often requires the loss prevention professional to analyze different business units or types to ensure the sufficiency of shortage control measures.” Erik Nelsen, JCPenney, page 49

Developing Your Own Professional Brand

“Collaboration and salesmanship in my eyes have moved to the forefront of competencies required specifically for any LP professional expecting to maintain a successful career in the industry. As a result, industry practitioners now must be able to sell programs, solutions, and strategies that benefit the entire business, including sales and growth, profitability, customer experience, payroll, and brand protection.”

Kevin J. Thomas CFE, CFI, CBCP, PGA TOUR Superstores, page 54

Jack Trlica Managing Editor

Loss Prevention, LP Magazine, and LP Magazine EU 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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700 Matthews Mint Hill Rd, Ste C Matthews, NC 28105 704-365-5226 office, 704-365-1026 fax MANAGING EDITOR Jack Trlica JackT@LPportal.com EXECUTIVE EDITOR James Lee, LPC JimL@LPportal.com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, DIGITAL Jacque Brittain, LPC JacB@LPportal.com MANAGING EDITOR, DIGITAL Kelsey Seidler KelseyS@LPportal.com CONTRIBUTORS Dave DiSilva Read Hayes, PhD, CPP Richard C. Hollinger, PhD Walter Palmer, CFI, CPP, CFE Tom Meehan, CFI Gene Smith, LPC Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP Bill Turner, LPC David E. Zulawski, CFI, CFE CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Kevin McMenimen, LPC KevinM@LPportal.com DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Merek Bigelow MerekB@LPportal.com DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL OPERATIONS John Selevitch JohnS@LPportal.com SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGERS Kat Houston, LPQ Justin Kemp, LPQ Karen Rondeau DESIGN & PRODUCTION SPARK Publications info@SPARKpublications.com CREATIVE DIRECTOR Larry Preslar ADVERTISING MANAGER Ben Skidmore 972-587-9064 office, 972-692-8138 fax BenS@LPportal.com EAST COAST AD REP Kristie Thymes 972-782-9841 office, 972-692-8138 fax KristieT@LPportal.com SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

NEW OR CHANGE OF ADDRESS myLPmag.com POSTMASTER Send change of address forms to Loss Prevention Magazine P.O. Box 92558 Long Beach, CA 90809-2558 Loss Prevention aka LP Magazine aka LPM (USPS 000-710) is published bimonthly by Loss Prevention Magazine, Inc., 700 Matthews Mint Hill Rd, Ste C, Matthews, NC 28105. Print subscriptions are available free to qualified loss prevention and associated professionals in the U.S. and Canada at www.myLPmag.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 Matthews, NC, and additional mailing offices.

© 2016 Loss Prevention Magazine, Inc.

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ON THE WEB

EDITORIAL BOARD

Dealing with First Offenders: A Success Story in Arlington, Texas

Watch the archived webinar about the restorative justice partnership between the Arlington Police Department, Walmart, and CEC. Visit the Events tab on the magazine website and select Previous Events.

Leo Anguiano, LPC Senior Director, Asset Protection, Dollar Express

David Lund, LPC Vice President of Loss Prevention, DICK’S Sporting Goods

Jim Carr, CFI Senior Director, Global Loss Prevention, Rent-A-Center

Bob MacLea Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, TJX

Ray Cloud Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, Ross Stores

John Matas Vice President, Asset Protection, Investigations & ORC, Macy’s

Francis D’Addario, CPP, CFE Emeritus Faculty Member, Strategic Influence and Innovation, Security Executive Council

Chris McDonald Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, Compass Group NA

Charles Delgado, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection, Meijer Scott Draher, LPC Vice President, Loss Prevention, Safety, and Operations, Lowe’s

New LPM Website

Our new digital platform has hundreds of current and archived articles aligned by key categories: ■ Data protection ■ Employee theft ■ Inventory shrinkage ■ Loss prevention ■ LP technology ■ Professional development ■ Retail fraud ■ Retail industry ■ Retail security ■ Shoplifting and organized retail crime ■ Supply-chain security

Scott Glenn Chief Security Officer, Sears Holdings Tim Gorman Divisional Vice President, Loss Prevention, Asset Protection, and Business Continuity, Walgreens Barry Grant Chief Operating Officer, Canadian Images

Retail Fraud Special Report

Bill Heine Senior Director, Global Security, Brinker International

In addition to ongoing original articles on a variety of topics, our new website offers free special reports on focused topics that will provide both an overview as well as detailed information to help LP professionals understand the key issues impacting the industry.

Frank Johns, LPC Chairman, The Loss Prevention Foundation Mike Lamb, LPC Vice President, Asset Protection & Safety, Walmart Stores US

Subscribe Now Go to LossPreventionMedia.com to sign up one time to access all the current, past, and upcoming information from the number one publication and resource for the loss prevention and asset protection industry.

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Karl Langhorst, CPP, CFI Corporate Director, Loss Prevention, The Kroger Co.

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Randy Meadows Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention, Kohl’s Melissa Mitchell, CFI Director of Asset Protection and Retail Supply Chain, LifeWay Christian Stores Dan Provost, LPC Vice President, Global Loss Prevention, Staples Tina Sellers, LPC Director of Loss Prevention, Delhaize America Mark Stinde Vice President, Asset Protection, 7-Eleven Paul Stone, LPC Vice President, Loss Prevention and Risk Management, Best Buy Robert Vranek Vice President, Loss Prevention Belk Keith White, LPC Senior Vice President, Loss Prevention and Corporate Administration, Gap Inc.

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11

INTERVIEWING

To Record or Not Record: Part 2

by David E. Zulawski, CFI, CFE and Shane G. Sturman, CFI, CPP

© 2016 Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, Inc.

I

n this column we will attempt to set the stage for how one might deal with organizational resistance to recording employee interviews. We asked for feedback from a number of loss prevention executives who have had experience with selling the idea of recording investigative interviews of employees suspected of dishonesty to their companies. We wanted to hear what their experiences had been in dealing with their investigators, legal, human resources, and operations partners.

Feedback from LP Executives

One concern voiced was that a recording would be used to “clobber” the interviewer. What if the defense or plaintiff obtained a copy? Some were worried about showing the suspected employee dignity and respect. Some in the legal department “raised their eyebrows,” seemingly searching for a way to say no.

However, others in the legal department simply liked the idea. One senior executive of loss prevention decided that the best way to begin the sales pitch was to derail objections by seeking an independent legal opinion, which handled the issue

One concern voiced was that a recording would be used to “clobber” the interviewer.

What if the defense or plaintiff obtained a copy?

Some were worried about showing the suspected employee dignity and respect. Some in the legal department “raised their eyebrows,” seemingly searching for a way to say no. However, others in the legal department simply liked the idea.

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Zulawski and Sturman are executives in the investigative and training firm of Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates (w-z.com). Zulawski is a senior partner, and Sturman is president. Sturman is also a member of ASIS International’s Retail Loss Prevention Council.

They can be reached at 800-222-7789 or via email at dzulawski@w-z.com and ssturman@w-z.com.

in a well-written legal brief. This almost immediately swayed the legal department since the research had already been done and was presented in a familiar format. The recording would be the best evidence of what went on during the conversation since it included the context of the conversation, word choices, and tone of the participants. The listener could essentially be a fly on the wall listening to the investigative interview from its onset to conclusion, even being privy to the context in which an admission was made.

At the heart of the discussion, all the parties recognized the problems associated with employee interviews and the legal ramifications that can sprout from them. Without a recording, decisions were based on the investigator, his report, and potentially a company witness versus the employee who alleged mistreatment or misconduct on the part of the investigator. This became even more difficult in situations where the interviewer, for one reason or another, did not have a witness present during the conversation.

One senior loss prevention executive said that it was not unusual for his organization to receive an employee complaint about an interview every other month. These types of complaints required a follow-up investigation, which took time from the investigator associated with the incident, his supervisor, a senior loss prevention executive, legal, and human resources. This became a massive effort by all involved to resolve complaints. In some instances, the situation was complicated even further by the former employee retaining legal representation. After beginning to use recordings of the interviews, opposing counsel were given access to the recorded interviews and were never heard from again.

In another instance, a former employee alleged he was “abused by the interviewer” and “endured thirty-six minutes of hell.”

After legal and human resources representatives listened to the conversation, the lawyer from the legal department said, “That’s it? Thirty-six minutes of hell?” The complaint was easily dealt with after listening to the recording. This incident caused senior management to see things a little differently and question the impact on the investigator who was wrongly accused by a former employee. Was the organization treating that investigator with the dignity and respect that he was owed in the situation?

Another objection in opposition to recording was that it focused on the suspected employee and proving his guilt, thus the organization was not being sensitive to him. This statement was handled just as a salesman would handle a sales objection—agreeing with the statement but turning it around continued on page 14

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offering that both the recorded employee and the investigator were being protected since neither could be abused by the other.

There was some pushback by loss prevention investigators who had never been recorded before. Some of these individuals had their own way of doing interviews that didn’t necessarily correspond to the approach preferred by the loss prevention department. In general, newer investigators had less difficulty with recordings since they were not set in their way of interviewing and could easily adopt new strategies.

Implementing a New Process

Each of the loss prevention executives followed a similar pathway to institute the recording process. First, they approached legal and human resources to partner with them as they began to institute the program. Helping both legal and human resources understand the interview process and the effectiveness of recording proved helpful in the long-term acceptance of the program. Some of the executives had human resources attend the interview training, so they would have a crucial understanding of the interview process and how it was to be applied to the investigative interview. Interestingly, human resources representatives began to embrace the training since they themselves are often dealing with investigative interviews.

Some of the executives had human resources attend the interview training, so they would have a crucial understanding of the interview process and how it was to be applied to the investigative interview.

Second, the executives selected a training program on interviewing that embraced the effective non-confrontational approach, which assured the dignity and respect of the suspected employee. From this training they were able to establish standards and interview practices that could be uniformly applied to all investigators conducting employee interviews.

Third, the executives trained in the selected interview strategies, branding them as the benchmark against which interviewers would be measured. This portion of the strategy introduced subsequent audits of the recorded interviews to assure that the interview training was actually being implemented by all investigators. The problem with any training program is the monitoring and measuring component that assures the training is being used and understood. Without an audit component, the interviewer would not receive feedback on his or her efforts, and management could not measure whether the training was being reliably used.

Fourth, the executives instituted an audit program where each interviewer was periodically reviewed for adherence to the

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selected training program. Those investigators who were not achieving the standards set for interviews were either retrained, counseled, scheduled for further reviews, or in egregious circumstances discharged.

Fifth, the interviews were examined to determine if there were generalized difficulties with the concepts presented during the actual training. This review allowed the organization to focus specifically on problem areas generalized across the company’s investigators. In future training, the program could be modified to retrain or enhance investigators’ understanding in these areas of weakness.

Sixth, specific company personnel were trained to audit the interviews and provide feedback to the investigators relating to the standardized approaches. Using specifically trained auditors allowed the organization to provide a standardized feedback to all the investigators. To a large extent this prevented any of the auditors from moving away from the standardized training materials to their own personal interview preferences. One executive pointed to a reduction of litigation resulting from the investigative interview to almost zero after the program was instituted.

Positives Outweigh the Negatives

Other reported benefits were varied. One executive said fewer employees were being returned to their assignments after making admissions to policy violations. Human resources was able to listen to the interviews and make judgments on whether or not associates would be terminated for policy violations based on the individuals’ own words. Human resources was not biased by what the investigator said were admissions, but rather were able to make determinations on the recorded interviews alone.

Another benefit was related to dealing with risk management.

A review of an interview could quickly counter allegations of misconduct or, if necessary, begin negotiations before the problem escalated to a costly legal battle. In essence, the recordings decreased costs and made risk assessment a much easier and more reliable endeavor.

In telephone interviews, the recordings made managing the investigative case file much easier since obtaining written statements and identification of other documents is difficult during a phone conversation. The recordings provided documentation for the case files of any subject admissions or total confessions to incidences under investigation. The recording could then be saved in the organization’s case management system or, in some cases, on a standalone server.

The executives we spoke with said the positives far outweighed the negatives in their opinions. They felt that the recordings made the investigator a better interviewer who was more thorough when doing an interview. In addition, they could say their interviewers were treating employees with the dignity and respect the organization wanted while at the same time protecting the investigators from false allegations of disgruntled employees.

The costs associated with recording employee interviews have also dropped significantly. It is not a large capital expense to begin to record investigative interviews since laptops and smart phones are readily available to investigators. There are some costs associated with training, monitoring and measuring the interview process, and storing the interviews, but the costs of doing nothing far outweigh the hope that everything is just fine.

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FEATURE

DATA ANALYTICS

PYRAMID UNDERSTANDING WHAT IS HAPPENING IN YOUR STORES

By Johnny Custer, LPC, CFI

DATA ANALYTICS PYRAMID

A

s loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, we are often asked to describe our jobs to others. In the old days, we could get away with simply stating, “I catch people who are stealing from my company.” And while this was—at one time—an accurate representation of our duties (and probably fascinated your audience), it in no way accurately describes the full gamut of our responsibilities now.

The loss prevention and asset protection teams of 2016 are much more than simply “bad-guy catchers.” We are analysts, interviewers, auditors, operators, coaches, inventory specialists, and even merchandisers. These areas of expertise may or may not be what we originally signed up for, but we have evolved to this point nonetheless. Despite this continual evolution, there is one thing that remains constant with us—our ability to recognize when things aren’t as they should be. This

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ability is the foundation of our existence.

It is present when we are introduced to a cashier who spends the whole conversation saying how much he or she wants to work in LP. It is present when we notice a customer in the razor blade aisle wearing a long winter coat in July.

It is present when we audit a store and identify opportunities in cash handling practices. But is it present while we are looking at our data?

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Identification and correction of these leading indicators driven by this single analyst could rival the internal and external apprehension total for a comparably sized span of control with a full staff of loss prevention associates.

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Below is a matrix that, when understood in its entirety, can provide you with the foundation for being successful in data analytics. This is the P³ Pyramid—simply pronounced “P three.”

It is broken down into three pillars of understanding, each of equal importance.

Platform

The platform piece refers to the technical or systemic limitations available in any system or operation. It is imperative that all AP professionals become experts in the full abilities and limitations for every system or operation in the store. As an example, let’s discuss the point-of-sale (POS) system.

Most of us have been through some level of cashier training. This taught us the protocols that our companies have adopted as best practices at the register.

However, did this training expose us to the full capabilities of the register? Did

DATA ANALYTICS PYRAMID

The loss prevention and asset protection teams of 2016 are much more than simply “bad-guy catchers.” We are analysts, interviewers, auditors, operators, coaches, inventory specialists, and even merchandisers.

These areas of expertise may or may not be what we originally signed up for, but we have evolved to this point nonetheless. Despite this continual evolution, there is one thing that remains constant with us—our ability to recognize when things aren’t as they should be.

it provide a complete understanding of how an untrained or dishonest cashier might push a few buttons that may have significant impact on shrink or margin?

More than likely, it did not.

So how do you go about building this understanding of platform limitations?

One good method is through a comprehensive audit process. This audit is conducted by recreating the full range of transactions (where the system allows), documenting any roadblocks put up by the system, and seeing how this translates to the data contained in your end-of-day

reporting and electronic journal and exception-based reporting analysis. You want to know exactly what happened in each transaction and then gain an understanding of exactly how (or if) each action from the transaction is represented within your data and reporting.

Conducting the audit is relatively easy if you commit to the process, and the information you derive will be invaluable for you and your entire team.

First, you will want to determine the size and scope of the project. It is important to determine each type and version of LP MAGAZINE | JULY–AUGUST 2016

POS system that your company uses, along with the department-specific functionalities, such as service desk, restaurant, electronics, and pharmacy, and how much visibility your organization or team has to the related data on the backend. This last piece is especially important as the exercise is essentially pointless if the activities are invisible to you.

Next, you will want to develop a comprehensive list of all transactions that need to be tested and understood. This list would include legitimate transactions,

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Understanding of the P³ pyramid will probably not give you all of the answers to your company’s shrink and profit loss.

If approached and researched properly, however, it will certainly give you and your team an exceptional number of tools and leading indicators to recognize the potential for liability and the ability for you to act in a proactive and holistic manner.

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high-risk transactions, and any activities that may drive a high amount lock out (HALO) or low amount lock out (LALO) action. HALO and LALO actions are driven by amounts that, once reached during an item or transaction-level occurrence, will “lock out” the cashier from performing the function without some type of manager intervention.

The list below shows some examples of transactions you could run to understand platform limitations. Being mindful of space availability in this article, these examples are strictly related to refunds and not the entire scope of the project: ■ R efund with a receipt ■ R efund without a receipt ■ R eturn on cash, check, credit card, gift cards, or merchandise credit due bill (When looking at refund to credit card, consider both manual entry and swiped.)

■ R efund on employee purchase ■ R efund of bottle return ■ R efund of a sale item, BOGO, coupon, or markdown ■ R efund of money order ■ R efund of warranty or long-term service agreement ■ R efund card or merchandise credit (Can it be re-charged? HALO or LALO?) ■ C hange refunded item to “damaged” in controller ■ A ttempt to ring up a negative sale ■ A ttempt all of the above in training mode (Is there a flag or differentiator?)

■ C omplete a non-scanned refund with item not on file ■ T ry to circumvent the online refund procedures ■ R efund on same day, same store ■ R efund on same day, different store ■ R efund on fraudulent item not purchased (directly off shelf) ■ R efund on different day, different store As you can see, the list is fairly robust but nowhere near complete. The list should include all types of transactions, including basic sales, line item voids, post voids, coupons, discounts, damages, suspended transactions, and so forth. There should be special considerations given to satellite registers or POS systems in the specialty departments mentioned earlier.

Learning the limitations of each data-generating system within the

DATA ANALYTICS PYRAMID store is necessary to learn where your company may be missing stopgaps or countermeasures. As an example, what is the dollar threshold at which a cashier can process a price override without the need for management approval? Most of you probably thought of a dollar amount as you read this. But are you sure? Just because the standard operating procedure or cashier training manual both say the amount is $10, for example, this doesn’t mean that the system isn’t set at a different level. And it’s our responsibility to understand what that level is.

In a perfect world, we would compile results data and create a value proposition. This could be leveraged to encourage our partners in IT, systems, or operations to correct the issue and to ensure that our platforms limitations always match our protocols. In the real world, however, this is not always possible. But as long as we are aware of the inconsistency between platform and protocol, we can build reporting to monitor for deviant behavior.

Protocol

Protocol refers to the policies or standard operating procedures (SOPs) that our companies have adopted to guide all operational functions. These are your SOPs, cashier training classes and materials, or the most recent memo sent out to address a particular issue. Learning about your company’s protocols can be more difficult than you may think because of the different ways they are developed and communicated or not communicated for that matter.

Researching will involve a number of steps and some diligent follow-up to ensure understanding of the creation and development of both long-standing and new protocols, as well as the paper and communication trail that was created at launch. For example, once the busy holiday return season comes to an end, your company could decide that starting February 1st no refunds will be allowed at any register outside of the customer service desk. This is probably a sound decision, but how was it communicated? Is there

any possibility that the message could have been missed, misinterpreted, lost, or not sent at all? As an analyst or an investigator trying to determine intent, it is imperative for there to be very little doubt that a cashier fully understands that he or she is breaking policy when processing a refund for her friend at the sporting goods register.

Now imagine the possibility that platform limitations are completely inconsistent with the protocols that have been established. Going back to the price override from the earlier example, what if your protocol states that cashiers are allowed to process price overrides up to 10 percent or $10 (whichever is lower) off the original price? However, the platform is not regulated to match this protocol and will allow cashiers to price override any item down to $0.01.

Consider the theft and margin implications here. A dishonest cashier may take advantage of this inconsistency by fraudulently under-ringing, but at least fraud would more than likely show a logical theft pattern after a certain amount

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DATA ANALYTICS PYRAMID

of time. Perhaps more concerning though is the cashier that hasn’t been trained properly or coached on the 10 percent or $10 limit.

They may not have any detectable pattern or rhythm and could unintentionally cause massive damage to your profits.

Process

Data is the future of our industry. A single data-friendly LP professional can both identify and address leading indicators of loss for a significant grouping of stores, with no need for airfare, travel, or company car. Identification and correction of these leading indicators driven by this single analyst could rival the internal and external apprehension total for a comparably sized span of control with a full staff of loss prevention associates.

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Process, quite simply, refers to what is actually happening. Sometimes we can discover process by talking with employees, watching video, or conducting audits.

However, these methods are not always 100 percent conclusive.

Only by observing process in data can we get a true picture of what is happening. Video, auditing, and interviewing can supply us with the why, but data will supply a specific and accurate accounting of the what. Let’s revisit that override scenario one last time. Imagine that you find data indicating John Doe at store number 123 has been ringing multiple price overrides over the last ninety days for well over the 10 percent or $10 threshold. He has done so without manager approval. What do we do now? Is it theft? Is it poor training? Is this topic even addressed within the protocols? Can we verify that Doe was exposed and trained on the protocols? No matter what, we are incurring a loss of profit. It must be addressed through completion of a fraud investigation, disciplinary action, or retraining.

If protocol is what we are supposed to do and platform is what we are able to do, then process is our report card on how well those pieces are being executed.

The goal of course is to have complete symbiosis between the three P³ points. As long as this symbiosis exists, the potential for

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DATA ANALYTICS PYRAMID

shrink and margin erosion should be null.

We don’t live in a vacuum though, and many, many things can disturb the flow of your pyramid.

Identifying the inconsistencies, while a potentially lofty process, is really only the first step. Now decisions have to be made on what (if anything) can or should be done to reconcile the issues.

The reconciliation efforts will vary depending on the source of the issue, the financial impact on the business, and the potential cost associated with the fixing process. You will no doubt find that others in your organization will not always place the same premium that you might on all of the issues you uncover. Many times the answer to the “why don’t we change, fix, or improve this rule or technical function” question is the obligatory “this is the way we’ve always done it, so we just make do.” Aren’t there a million different motivational posters out there that refer to this response as the most dangerous phrase in business?

The key is in gathering data-driven facts that will clearly demonstrate the financial impacts of the issues in question. As another example, your operating partners might be less likely to question your push to refuse credit card payment for gift card purchases over $100 when you show them the store, market, or company history of fraud-related chargebacks associated with such transactions. You can influence them

through education on the financial impact of how these transactions are impacting their bottom line, versus their perceived (or actual) rewards of allowing them to continue.

This is a type of conversation that most LP and AP professionals are probably used to having. After all, we are experts at showing financial value of increasing or decreasing EAS tags, locking up certain items, or moving a display under a camera.

Things might start to get tricky, however, when we attempt to influence our partners in IT, logistics, or purchasing about a change that needs to occur. After all, they may not be as personally vested in the store-level financial impact of the changes you are proposing.

Regardless of what company program or system you are looking into, as you begin your quest to understand the P³ associated with it, you will be required to interface with some of these personnel.

This is especially true when you begin identifying flaws or inconsistencies within the platform structure. A protocol can be

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DATA ANALYTICS PYRAMID changed after some careful consideration from the appropriate parties, but a platform change costs time and money.

Making changes or updates of a POS or inventory management system often requires a large amount of time to create, test, and deploy, not to mention the cost of any updated soft or hardware that may be required. You will be challenged on the return on any investment here, so it is best to enter these conversations prepared with a comprehensive view of the pyramid, as well as a detailed list of each and every way the business will be improved by making the change. Sometimes these changes will be immediately tangible as they manifest in improvements to sales, shrink, or margin. They may also be intangible as they create a smoother, more streamlined experience for your employees, investigators, or more importantly your customers.

Moving Forward

The reality is that there will be some scenarios that you just won’t be able to get fixed. Either the fix won’t make

financial sense to you, or it won’t make sense to someone else, and it simply won’t get done. This is not the end of the world. The important point is for our teams to be aware of the opportunities.

We must be able to identify these gaps.

We need to work with our vendor partners to develop software that can create queries and reports to monitor them. We must ensure that we are succinct in our communication of our findings and that we can help to influence the best way for our companies to move forward.

Many issues will be solved simply through training or retraining of an individual or a store. Some will be solved through terminations or prosecutions.

However, we may also discover that there are omissions or inconsistencies in the P³ that have global implications. This is where communication is so important.

Larger identified issues within the P³ may need to be addressed through a sweeping operational or systemic change if they are deemed to be cost effective.

Understanding of the P³ pyramid will probably not give you all of the answers to your company’s shrink and profit loss.

If approached and researched properly, however, it will certainly give you and your team an exceptional number of tools and leading indicators to recognize the potential for liability and the ability for you to act in a proactive and holistic manner.

JOHNNY CUSTER, LPC, CFI, is director of analytics for asset and profit protection at Sears Holdings. He is a career loss prevention leader with more than twenty years of experience at field, analytical, and corporate levels. Custer is recognized as a specialist with a “holistic” approach to loss prevention and profit management. For over a decade, he has placed a high premium on proactive data-driven LP philosophy, developing and working with algorithms that touch all areas of the retail business enterprise. Prior to joining Sears, Custer served as a consultant to several C-suite executive teams and worked for several retailers including CVS/Caremark, Kmart/Super-K, and Value City Department Stores. He can be reached at 847-286-5435 or at johnny.custer@searshc.com.

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CERTIFICATION

The Benefits of Certification for College Graduates T

Interview with Marcy Smith, LPQ Marcy Smith, LPQ, is the asset protection operations specialist for Weis Markets. She took this role in 2014 after graduating from the University of Louisville (Kentucky) with a bachelor’s degree in justice administration. Smith oversees the daily functions at Weis’ store support center in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, managing physical security programs relating to alarms, CCTV, and access control. She also coordinates the AP internship program as well as the training awareness program for all store associates.

and financial acumen. It has also placed me on a level playing field with others in our industry who have taken the course.

his is another in a series of interviews with working LP professionals who have earned their LPQ or LPC certifications from the Loss Prevention Foundation (LPF) to hear in their own words why they pursued certification and how it benefited their careers. This interview speaks to the importance of certification for pending or recent university graduates.

Why did you decide to pursue certification? Was there something specific that influenced your decision?

I completed the LPQ certification to learn more about the industry. My position at Weis Markets focuses more on the corporate side of retail, rather than store experiences, and I wanted to develop my knowledge in all areas. My boss, Mike Limauro, vice president of asset protection, introduced me to the Loss Prevention Foundation and explained the importance of the LPQ and LPC certifications and how vital continuing education is for our careers.

Once I learned about how the LPQ would benefit me early on in my professional career, I was extremely motived to get busy.

When taking this job right out of college, I didn’t have any LP experience and had very little knowledge of the field. I had the college degree to get me in the door, but no experience. Right away I had to soak up as much as information as quickly as I could. Once I began studying for the LPQ, things just began to click, and I would have those “ah-ha” moments on a regular basis. Terms like “restitution and civil demand” or “gross margin and net profit,” all terms used daily, became clearer.

The LPQ helped boost my confidence and reminded me of how continuing to learn always creates room for personal and professional growth. Taking the LPQ exam became less about getting a certification to set me apart from others and more about my personal growth.

What was the most eye-opening information that was part of the curriculum?

The entire process has been eye-opening for me. In college our course work focused mainly on criminal justice and rarely on loss prevention. It’s unfortunate that young professionals don’t get a clear understanding of this field and how much opportunity lies within. Taking the course has helped me with my business JULY–AUGUST 2016

The main benefit this course has offered me is the development of my confidence. I feel better educated, open for discussions, and more eager to teach others things I have learned. I manage our internship program here, and after completing my LPQ, I feel more qualified to help our interns understand more about our industry and what we do. I know my boss and others who I work with on a daily basis have seen benefits from my certification as well.

If you could offer one key takeaway to someone currently considering getting certified, what would it be?

One key factor I have learned from my boss and our director of AP, Chris Harris, is the most effective way to move up in our industry is to work hard, excel at what you do, and take every opportunity to learn new things. Having a certification such as LPQ or LPC is one way to help propel yourself.

Do you think getting certified will help make you a better LP professional?

Looking at your own personal development, what information within the course helped you the most?

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What benefits have you seen from taking the course?

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Having the LPQ certification will definitely make me a better AP professional. In the beginning, I had to strategize a plan and become organized to stay on task with the coursework and quizzes. Once I completed the course work, I had to prioritize my responsibilities and focus on studying and committing myself to learning the materials.

Once I felt confident, I signed up for the exam and became certified. Looking back, the certification process itself helped develop basic organizational and time management skills. I can’t wait to see how it affects my career in the future.

How has certification changed your expectations of loss prevention as a career, for yourself and for others?

The LPQ certification has reinforced my expectations of LP as a career. Mainly it helped broaden my perspective on the opportunities available in our field for my future.

People who complete these certifications are passionate about learning, motived by the fast-paced industry, and strive for self-development. I now feel confident I can achieve my personal goals of becoming a business professional while focusing on all aspects of the retail business.

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Newly Certified

Would you recommend certification to others?

I would absolutely recommend this certification to others. In fact, our last intern from Penn State is currently completing her LPQ during her last semester of school. The course work helps prepare you for your exam, and the certification itself reminds you that with hard work and dedication you can succeed and compete in our industry.

The LPQ is a great resource to help with personal and professional growth.

What advice would you give to current young professionals hoping to transition into the LP industry as a career field?

I would tell them to take advantage of the great resources out there such as LP Magazine, the LPF website, LPjobs.com, Linkedin, and most importantly, the LPQ certification. Job searching is stressful and can seem to take forever, but by using these resources, eventually I landed a great job with Weis Markets. I took a job nine hours away from my home in Louisville knowing that this opportunity was one I couldn’t pass up.

I recommend taking the LPQ to get ahead of the game and develop imperative skills early on in the job search. This will get you noticed.

Following are individuals who recently earned their certifications.

Recent LPC Recipients

Mark Broda, LPC Samuel Charles, LPC, Lowe’s Dennis Davis, LPC, Walmart Stores Heather Depalma, LPC, Goodwill of Southwestern PA Frank Devlin, LPC Navtej Duggal, LPC, TJX Canada Kevin Eikenberry, LPC, Goodwill Industries of Greater Grand Rapids Mark Headley, LPC, Lowe’s Ronald Horn, LPC, Sears Holdings Jaclyn Johnson, LPC, Festival Foods Marc Marraccini, LPC, TJX Henry Mortelliti, LPC, CVS Health Rui Rodrigues, LPC, C&R Timothy Rout, LPC, Lowe’s Tina Sellers, LPC, Delhaize America Monika Shah, LPC Ryan Shedd, LPC , SpartanNash Claude Taybi, LPC, Sterling Jewelers Ryan Themm, LPC, Meijer

Recent LPQ Recipients

Nakhshab Arshad, LPQ, Vector Security Leanne L. Blais, LPQ, L.L.Bean Melissa Bowers, LPQ, Dollar Financial Group

Logan Britton, LPQ, University of Indianapolis Kathleen Budd, LPQ, University of Indianapolis Rodney Corley, LPQ Julie Droppa, LPQ Stephen Elley, LPQ, Wild Rose Co-op Sarah Graber, LPQ, TransAlarm Lucia Grande, LPQ, Starbucks Coffee David Guerrero, LPQ, AT&T/ Cricket Communications Jason Guiste, LPQ, Lowe’s Marcus Guzman, LPQ, Goodwill Industries of Suncoast James Harvey, LPQ, Publix Super Markets John Hasnauer, LPQ, Harris Teeter Supermarkets Jeffery Haubrich, LPQ, Borderland Co-operatives Ltd Jodie Hurst, LPQ, University of Indianapolis Hannah Johnson, LPQ, University of Indianapolis Scott Kirsch, LPQ, Penske Logistics Arturo Marquez, LPQ, Ross Stores Ravi Patel, LPQ, Whitbread Plc Debbie Peterson, LPQ, Swan Valley Co-op Scott Petty, LPQ David Plaster, LPQ Shyam Ramballi, LPQ, American Eagle Outfitters Kirsty Sellers, LPQ, Starbucks Coffee Joshua Sheese, LPQ, Walmart Stores Kaci Tompkins, LPQ, University of Indianapolis Erin Wolfe, LPQ, Penske Logistics Andrew Zahorsky, LPQ, Pacific Sunwear of California

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ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT

2016 National Retail Security Survey Key Findings

T

he 2016 National Retail Security Survey (NRSS) based on 2015 data from retailers was released at the recent National Retail Federation (NRF) PROTECT Conference held in Philadelphia.

Now in its twenty-fifth year, the NRSS continues to be the bellwether survey that retail loss prevention executives use to compare themselves to other retail chains.

This year’s NRSS survey was conducted during April 2016 in collaboration with the NRF. The full text, charts, and findings are available at nrf.com/resources/retail-library/ national-retail-security-survey-2016.

If your company is currently a member of the NRF, you can immediately download the survey by logging on with your member ID. If you are not a member, you can register yourself and then download the survey.

Following is a brief overview of the key findings of the research study. You can review all of these results on the survey PDF. Any questions can be directed to Bob Moraca, vice president of loss prevention at the NRF, at moracar@nrf.com or to me.

■ The impact of shrinkage on the retail industry continues to be sizeable. With an average shrink rate of 1.38 percent, this cost the overall US retail economy $45.2 billion in 2015. While the shrinkage percentage is identical to last year’s study, the dollar impact has increased due to the growth in retail sales. The good news is that the shrinkage percentage reported during the past two years is the lowest ever observed in the history of the NRSS. ■ Overall inventory shrink increased 48.1 percent for the retailers surveyed. While this may seem counterintuitive to the increase in dollar losses, nearly half of major retailers seem optimistic in their efforts to lower shrinkage. One could conclude that leveraging technology is beginning to pay off on the bottom line.

■ LP budgets remain flat as a percentage of sales. Unfortunately, most retail executives are still not satisfied with the resources they are being given to fight the war against retail loss. Nevertheless, the total number of LP personnel per $1 billion in sales did increase slightly from 32.47 in 2014 to 37.5 in 2015. As expected, most of the employment additions were in exempt positions; non-exempt employees declined slightly.

■ Most retailers continue to rely on LP professionals to apprehend shoplifters. More than two-thirds of those surveyed said they limit apprehensions to trained LP personnel. The liability and physical risks of using sales personnel to make shoplifting stops is still too great to justify.

■ For the second year in a row, shoplifting has slightly surpassed employee theft as the greatest cause of inventory shrink. The number of apprehensions without referrals and shoplifting prosecutions dropped slightly, while the number of shoplifting-related civil demands increased significantly. You may recall that until last year

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by Richard C. Hollinger, PhD Dr. Hollinger is professor emeritus of the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is also director of the Security Research Project, which annually conducts the National Retail Security Survey.

Dr. Hollinger can be reached at rhollin@ufl.edu or 352-392-6568. © 2016 Richard C. Hollinger

previous NRSS data indicated that dishonest employees comprised the largest share of the shrinkage problem. The growth in organized retail crime (ORC) has obviously changed this situation.

■ The average loss was $377 per shoplifting incident, up nearly $60 from 2014. Despite huge ORC cases, the average shoplifting case continues to be relatively small in dollar loss. The amateur shoplifter continues to be a major problem in causing retail loss.

■ The average loss from dishonest employee cases dropped from $1,547 to $1,234. While this is good news, the number of employee apprehensions increased. Prosecutions, terminations, and civil demands for these types of internal incidents dropped. Prosecution is apparently still too expensive to justify a criminal justice response.

■ Many hiring practices retailers use to deter dishonest employees dropped. Only the use of credit checks and workers’ compensation claims increased. It appears that checking backgrounds of employees is still a questionable and controversial tool.

■ Technology is increasing in use as a shoplifting deterrent, but some of the more advanced methods, such as facial recognition and RFID, are still not catching on in levels expected when introduced. Leveraging technology is still the best countermeasure to deter shoplifting, but not all can be justified using ROI. ■ Methods of increasing LP awareness in the workforce are changing somewhat. Newsletters, periodic programs, and lectures increased while training videos and discussions during new-hire orientation decreased. There is little doubt that some of these communications are being transmitted by social media.

■ When it comes to shoplifting deterrents, the more visible, the better.

The use of uniformed guards is up, while the use of plainclothes detectives is down. Visible CCTV still provides a deterrent to both amateur and professional shoplifters.

■ Robberies are a growing expense for retailers, costing on average $8,170. Armed robberies are a troubling form of violent crime that still occur regularly, especially in urban areas where drug trafficking is a problem.

Only eighty retail chains responded to the NRSS this year, down twenty from the previous year. While this decreasing number is disturbing, it is likely due in part to the shrinking number of retailers in business. As retail firms merge or go out of business, inevitably the survey will have fewer and fewer respondents.

Men’s and women’s apparel was the most robust segment of responding retailers. Grocery and discount stores continue to be well represented. However, to increase the value of the NRSS in the future, more retail chains must be convinced to participate in this valuable study.

Please remember this when you are asked to participate next year.

LOSSPREVENTIONMEDIA.COM

INTERVIEW

FROM CORPORATE SECURITY TO RESTAURANT LOSS PREVENTION AND SAFETY THE CAREER OF ROB HOLM OF MCDONALD’S

By James Lee, LPC, Executive Editor • Photos by David Czuba

INTERVIEW EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert “Rob” Holm is senior director of safety and security for the US Operations of McDonald’s USA. He began his career in corporate security with Honeywell before holding a variety of security management positions with 3M, Imation Corporation, the Tribune Company, and Navistar. Holm earned his bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Bemidji State University as well as numerous leadership certificates from Georgetown University and Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. He is president of the Restaurant Loss Prevention & Security Association.

EDITOR: I want to start with a question many of us can identify with. What is your first memory of eating at a McDonald’s?

HOLM: Well, this is the first time

We believe that our company-owned restaurants serve a valuable purpose, and it’s really about the people. We put people through our restaurants. We train them. We develop them. We want them to mature.

We want them to grow. We want them to be successful. Also, when we want to test and try something new, whatever that might be—a menu item, a piece of equipment, a design in a restaurant—our company-owned restaurants provide a good location.

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I’ve ever been asked that question.

Thinking back to when I was a kid, I was raised on a farm in northern Minnesota just outside of a town of 300 people. We never really went out to eat. I had never even heard of McDonald’s until we moved to the big city—Minneapolis—when I was ten.

In high school I played on the football team, and going to McDonald’s was kind of a weekly tradition. We’d load up the car after our Thursday practice or the Friday game and go to McDonald’s. We each got a milkshake and those McDonald Land cookies.

EDITOR: I’m guessing McDonald’s has changed a bit since then. What is the size of McDonald’s today?

HOLM: We have approximately

36,000 restaurants worldwide and serve more than 67 million people a day. Within the United States, we have approximately 14,000 restaurants serving more than 25 million people a day.

EDITOR: You have both company-owned and franchise-owned restaurants.

INTERVIEW How does McDonald’s view the role of the company-owned restaurants?

HOLM: We believe that our

company-owned restaurants serve a valuable purpose, and it’s really about the people. We put people through our restaurants. We train them. We develop them. We want them to mature. We want them to grow. We want them to be successful. In fact, about half our leadership came from restaurants, so we embrace that.

Also, when we want to test and try something new, whatever that might be—a menu item, a piece of equipment, a design in a restaurant—our company-owned restaurants provide a good location.

EDITOR: You have responsibility for food safety, restaurant safety, and security. With all that, who do you report to?

HOLM: I report directly to Jim Floyd,

vice president of strategy and shared services for US Operations. I also report dotted line to Michael Peaster, the chief security officer and vice president of

global safety and security. I receive phenomenal coaching and support from my leadership, which I don’t take for granted. Also, I know this interview is geared around security, but I would like to state that I am truly blessed with nineteen wonderful people who make up the entire food safety, safety, and security organization.

EDITOR: How do you divide your time between those different responsibilities?

HOLM: All these areas are important

to our business and brand, so it’s really about finding the balance and giving them the attention they need.

EDITOR: How do you divide your focus between the company-owned and franchise-owned restaurants?

HOLM: Serving and supporting the

company-owned and franchise-owned restaurants are both very important.

Almost my entire team is located in the field, which provides them a very good opportunity to understand the local

LP MAGAZINE | JULY–AUGUST 2016

business needs and issues. Aligning our objectives with regional leadership’s goals helps guide us on our priorities.

EDITOR: We published a very popular feature article on McDonald’s last year. One of the important aspects of your organization discussed in that article was having people with varied backgrounds. What is your view of the importance of diverse backgrounds on your team?

HOLM: That’s a very important piece,

and I’m proud to say we have a very diverse organization. I don’t mean just diverse in gender or ethnicity, but also diverse in prior experience. I firmly believe in that; always have throughout my professional career.

Since I rejoined McDonald’s in 2011, I would say 50 percent of the people are in new positions. They’ve either been promoted, or we’ve brought people in from the outside. Some have a law enforcement background, which is a good thing, but it’s not everything. We

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INTERVIEW have really valued bringing in people with a diverse skillset from many different retail segments and disciplines.

EDITOR: In order to get that diversity of background, how did you go about attracting talented team members to hire?

HOLM: Traditionally, when you would

recruit, you would partner with your HR department or your talent acquisition department. Traditionally, they would reach out to the job market via Career Builder or another job site, and then go through the interview process. Given loss prevention and security are a pretty tight profession, my belief is that such a unique network of professionals knows best who would fit in with the team. So networking and meeting people gives me and my team the opportunity to look at who else is out there. We are able to personally approach them, which means we’ll be able to evaluate whether they have the chemistry to enhance the overall brand.

So it’s really a combination of working with the HR and talent department and networking. I’m very proud of the team we’ve built, and this approach has proven to be successful.

For any issue, we have a two-pronged approach—proactive and reactive. From a proactive standpoint, it’s all about education, training, and awareness. Sustaining the security and protection of our employees and customers is the number one goal, so we focus on educating our managers on safety practices, crime prevention, and food and inventory standards. Then the other prong is reacting to situations that may arise, whether a crime, accident, or a situation that could impact our customers.

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EDITOR: You have a very lean organization for the size of the company. How many restaurants would one of your regional security mangers be responsible for?

HOLM: Well, having a lean organization

is a matter of perspective. I have a different point of view. It’s not the size of my organization I focus on; it’s really about the value my organization brings to the company and to our stakeholders. McDonald’s is not in the security business; we’re in the hamburger business. Therefore, we need to be good students of the business and be seen as true business professionals first, subject-matter experts second. If we apply this approach, it shouldn’t matter the number of restaurants. It’s really about being smart and leveraging your resources that achieve the best results.

EDITOR: What are the typical kinds of issues that your

INTERVIEW people deal with? And what’s the general approach to addressing them?

HOLM: For any issue, we have a

last couple of years that have made a major impact? Is there anything new on the horizon?

HOLM: We have a number of

two-pronged approach—proactive and reactive. From a proactive standpoint, it’s all about education, training, and awareness. Sustaining the security and protection of our employees and customers is the number one goal, so we focus on educating our managers on safety practices, crime prevention, and food and inventory standards. We want our training programs to be there to minimize any issues we can before they happen.

Then the other prong is reacting to situations that may arise, whether a crime, accident, or a situation that could impact our customers. We get a lot of attention.

It’s one of the wonderful things that come with being one of the most recognized brands in the world. But a lot of the focus on us is just a simple result of being deep in the community.

technology-related initiatives in the pipeline. We’ve been piloting biometrics with our POS in a few restaurants, and we like the initial results. Later this year we’re planning to test the proof of concept in a larger number of restaurants.

We’re also testing a restaurant risk assessment management program, or as we call it R2AMP, in some of our restaurants as we speak. That’s been fairly exciting. This is a tool we co-developed with CAP Index, and there’s nothing like it in our industry. In fact, we plan on unveiling it during the RLPSA [Restaurant Loss Prevention & Security Association] conference for the benefit of our membership.

EDITOR: What technologies have you deployed over the

EDITOR: Are you leveraging these technologies across the franchises as well?

HOLM: The biometrics with POS has

been tested with a couple franchisees,

but the risk assessment tool not yet.

This initiative is brand new—just out of the box. So we’re using this tool in our company-owned restaurants, where we have the highest priority. Our expectation is that after we’ve proven this tool successful, then we’ll be able to potentially introduce it to our franchisees for their consideration.

EDITOR: How much of your regional security manager’s workload is spent on employee theft or employee dishonesty?

HOLM: It’s becoming less and less,

and it’s hard for me to put a percent on it. As I mentioned earlier, our focus is working with our restaurants proactively to help them identify where opportunities exist. We help them identify and address the opportunities before it becomes a “turnover” issue.

EDITOR: Given your business and the reality of robbery, what robbery prevention steps have you taken?

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A CIBA provides a convenient benchmark for comparing your GOODS AND APPAREL | AUTO PARTS/ACCESSORIES | BOOKS/MAGAZINES/MUSIC | CONVENIENCE crime risks to industry averages.

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GAMES | FOOTWEAR | HOME CENTER/HARDWARE/GARDEN | JEWELRY/ACCESSORIES/EYEWEAR | LIQUOR/BEER/WINE | OFFICE SUPPLIES/STATIONERY | PET/ANIMAL SUPPLIES | SPORTING GOOD | SUPERMARKET/GROCERY | TOYS/GAMES | APPAREL | ATHLETIC GOODS AND APPAREL | AUTO PARTS/ ACCESSORIES | BOOKS/MAGAZINES/MUSIC | CONVENIENCE STORES |OUTSMART CHILDREN’SCRIME MERCHANDISE | DEPARTMENT STORE | DISCOUNT MERCHANDISE | DRUGSTORE/PHARMACY | ELECTRONICS/ COMPUTERS/APPLIANCES | ENTERTAINMENT/MEDIA/GAMES | FOOTWEAR | HOME CENTER/ LP MAGAZINE | JULY–AUGUST 2016

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INTERVIEW HOLM: We have really great and innovative training programs in place.

We’re doing videos, webinars, face-to-face PowerPoint presentations, having mock exercises—a plethora of different vehicles that we use for training. Robbery prevention is always one of those topics that we want to make sure is shared and discussed. Of course, we want to prevent as much as we can.

So when we have a robbery, we have to respond efficiently, effectively, and make sure that we’re minimizing the loss of cash, but more importantly that we’re maximizing the safety of our guests and our employees as much as humanly possible. Along with our operations and HR partners, we reach out to our crew members and managers who have been victims of this type of incident to let them know that we care about them, that we’re here to help them in any way we can.

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talk about career potential. Two weeks later, I sat down with Mr. Porcaro.

That thirty minutes turned into a few hours’ discussion with him more or less taking me under his wing and talking to me about all the different aspects of corporate security and what I could do to position myself better. He told me, “No promises, but we’ll see what happens when you graduate. If I have any openings, you can apply.” He also said, “By the way, you’re the first person in my whole organization who’s ever talked to me about a potential career in security.” And there I was, a twenty-year-old kid.

Ultimately, I applied for the US Marshals job, as well as a security specialist job at Honeywell. I was fortunate to be offered both positions.

I chose the security specialist job at Honeywell mostly because of what I learned earlier from Mr. Porcaro.

Thirty-three years later I’ve never regretted my decision.

EDITOR: We’ve talked a good deal about your time with McDonald’s. Tell us about your early career that led you to the position you’re in today.

HOLM: I had three older brothers who

EDITOR: Where else have you worked?

HOLM: After Honeywell, I worked

were in the Marine Corp. One who went in right out of high school and two who didn’t finish high school but did achieve their GED equivalency.

They were all Marine military police and got into corrections or law enforcement afterwards.

I played high school football in Minnesota and received a small scholarship, so I went to college. Given law enforcement was in my blood, I chose criminal justice as my degree program. At that point I had the hope of going into federal law enforcement. So in 1983 I had a dual internship with the US Marshals Service and the FBI. However, I paid my way through college working in the summers as a security officer at Honeywell, which is based in Minneapolis. One night working third shift, I came across a corporate security organization chart showing a director of corporate security.

When I got off duty that morning, I called the director’s office and talked to his secretary. I asked if I could get on his calendar for thirty minutes and

with 3M and Imation Corporation, which was a 3M spin-off, before joining McDonald’s for the first time as director of global security. After about four years, I was lured away from McDonald’s in 2001 by the Tribune Company in Chicago that included the Chicago Tribune newspaper, but also the Chicago Cubs baseball team and other interests.

That was a wonderful job that taught me an awful lot. I loved the company, the people. But as you know, the newspaper business has changed dramatically in recent years. The Tribune was purchased, and the new owners eliminated my position in 2008.

As you’ll recall, 2008 was the beginning of the Great Recession, not a great time to be looking for a job. With children in school, I had to do what I could to make ends meet. So I got my license to sell insurance while consulting whenever I could in the security world.

That consulting led me to get a call from Navistar where I initially consulted with them before they hired me as a regional security manager.

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That period of time between 2008 and joining McDonald’s again in 2011 taught me a lot about priorities. Before 2008 my priorities were having a big title, a corner office, and making as much money as I could. Then it all went away. It made me realize that what’s important in life is your faith, family, and friends. Today I realize that the best part of my life is my wife of twenty-eight years and two sons, ages twenty-six and twenty-four, all living here in Chicago.

EDITOR: Your career and your experiences have obviously made you the accomplished leader that you are.

HOLM: Thank you for that. Let me add

that what I get my biggest satisfaction out of is seeing my people develop and grow and accomplish and be recognized.

That’s what I wake up every morning and look forward to.

In our profession, many of us come from backgrounds that require you to follow a manual, that you see things in black and white. I always try to overcompensate for that mindset. We really operate in a much more grey area than that way of thinking. And to me, that requires creativity, which means it’s okay to take chances. It’s okay to fail. You have to. That’s why I like to reference these sayings: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” And, “You can’t run out of creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

I also like to quote Michael Jordan, given I consider myself a Chicagoan now and fondly remember the great run of Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the ‘90s. He said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

EDITOR: That’s terrific, Rob. Here’s my final question. From Billings, Montana, to Charlotte, North Carolina, to London, England, how does McDonald’s continued on page 34

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INTERVIEW continued from page 32 serve those wonderful fries that basically look and taste the same around the world?

HOLM: [Laughter] I was fortunate in that

I was able to participate in a leadership program last year where we were reminded of an analogy that our founder, Ray Kroc, used that addresses your question. He would say that McDonald’s operates as a three-legged stool. The top part of that stool, the seat part, represents the entire McDonald’s system. The legs underneath are supporting the system. Each leg represents an equally important part because without one of the legs, the whole thing will fall over.

One leg represents the corporation and all of its employees. Another leg represents the franchisee or our owner/operators.

The third and equally important leg is our supplier relationships. That includes our farmers who grow and nurture the potatoes in Idaho. Those potatoes then go to our manufacturers who process the potatoes that in turn are shipped to our stores. Then there is the company that provides us with the fryer oil that is perfectly clean and meets a precise formula. Finally, it all comes together at the restaurant with the people there. They train extensively, study in their field, and learn how to prepare our food the way it’s intended to be prepared and ultimately served and enjoyed by our customers.

We have a number of technology-related initiatives in the pipeline. We’ve been piloting biometrics with our POS in a few restaurants, and we like the initial results. Later this year we’re planning to test the proof of concept in a larger number of restaurants. We’re also testing a restaurant risk assessment management program, or as we call it R2AMP, in some of our restaurants as we speak.

That’s been fairly exciting. This is a tool we co-developed with CAP Index, and there’s nothing like it in our industry.

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EDITOR: Thanks again, Rob. We’ll see you in July at the RLPSA conference.

HOLM: It should be a great conference

this year July 24–27 in San Antonio. I hope all of your readers in the restaurant segment have a chance to come to the conference and network with their peers.

It’s important for our industry.

Incidentally, one of the things that we’re doing this year is recognizing some of the individuals who saw the need for an organization focused on loss prevention and safety in the restaurant industry and started what was then called the NFSSC [National Food Service Security Council] in 1979.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For more information about the RLPSA, visit rlpsa.com.

ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT

Bridging the Gap between Cyber Crime and ORC C

ybercrime and organized retail crime (ORC) are words we hear on a daily basis. Let’s talk about how they’re related and how they’re different. ORC is very difficult to define because it falls under many different definitions depending on where you are reading it. For the purpose of this discussion, ORC is defined as groups of people engaged in illegally obtaining merchandise in substantial quantities through both theft and fraud for the purpose of resale. Cyber crime is defined as crime conducted via the Internet or some other computer network. The two have both similarities and differences.

The Progression of Theft

I have always felt the “broken window theory” is an accurate depiction of how crime can be generated both in real world and cyber settings. For those not familiar with the theory, it proposes that a small amount of disorder in a given community (think a wall of graffiti) can eventually become the norm and can permeate throughout the area. The graffiti was never washed off, so now it becomes a part of that society. Eventually the graffiti artists will

Cybercrime is a global issue, certainly much larger than any individual retailer. It is important to keep up to date in the latest trends and how it is affecting other retailers. spread their work to other walls since they saw there was no action taken to remove the first wall of graffiti.

This theory is very similar to the career path of a shoplifter turned booster turned fraudster. The shoplifter isn’t getting caught taking small amounts of items, so they try their luck at larger items. Once they get into the lifestyle of stealing and reselling larger quantities of goods, they need to do it more and more to keep up the lifestyle. Some of the largest ORC groups consist of people who started out as shoplifters who are now recruiting people to skim cards. Now more than ever I

FUTURE OF LP

By Tom Meehan, CFI Meehan is director of technology and investigations for Bloomingdale’s. He specializes in new technology deployments, business intelligence, industrial intelligence, and systems implementation and design. Meehan brings nineteen years of expertise in retail LP, information technology, and process improvement, the last eleven years with Bloomingdale’s and eight years prior to that with Home Depot. Meehan is also chair of the LPRC’s Future of LP Working Group and co-chair of the Fraud Working Group. He can be reached at tom.meehan@bloomingdales.com.

see them with someone else’s personal information, which makes me wonder if they are obtaining this information from the Dark Web or getting the information themselves. Is that ORC or cyber crime?

It depends on who uses the data or card numbers. An example: a skimmer is at a gas station pump. The person that installs the skimmer goes back to get the credit card information. They do one of two things—either sell it on the Deep Web or give it to a group who goes shopping. Is the first action cyber crime? Is the second ORC? My opinion is they are blurred together. How would your company define this?

The Evolution and Impact of Fraud

In the last few years when there were major breaches in retail, did you or your company measure the impact it had on your numbers?

If you have a cobranded store card, was your customer affected, and did it affect your fraud rate? Did your calls relating to fraud increase?

Do you have a strategy or plan to address or review? Does your company subscribe to a third-party intelligence company to keep up with underground chatter? How will the dynamic in-store change?

Do you monitor healthcare breaches and see if there is a relationship with new account fraud?

If you answered “no” to most of those questions, then there’s a gap. If a group of hackers in Russia steals credit card information and sells it on the web, it may lean more to the cyber-crime side. These questions relate to the evolution of ORC and how we can impact it in the future. If you are caught off guard by these questions, imagine how you will react when this type of activity is at your front door.

We discuss these issues every month on the Loss Prevention Research Council’s Retail Fraud Task Force as well as the Future of LP and ORC Working Groups to discuss the changing fraud landscape. Cyber crime is a global issue, certainly much larger than any individual retailer. It is important to keep up to date on the latest trends and how they are affecting other retailers.

For loss prevention professionals, here are some fundamental takeaways: ■ Create common definitions for ORC and cyber crime and evaluate how certain criminal actions can be classified.

■ Keep abreast of breaches and other data-security issues that affect your customers, as that could be an indicator of the coming tide of fraud.

■ Develop a game plan for people who are detained with fake IDs, counterfeit cards, and skimmers, or for other crimes that require the person to assume another identity. It could be the ground intelligence you need to prevent future cyber crime.

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STRATEGIES

Transitioning Analytics When Stores Become Showrooms R etail is an ever-evolving landscape that loss prevention professionals have had to navigate over the course of time, and it is no different for the way we address analytics.

As organizations shift their focus from operationally managing stores to providing custom experiences for consumers, retailers are rethinking their physical spaces. It is not predicted that retail stores will go away entirely, but it is likely that they will dynamically change in a climate of consumers who are looking to explore and educate themselves on items before purchasing.

Rather than trudge through the mix-matched, out-of-style, or out-of-season overstocked shelves with lackluster store clerks, merchants are turning their locations into showroom shops with quaint and comfortable décor that provides a shopping experience, aided by sales consultants and advanced technology to enhance the overall engagement. Additionally, there are more online companies finding the need to create physical venues for consumers to visit their brands beyond just their websites, as this allows customers to touch and feel products and to better understand the offers these companies are promoting.

The Impact on Inventories

With this kind of transition, we have to be aware of how inventory in our current environments will change. It could be significantly reduced in our brick-and-mortar locations, and even the purpose of such locations may shift to a smaller square-footage footprint to serve as pickup locations, drive-thru customer service centers, payment booths, or ultimately showrooms that provide a more service-oriented commerce. We must think about how to bring such new dynamics into our analytics programs.

Technology has shifted with the occurring convergence across all channels: stores, e-commerce, kiosks, pop-up shops, distribution, and localized fulfilment. And the amount of data that is captured by retailers will only continue to increase and be available in the future for more analytics.

Evolving from POS Exceptions to a Holistic Analytics Approach

Traditional LP analytics and even retail analytics have focused more on the physical store activity and specifically point-of-sale (POS) rather than on other key areas within retailers’ organizations. Now with a potential shift from traditional

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By Shannon K. Stilwell, CPP, CFE Currently the vice president of analytics for Sysrepublic, Stilwell has over twenty years of retail loss prevention experience having held both field and corporate positions for leading retailers such as Gottschalks, Hollywood Video, Borders Books & Music, and Kohl’s Department Stores.

She is an adjunct professor at the University of Northern Michigan and leads the EBRgroup, an industry networking and educational group. Stilwell can be reached at shannon.stilwell@sysrepublic.com.

brick-and-mortar stores to showrooms, a need arises for a more holistic analytics platform that looks at more data points within the business: multi-channel or omni-channel POS (mobile devices and shopping apps), supply chain, inventory, customer traffic (virtual and physical), customer insights and wallet share, marketing (social media), and staff-to-customer engagements.

And it should all be integrated with the common POS data that is analyzed today.

Loss prevention has had some real success with POS analytics because of the combination of analytics with human intuition and behavior. However, retail analytics will develop a broader scope and look to encompass the entirety of the organization for both understanding and insight that can be leveraged across the whole of the enterprise for value, action-driven performance, and decisions.

Retailers can be working hard to prepare for this shift. It is important for loss prevention teams to get involved in this movement as well. Develop the capabilities to evolve from just POS analysis to a new focus that redefines metrics across channels while still being individual-centric and traversing all business functions. What this means is being able to have cross-functional business process data integration that will allow a single event, consumer, or employee to be seen as a single entity across the entire dataset. This will be the key to effective analytic programs, especially when the concept of a store becomes a merged concept of product sales, showroom, warehouse, and virtual marketplace.

Supporting the Enterprise

Loss prevention groups will increasingly function as connectors of real-time and forensic profit analyses across the enterprise.

Retailers already have so much data to manage, and most have all the information they need for conducting analysis for real-time decision-making, product allotment, marketing personalization, process improvements, fraud detection, and profit protection. But often these are in detached systems or applications, which each have their own separate analyst teams.

An important strategy that loss prevention divisions can establish for the future is to start building an analytics program that connects people, processes, and platforms within the organization as a whole and leveraging a team of analysts that can think about your business from this different vantage point. This will not only continue to drive the industry to meet the needs of businesses but also be a significant benefit to retailers who get this right.

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FEATURE

AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES THE EVIDENCE TO DATE ON MAKING THIEVES THINK TWICE

By Adrian Beck

AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES

A

new report from the ECR Community’s Shrinkage and On-shelf Availability Group titled Amplifying Risk in Retail Stores offers a comprehensive review of the evidence to date on what is known about the various ways in which retailers try to discourage thieves from stealing from their stores, focusing particularly on ways in which the risk of being caught can be increased or “amplified.”

Retailers are not short on advice as to how they might manage the risk of retail theft in their physical and virtual stores—a considerable consulting and technology-based industry has developed around them offering a plethora of ways to try and achieve this goal. It is easy to see why this has happened. The challenge is considerable, and even the best “solutions” often struggle to maintain their potency—the

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determined shop thief can be highly adaptive, innovative, and brazen in the approaches taken to relieve retailers of their merchandise.

Understanding the Decision to Steal

Academic research provides detailed insights into how offenders think and, perhaps more importantly, the factors that can act to deter them. It shows that they typically assess the following factors before coming to a decision to steal: ■ The perceived risk—how likely is it that I will be caught?

■ The relative ease with which the offense can be committed—how easy is it for me to do this?

■ The benefit of undertaking the offense—what will I get from doing this and is it worth it?

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T he likely consequences if they were to be caught—what will happen to me if they catch me?

If they decide that the risk is low, that it is easy to do, well worth the effort, and even if they were to be caught the consequences would be low, then they are highly likely to go ahead and offend. Of these factors, it has been found that the first—the risk of being caught—is often the most important in an offenders’ decision-making process, while consequential punishment is regarded as the least important.

For retailers, it is difficult to impact all four of these factors to the same extent, and some are more susceptible to their control than others. For instance, retailers are certainly able to influence the degree to which an offender feels like they may be caught and how easy it is to carry out a crime. And while they can impact to a ■

AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES

degree on reducing the benefit obtained, such as utilizing benefit-denial strategies, it is much more difficult for them to try to impact the punishments associated with crimes against their businesses.

Influencing the Decision to Steal

A series of factors have been identified as ways to try and influence the decision-making of thieves. For instance, many approaches have been developed to try and make it harder for the offender to commit a crime, such as through target-hardening measures—making it less easy for them to take merchandise, limiting their access to highly desirable products by putting them behind a counter, or encouraging them to go elsewhere through the use of attentive store staff.

Other approaches have also been developed to try and increase the extent

to which a would-be thief believes they might be caught, such as by increasing surveillance and guardianship and reducing the amount of anonymity they feel they have.

Other ways include trying to reduce the rewards of crime, such as making products less desirable for resale, making it less likely that an offender will be provoked into offending, and also removing any possible excuses they might have to commit an offense.

Understanding the Shop Thief

Of course there is no such thing as the typical retail thief. Many typologies have been developed trying to capture the characteristics of those who come into retail stores to steal products, described rather euphemistically by some as “non-paying customers” or LP MAGAZINE | JULY–AUGUST 2016

“those engaged in consumer product acquisition.” For many, a key and somewhat simplistic distinction is often drawn between those who are regarded as rather opportunistic amateurs in nature—having no real predefined plan to steal and taking product when they can, principally for personal use—versus those regarded as professionals—often working with others and mainly stealing products so that they can be converted into cash. Understanding the difference is really very important because research has shown that the impact of interventions designed to stop or minimize theft vary considerably in their effectiveness depending on the type of offender that comes across them.

Well-organized professional thieves often have a very different attitude toward security interventions, regarding them as something of an inconvenience

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AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES

to be managed, whereas opportunistic thieves are much more likely to be deterred. Deterring and indeed detecting professional shop thieves often requires a very different approach, sometimes requiring changes in legislation, as well as having highly trained and dedicated security teams, working frequently with local law enforcement to identify and prosecute offenders, and having a considerable on-going budget.

On the other hand, the more opportunistic thief is much more concerned about being caught and, while not always acutely aware of security interventions designed to make it more difficult for them to steal items, can be relatively more easily deterred.

Evidence would suggest that most anti-theft interventions are mainly designed for the opportunistic offender—they are much more likely to be taken seriously by them and reduce the likelihood of offending. However, in order for this type of thief to be effectively deterred they must not only be aware of the security intervention but

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also believe it is credible. They must see it and must believe it is going to increase their chances of being caught. Therefore, the principal aim of the retailer and its associated security and technology providers is to ensure that the risk of apprehension is sufficiently amplified in the retail environment. They must make the potential thief sufficiently aware that a credible risk exists in the store.

Interventions and Risk Amplification

Risk amplifiers can come in many different shapes, sizes, approaches, formats, and forms of intervention. Hence, a considerable industry has developed creating a whole host of ways in which to prevent theft. For the most part, they have been designed to try and deter the offender.

Retailers have recognized that deterrence, rather than detection and prosecution, is a much more cost-effective and manageable means to deal with the issue of shop theft. As one grizzled old loss prevention executive once said, “You cannot arrest your way out of a shrinkage JULY–AUGUST 2016

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problem.” This is particularly the case if the opportunistic model of offending is subscribed to. A significant proportion of people will take advantage of the opportunities presented to them and will only stop when they consider the risk of apprehension to be too high, when it is considered too difficult to undertake, where the perceived reward is too low, or when the consequence of apprehension is deemed too unacceptable.

The idea of risk amplification is particularly important to the first factor—perceived risk of apprehension—if a device or an approach in a store can ensure an elevated sense of this risk, then the offender is much less likely to commit the crime. However, for this to be successful, the offender must first recognize the intervention and secondly understand how it will increase the risk of being caught.

Approaches to Amplifying Risk and the Evidence to Date

The extensive review undertaken for the ECR Community’s Shrinkage

AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES

For retailers, the existing evidence base on what works and why in terms of amplifying risk is complicated and largely mixed. Some things seem to work, and others less so. And all interventions are clouded by the context within which they are used. and On-shelf Availability Group found that there is relatively little high-quality published evidence on what interventions work and why. Much of the evidence is really quite old, in many cases dating back twenty and thirty years, making it difficult to equate the findings to the very different context in which retailing now finds itself.

It is also clear that many of the studies focused on evaluating effectiveness have relatively weak methodologies, with a significant number undertaken in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s that would struggle to be published in academic peer-reviewed journals today.

Of particular concern is the relatively short data collection periods used,

sometimes as little as one or two weeks.

As we all know, drawing conclusions from short time periods within dynamic retail environments is unlikely to be representative of what is likely to happen in the longer term.

There is undoubtedly a progression toward the greater use of more sophisticated and nuanced methodologies as seen by the work of Read Hayes, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Florida, and this is to be welcomed. In the busy, complex, and pressured world of retailing, it is inherently difficult if not impossible to try to control for all possible confounding factors when evaluating the impact of a given intervention. Researchers need to adopt

LP MAGAZINE | JULY–AUGUST 2016

approaches that utilize good practices but also understand that it would be unrealistic to adopt such strict standards seen when researchers are, for instance, testing drugs in the medical world.

The review found that there are far more published studies that look more broadly at the impact of various interventions to amplify risk without necessarily focusing on the “does it work” question. And there is much to be learned from them, particularly concerning the views of offenders, customer, and retail staff. As many have said, the question is not always strictly what works, but more often understanding why something does or does not work in a given context. CCTV

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AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES

is a good example of an intervention that has proven very difficult to justify in pure ROI terms when measured against rates of shrinkage. But it has been shown to add value in many other ways, some far harder to measure than others but still deemed important to a retail business, such as staff and customer reassurance.

Risk amplification is but one part of the jigsaw that must be put together to control losses in retail stores. Making would-be offenders feel that there is an elevated risk of being caught is an important piece of the jigsaw, and the review identified three key factors that need to be taken into account when developing an action plan for making this happen.

Making Risk Amplification Visible

Interventions must be highly visible if they are to play a role in amplifying risk.

There is no point in hiding it away or making it less than obvious to the would-be thief. Modern retail loss prevention should be focused on deterrence not detection.

For interventions such as electronic article

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surveillance (EAS), this means making the presence of the product tag abundantly clear. Hiding it away inside the packaging does not represent a good use of the technology, especially if its presence is not indicated on the packaging. It needs to be very obvious to the would-be thief that a product is protected. And where tags are concerned, either they need to be very visible and obvious what they are, or their presence needs to be very clearly marketed on the product packaging.

Equally, the exit and entrance gates need to be clearly visible and recognizable for what they are—part of a system designed to raise the risk of being caught. Here the growing use of gate advertising shrouds as a means to generate additional revenue for the retailer is interesting. Does this use impact their visibility to the would-be thief?

Are they blurring the message by in some way masking their primary role? Further research could explore this issue.

Generating visibility, particularly for some interventions such as CCTV, may prove increasingly challenging. CCTV’s growing ubiquitous presence may

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undermine its ability to amplify risk in the retail environment, although research on public view monitors (PVMs) suggests that it can be achieved with a degree of success, in the short term at least. More research is required on how new forms of CCTV technologies, such as PVMs, may help to amplify risk, particularly at self-checkouts where opportunities for deviant behavior would seem plentiful together with plausible and defendable excuses for the wily thief. New insights offered by behavioral sciences could be utilized with this type of technology to impact perceptions of risk, as well as notions of honesty.

What is very clear from the review is the role people can play in amplifying risk.

It would seem that opportunistic and more determined professional thieves alike regard both retail sales staff and dedicated security employees as key deterrents. But staff must be visible and very often proximal to the offender to be successful in amplifying risk. They need good lines of sight, and in respect to security guards, they need to be mobile, moving around the store.

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AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES

There is little doubt that amplifying risk in the retail store is a very important component of reducing the threat of crime, with success hinging on the capacity of interventions to be visible and credible—both of which are intrinsically linked to delivering an effective shopping experience for the consumer.

Currently, many retailers employ security guards at the entrances and exits of stores, frequently watching CCTV and ideally responding to EAS alarms. The evidence would suggest that: ■ Guards are unlikely to observe thieves on CCTV in the act of concealing goods in the store unless they have been provided information from others about a suspicious customer, ■ That professional thieves in particular are not put off by the presence of CCTV in the store, and ■ Guards are unlikely to apprehend people through EAS alarm activations. Only a small percentage of alarms generate a

check of a receipt, and even fewer lead to stolen goods being identified.

Therefore, it seems useful to understand how security guards can be better utilized in the retail space, both as risk amplifiers and safety advocates, and how they can better employ the technologies made available to them.

For retail staff, the research suggests that they need to be made fully aware of their importance in amplifying risk and how they can deliver this effectively.

It would seem that the attributes that make an employee good at being a retailer—particularly being highly customer-focused—are also those that

seem to generate the highest rates of amplified risk in the would-be offender.

Reducing the degree of anonymity would-be thieves perceive they have is also important in the risk amplification process—something that can be achieved by not only attentive staff and alert security personnel but also smart technologies. The growing use of mobile scan-and-pay technologies in particular is bringing this into stark relief, as existing risk amplifiers are made redundant by this type of consumer experience. More research is required to understand how mobile technologies might be used to amplify risk through communication with

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AMPLIFYING RISK IN RETAIL STORES

Well-organized professional thieves often have a very different attitude toward security interventions, regarding them as something of an inconvenience to be managed, whereas opportunistic thieves are much more likely to be deterred. the consumer as they move through the retail store.

Making Risk Amplification Credible

While risk amplifiers need to be visible to the would-be thief, they also need to be credible. Thieves need to believe that the risk of apprehension is real. The research on offenders draws clear distinctions between those regarded as more opportunistic thieves compared with those that are more organized and professional in the way they go about their thieving.

The former are more likely to believe that a range of interventions are effective in making it more likely they will be caught, while the latter tend to view them with a higher degree of scepticism and disregard.

This is particularly the case with EAS where concerns about false alarms and a lack of a credible response have plagued the industry since it was first introduced over forty years ago.

The current evidence would suggest that this is certainly taken into account by the more determined professional thief, who will develop ways to exploit this credibility gap, but less so by ECR theCommuni morety Availability Group opportunistic offender, who remains easily intimidated by its presence within the retail environment. As new technologies emerge, such as mobile scan-and-pay, it will be important to monitor this situation to ensure that EAS’s rather battered, but still potentially potent amplification capacity, remains viable.

and collect. This emerging retail landscape presents significant challenges to how retail losses will be managed in the future—the where, the how, and the who are all likely to become more complex and diverse. But it also presents potential opportunities as well in terms of how risk might be amplified in the future, not least through the use of these very same technologies and developments.

Anonymity is often an important prerequisite for an offender to decide to commit an offense. If they do not feel like they have been noticed, their sense of risk

Amplifying Risk in Retail Stores:

The Evidence to Date

A Report for the ECR Community Shrinkage and

On-shelf Availability Group

Professor Adrian Beck University of Leicester

Shrinkage & On-shelf

ECR Community

ECR Community

9 avenue des Gaulois 1040 Brussels Belgium http://ecr-shrink-group.com

Making Risk Amplification Intelligent and Proactive

Shrinkage & On-shelf

Availability Group

To receive a free copy of the report, please contact the author at bna@le.ac.uk. For further information about the ECR Community’s Shrinkage and On-shelf Availability Group, visit ecr-shrink-group.com.

The retail space is changing rapidly with new technologies quickly becoming integrated, such as consumer-owned mobile devices, together with greater complexity and agility being introduced across the supply chain through developments such as online and click

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is reduced. What new intelligence-focused technologies might be able to achieve is more of a loss of this sense of anonymity—the store, the shopping cart, the shelf, the product, the checkout, the parking lot could all begin to be part of a person-focused communication process with the consumer, making them aware that their presence in the store is known.

Much of this is already possible, and consumers are becoming increasingly familiar with and arguably desensitized to the collection of their data and the potential benefits of their location being known. Future research is required to better understand how this might play out in the retail store and how risk might be best amplified through these developments.

Will would-be thieves be less likely to steal because their identity and location is known? Will the fact that they are leaving an electronic trail behind them, which might be associated with a deviant act, be a sufficient risk to deter them?

The Risk Amplification Landscape

For retailers, the existing evidence base on what works and why in terms of amplifying risk is complicated and largely mixed. Some things seem to work, and others less so. And all interventions are clouded by the context within which they are used. There is little doubt that amplifying risk in the retail store is a very important component of reducing the threat of crime, with success hinging on the capacity of interventions to be visible and credible—both of which are intrinsically linked to delivering an effective shopping experience for the consumer.

ADRIAN BECK is a professor in the criminology department at the University of Leicester in the UK where he is primarily focused on research on retail crime and shrinkage issues. Since 1999 Beck has been an academic advisor to the ECR Community’s Shrinkage and On-shelf Availability Group. He is widely published as well as a frequent speaker at loss prevention conferences in Europe and the US. To read other articles in LP Magazine by Professor Beck, visit LossPreventionMedia.com. Beck can be reached at bna@le.ac.uk.

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As a member of The Loss Prevention Foundation, you join an association founded by and for loss prevention professionals. With access to an elite network of fellow industry professionals, development tools tailored specifically to our industry to help you advance your career and other great member benefits such as exclusive access to elite savings and discounts on thousands of products and services nationwide. Your membership is not only a demonstration of industry leadership; it’s a commitment to the profession and to your own professional development. Elevating the Industry, One Leader at a Time.

For more information, visit losspreventionfoundation.org or call (866)433-5545

EVIDENCE-BASED

Go Big or Go Home

by Read Hayes, PhD, CPP Dr. Hayes is director of the Loss Prevention Research Council and coordinator of the Loss Prevention Research Team at the University of Florida. He can be reached at 321-303-6193 or via email at rhayes@lpresearch.org. © 2016 Loss Prevention Research Council

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o big or go home. In this case, retailers need to go both big and small. Successful retail decision-makers continuously work to improve what they do and how they do it—both overall (big) and in specific actions (small).

So at the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) and within the University of Florida’s Crime Prevention Research Team, our mandate is to help retailers create: ■ Better overall LP/AP strategies and delivery models. In other words, we’re working on corporate and field LP frameworks to reduce crime and loss issues and attempts across the enterprise via a comprehensive program.

■ Better specific LP/AP interventions, including people, programs, processes, and technologies that operationalize the corporate strategy.

We keep hearing there is ample opportunity to improve how LP supports retail organizations. Mission-critical supply chains still have some leak points. Cost-effective in-store product protection that enhances the shopping and buying

We are leveraging the LPRC’s “see, get, fear” model by thinking contrast. We only have a split second to create an impression of control to simple, stressed, and often-impaired offenders. experience remains elusive in some areas. Employee deviance prevention can be improved. And parking lot and store safety still have room for development.

We’re working with almost forty retail chains on these very issues by trialing very focused small-ball tactics in stores, distribution centers, and outside areas. New research indicates mixing different types of EAS together extends a system’s impact, further enhancing the “see, get, fear” effects of public view monitors and maintaining their viability. And certain signage improvements (targeted wording and symbols) are helping other deterrent measures, like EAS, CCTV, alarms, point protection items, and so forth, work better.

And on the big or strategic front, even more closely tying LP/AP into operations, buying, and site-selection planning, as well as using situational effort, risk, reward efforts in the five

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zones of influence model, as a corporate focus is helping LP departments up their positive impact across the company.

Contrast

Thinking out loud here on the LP tactics or field practitioner front, we’re working to boost the contrast of a given deterrent cue to increase its effects. In other words, we are leveraging the LPRC’s “see, get, fear” model by thinking contrast. We only have a split second to create an impression of control to simple, stressed, and often-impaired offenders.

See. Offenders must actually notice or know about an arrayed cue to be deterred by it. They have got to see or discern our countermeasure. So we work to improve the probability most would-be offenders will perceive the deterrent measure in the real world and in the heat of the moment. We use size, placement, coloring, signage, lighting, sounds, and more to contrast the cue in a busy background.

Get. After noticing or knowing about a countermeasure, offenders must truly understand how the deployed mono or combo treatment will make their crime attempt harder, riskier, or less rewarding. We must create enough contrast between our deterrent effort and the confusing background, or other objects like smoke detectors, to help our targeted offenders immediately grasp how our measure will negatively affect them and their success.

Fear. Finally, we must instantly create a real and compelling “no-go” impression in offenders’ minds. Our intervention must be credible to offenders by creating a certain contrast between keep going and desist options. We must convince them that if they continue their attempt, they will be caught or just won’t be successful—it’s not worth it, so stop.

More is to come on this important research in actual stores and parking lots, so keep your eyes and mind open to ways to contrast what you do in order to gain an advantage over the opposition.

Events and Attractions

I thoroughly enjoyed and learned a ton at both the RILA and NRF loss prevention conferences this year. I continue to be impressed at how many talented and energized people we have in loss prevention. These conferences bring together that talent with innovation solution partners and other experts to share, learn, and build.

The LPRC webinar series continues featuring “Collecting and Using Data 101” then “Cyber Security: Threat Intelligence.”

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The 2016 Impact Conference at the beautiful University of Florida Reitz Student Union on October 4–6 features five learning labs for breakouts, working group planning, a tour of the dramatically upgraded LPRC Innovation Lab, and multiple research review and networking exercises.

These webinars follow the recent and still available online “The Science of Loss Prevention” and “Improving Performance: Using the SARA Problem-Solving Method” sessions.

The 2016 Impact Conference at the beautiful University of Florida Reitz Student Union on October 4–6 features five learning labs for breakouts, working group planning, a tour of the dramatically upgraded LPRC Innovation Lab, and multiple research review and networking exercises. We already have twice as many people enrolled as last year, so move quickly to participate in this unique LP experience.

The Violent Crime Working Group continues to convene Violent Crime Summits bringing together retailers and law

enforcement agencies to discuss joint crime mapping and pattern notification, intelligence sharing, and ongoing and upcoming crime control research. Look for summits in Houston, Baltimore, and Jacksonville. More information is available by emailing operations@lpresearch.org.

Gary Johnson is coordinating three regional LPRC Learning Lab meetings to discuss the array of LP/AP research and working group activities with interested retailers. Stay tuned for more information.

LPRC Knowledge Center

The online LPRC Knowledge Center continues to add video clips, white papers, and other resource material—over 325 documents alone to date. And the simple search-engine look makes it so easy to use. Stop by and check it out at lpresearch.org or email operations@lpresearch.org.

Recommended Reading

Analyzing Crime Patterns edited by Victor Goldsmith, Philip G. McGuire, John H. Mollenkopf, and Timothy A. Ross contains multiple chapters discussing tactical crime analysis, the NYPD’s Compstat program, social science and spatial analysis, crime hot spots and hot dots, and crime and place. This book is a must-have primer for anyone interested in graphically viewing crime distribution to better plan and attack high-impact issues.

As always, our University of Florida and LPRC teams are working to support you, so please let me know your thoughts and suggestions via our website at lpresearch.org, on LinkedIn, or at rhayes@lpresearch.org.

Is Your Back Door Open?

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• 100 dB alarm demands attention • Temporarily time bypass, but never disarm • Adjustable Timed bypass / Door Prop Time • Ability to match existing key • Monitor one or two doors with single EAX-3500 • Recharging back up battery for trouble free maintenance For more information on the Detex EAX-3500 and other fine restaurant security products, contact Amphion.

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www.amphion.biz LP MAGAZINE | JULY–AUGUST 2016

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PARTNERING WITH RETAILERS

Law Enforcement, Retailers Meet at Fusion Center

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embers of eBay’s North America Global Asset Protection (GAP) team participated in the National Retail Federation (NRF) PROTECT conference in Philadelphia June 14–16.

Each year the NRF conference is attended by more than a thousand retail professionals representing retailers from across the county, many of whom are eBay clients.

The 2016 NRF conference marked the seventh consecutive year that eBay has sponsored retail outreach through the Fusion Center, a designated area in the expo hall that provides an opportunity for law enforcement agencies from the federal, state, and local levels to link or “fuse” with retailers to counteract retail crime.

The Fusion Center offers retailers a valuable opportunity to network and partner with law enforcement and eBay. Retailers can visit various law enforcement agency booths to discuss tactics, exchange critical data, and enhance important partnerships. During the successful two-day event, GAP team members met with many of our retail and law enforcement partners.

This year eBay partnered with Macy’s in sponsoring and manning the Fusion Center. Special thanks go to John Matas and Chris DeSantis of Macy’s and all those who worked to make the Fusion Center a big success.

Following is a list of organized retail crime associations (ORCAs) and law enforcement agencies who participated in this year’s Fusion Center.

Organized Retail Crime Associations

Carolinas Organized Retail Crime Alliance Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail Cook County State’s Attorney’s Regional Organized Crime Task Force Florida Organized Retail Crime Association

By Dave DiSilva DiSilva is senior manager of global asset protection for eBay where he oversees eBay’s tools and PROACT teams. Prior to joining eBay in 2010, he held retail leadership roles in analytics, investigations, corporate LP, shortage control, e-commerce, and supply chain. DiSilva is an active member of the Loss Prevention Research Council, serving as co-chair of the predictive analytics group. Since 2011 he has been an LP Magazine contributor. DiSilva can be reached at 408-332-8666 or dadislva@ebay.com.

Georgia Retail Association Organized Retail Crime Alliance Indiana Retail Organized Crime Coalition Los Angeles Area Organized Retail Crime Association Metro Area Organized Retail Crime Alliance Mid-Atlantic Organized Retail Crime Alliance Twin Cities Organized Retail Crime Association Utah Organized Retail Crime Association

Law Enforcement Agencies

Arlington (VA) County Police Department Barrington (IL) Police Department Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, US Currency Education Program Boise (ID) Police Department Delaware Valley Intelligence Center Fairfax County Police Department (Tysons, VA, Urban Team) Federal Bureau of Investigation Florida Law Enforcement Property Recovery Unit Homeland Security Investigations Houston (TX) Police Department Los Angeles (CA) Police Department New York City Police Department Philadelphia (PA) Police Department Polk County (FL) Sheriff’s Office Salt Lake City (UT) Police Department US Marshals Service USPS Office of the Inspector General US Postal Inspection Service

North America GAP team members at the NRF Fusion Center are (left to right) Monica Lundgren, Hawken Averett, Spencer Jones, Stephen Huhnke, Christian Hardman, and Dave DiSilva.

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FEATURE

THREE STEPS TO ENSURE

SHORTAGE CONTROL

SUFFICIENCY

IN YOUR SUPPLY-CHAIN FACILITY

By Erik Nelsen

SUPPLY-CHAIN SHORTAGE CONTROL

T

oday’s retail environment is as competitively challenging as ever.

The retail sector of our economy is in constant change, moving with evolving technology, adjusting to consumer demands, and anticipating trends. The bedrock upon which healthy retailers are built is the supply chain that provides the goods to be sold. A retailer’s competitiveness, or lack thereof, is in measureable part a reflection of the extent to which these avenues of supply are cost effective and efficient.

The responsibility of a supply-chain loss prevention professional, broadly speaking, is to execute priorities that preserve assets, at least those within the loss prevention purview.

Fulfilling this directive, and thus promoting effective and efficient supply chains, often requires the loss prevention professional to analyze different business units or types to ensure the sufficiency of shortage control measures. Though the business types within a supply-chain unit or units may be varied, such as third-party logistics entities, picking and packing operations, consolidation units, and so forth, the approach needed to analyze each for shortage control sufficiency is the same.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate a three-component approach to assessing the shortage control sufficiency of any supply-chain unit or business type within the unit and then remedying the insufficiencies as appropriate.

The methods discussed here are specifically designed to address shrinkage related to internal theft and waste. Methods related to external and administrative-related shrink are beyond the scope of this article.

The responsibility of a supply-chain loss prevention professional, broadly speaking, is to execute priorities that preserve assets, at least those within the loss prevention purview. Fulfilling this directive, and thus promoting effective and efficient supply chains, often requires the loss prevention professional to analyze different business units or types to ensure the sufficiency of shortage control measures.

Shortage Control Analysis

Beginning a shortage control sufficiency review includes first establishing an understanding upon which all shortage control efforts will be built. That understanding is this: the goal for the loss prevention professional is first to identify exposure to shrink within the business type. Exposure simply means an area, process, practice, or condition in which or because of which loss is either occurring or likely to occur. Once exposure to loss is identified, shortage control measures can be directed at the exposure to either reduce or eliminate it.

There are three categories or areas of exposure analyzed in this approach—operational exposure, administrative exposure, and

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SUPPLY-CHAIN SHORTAGE CONTROL

An alignment between the business nature and type with the amount and expense of shortage control measures must be achieved.

The closer this alignment, the healthier the business unit and supply chain.

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physical exposure. The nature of these relatively broad categories is a symbiotic one; affecting one category may produce either a favorable or unfavorable effect on one or more of the others.

Further, specifically not discussed within the scope of this article, although it should be considered from a holistic shortage control perspective, are tools such as data mining, trending, and reporting capabilities.

These tools, when used properly, can have a complimentary and profound impact on the overall effectiveness of the shortage control measures implemented as a result of this analysis.

Operational Exposure. Review the business’s physical operation in its entirety.

Start at the beginning of the process and analyze each subsequent step until the entire operational process has been reviewed. For example, in a typical setting, one might start with a receiving process, work into the merchandise storage functions, and then move on to merchandise processing and handling, merchandise replenishment, quality control if applicable, and finally shipping.

As each independent function or handling process is reviewed for exposure, develop answers to questions similar to these to guide your analysis: ■ A re there operational methods employed that although effective operationally nevertheless circumvent or undermine current shortage control measures?

■ D o the methods or practices employed in the operation generate unnecessary exposure to loss?

■ C an operational practices be changed such that the business of the operation continues on, without unnecessary impediment, but does so in a way that reduces exposure to shrink?

Consider the following example to illustrate an operational exposure review.

A high-volume, high-value business unit secured by fencing around its perimeter generates empty corrugate as a byproduct of the inventory replenishment function. To remove this material, the operation employs the use of powered industrial trucks to drive the empty corrugate through a gate in the perimeter fence and on to a recycling location outside the area. Because of the volume of corrugate, a thorough inspection of the material at the exit gate by loss

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SUPPLY-CHAIN SHORTAGE CONTROL prevention personnel is impossible. This process is repeated several times daily, and from purely an operational perspective, it is effective.

A review from the perspective of operational exposure would reveal that this corrugate removal process, while effective functionally, circumvents shortage control hardware in place, namely the perimeter fence. Further, because of the volume of material and occurrences, a meaningful inspection at the exit gate is not possible.

The potential for internal shrink during this process is likely high.

In this example, exposure to shrink has been identified through the corrugate removal process. The goal here is to reduce or eliminate this operational exposure by modifying how the corrugate is processed.

Consider the following: ■ C ould the corrugate recycling process be brought within the confines of the perimeter fencing? If so, the operational elements creating exposure to shrink will be largely removed or eliminated altogether.

■ C ould the business change the way in which it removes corrugate from the area that would reduce the risk of loss? For example, could the corrugate be flattened, then palletized, and then removed from within? If so, a large portion of the risk of loss has also been removed.

The goal here is a challenging one.

After all, you are going to be asking the operation to change the way it does business. Compromises will likely be an element of any long-term solution.

However, intelligent changes made here will impact positively the health of the unit, and that is a result all the business partners can agree on.

Administrative Exposure.

Reviewing exposure to shrinkage from an administrative perspective involves analyzing current employee policy for the business unit within the context of both operational and physical shortage control measures. As matters of employee policy largely define how employees are permitted to interact with the environment in which they work, these policies should be consistent with measures to control shrinkage or at least not compete against them. Where administrative policy does

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not share alignment with operational and physical shortage control measures, exposure to shrink likely exists.

By way of illustration, an administrative issue that could have a direct impact on shrinkage is the employee dress code in certain business units. Employees working in a high-value area with easy access to individual merchandise units should reasonably have a dress code policy that deters against shrink, for example no pockets, no hats, and so forth. In this example, even if robust operational and physical shortage control measures have been established, if the dress code is weak or non-existent, administrative policy is actually undermining the entire shortage control effort.

When conducting this type of review, consider the following non-exhaustive administrative policy areas that could impact shortage control measures: ■ E mployee parking policy ■ B reak and meal times and locations of each ■ E mployee ID badge policy ■ B ackground check policy ■ D rug screening policy ■ C ell phone and electronic device policy ■ D iscount policy ■ S moking area policy ■ P urses and bag inspection policy ■ T ime clock policy Physical Exposure. The goal in this phase of review is simply to determine what pieces of physical hardware, such as

The goal for the loss prevention professional is first to identify exposure to shrink within the business type. Exposure simply means an area, process, practice, or condition in which or because of which loss is either occurring or likely to occur. Once exposure to loss is identified, shortage control measures can be directed at the exposure to either reduce or eliminate it.

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SUPPLY-CHAIN SHORTAGE CONTROL access control, CCTV, fencing, lighting, security personnel, alarm systems, and so forth, need to be present to best protect the business from shrink. The nature of the hardware desired will largely depend upon operational and administrative realities. Adjusting some component within the latter two areas will likely adjust the need for physical hardware as well. In any event, anywhere it is identified that a piece of hardware is lacking or does not complement the operational or administrative need of the unit, there is physical exposure and it should be remedied.

As with the operational review, a study of the business area must be performed. How does the movement of the business operation interact with current shortage control hardware?

Consider the following: ■ A re there sufficient physical controls in place to prevent or deter shrink in all desired areas?

■ A re the current controls intelligently dispersed into the operation?

A re the controls and measures used consistent with the value of the area and inventory to be protected?

■ A re controls consistent with the manner of inventory processing; in other words, is the operation largely automated or manual in nature?

■ I f modifications to the operation were made, what additional physical controls would be required; which could be re-purposed?

■ D oes the shortage control hardware complement the other measures within the unit?

■

Advocating the Intelligent

Sizable funds can and have been spent on shortage control measures

in businesses of all types. Conversely, the opposite is also true—not enough resources are deployed to protect against shrink, resulting in unnecessary loss.

An alignment between the business nature and type with the amount and expense of shortage control measures must be achieved. The closer this alignment, the healthier the business unit and supply chain. Being the advocate for the most intelligent ratio of shortage control measures to inventory value and risk of exposure is the desired position for the loss prevention professional. Assessing a business unit for shortage control sufficiency using the three-component approach described here will provide a pathway to effective shortage control.

ERIK NELSEN is the supply-chain loss prevention manager at JCPenney, an organization in which he has over fifteen years of experience. His tenure with JCPenney has afforded him the opportunity to serve the organization by providing leadership or interim leadership in several facilities and assisting with a number of network-impacting projects. Nelsen is also an attorney and small-business owner. He can be reached at eriknelsen@yahoo.com.

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MY TURN

Developing Your Own Loss Prevention Professional Brand T he loss prevention profession has undergone dramatic changes recently in regard to the skill set needed to be successful within the retail industry today. The historic experience level has taken a paradigm shift from possessing an extensive law enforcement background to being viewed as a retail professional that can collaborate well with key internal stakeholders and build support in order to protect company assets while increasing profitability.

Collaboration and salesmanship in my eyes have moved to the forefront of competencies required specifically for any LP professional expecting to maintain a successful career in the industry. As a result, industry practitioners now must be able to sell programs, solutions, and strategies that benefit the entire business, including sales and growth, profitability, customer experience, payroll, and brand protection.

In the 1970s and 1980s, service in local, state, and federal law enforcement was the required foundational experience for most loss prevention leaders. Today the ability to collaborate with business

You must first connect with people, empower others, and reproduce other influencers.

This evolutionary process doesn’t transpire overnight.

Loss prevention professionals must learn to create a sustainable personal brand that others desire to emulate and carry on long after you have parted ways.

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By Kevin J. Thomas, CFE, CFI, CBCP Thomas is the director of loss prevention and risk management for the PGA TOUR Superstores. Prior to joining the PGA TOUR Superstores, he managed the loss prevention programs at Columbia Sportswear and RaceTrac Petroleum. He earned both his Bachelor of Science in criminal justice and MBA in operations management from Troy University and can be reached at kthomas@pgatss.com.

partners has become the most important competency. The retail industry has begun to require loss prevention professionals to be more diversified in their skill sets as opposed to being considered too one-dimensional by today’s standards. As theft scenarios and policies involving such will remain, the strategies to address such must take into consideration the exposure liability and the impact on the greater customer base that drives sales. Loss prevention programs and solutions must strive to remain seamless and transparent to the internal and external customer base.

During a recent conversation with a young industry professional, I was asked, “How does an LP professional establish his or her own professional brand?” My response focused around two fundamental components: ■ Providing “WOW” customer service and ■ Continual professional development.

Providing “WOW” Customer Service

The first means delivering outstanding customer service to the various business units that LP traditionally supports, including finance, inventory accounting, operations, and human resources.

Customer service is not only answering your phone and responding to emails but also meeting much higher expectations. As the book Raving Fans by co-authors Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles indicates, there are three key principles that are pertinent to delivering a “WOW” customer service experience within any professional environment.

The first step is deciding what you want as your customer service model—how you want to be perceived by your executive leaders, internal peers, and business stakeholders. This not only impacts you as a leader but also resonates with the team you manage on a daily basis. Establish an individual and team presence within the organization that breeds collaboration as opposed to divisiveness. Focus on coalition verses silos, partnership not individualism. Distinguishing your customer service model definitely creates a communication segue to drive your department and team’s overall philosophy and ability to heighten awareness throughout your organization.

The second step to delivering this customer service concept is studying and analyzing your customer needs from a business support perspective. As with any new product launch, there’s a phase wherein the consumers’ needs are evaluated to ensure their needs are being addressed. Hence, you should test your customer service model constantly by obtaining feedback from your internal

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and external stakeholders to incorporate modifications to your vision as needed to be effective. No plan or blueprint to success works without changes being made throughout your professional journey. As internal and external business stakeholders need change, you as a professional must be adaptive in order to support these changes as well. The leader must anticipate these environmental changes and consider altering his or her three-, five-, or ten-year plan in order to remain aligned with the overall goals of the organization.

As business strategies and visions are shared internally, the leader must listen carefully and evaluate existing programs for the need to initiate changes required to optimize success.

Lastly, the third step of creating a “WOW” customer service support model is delivering your vision plus one percent.

In order to generate a raving fan, one must exceed every internal customer’s expectations on an ongoing basis, delivering a service to him or her that goes beyond the call of duty and creates a perception of consistency, which builds credibility. This will require a 360-degree evaluation of your customer service

philosophy and avoiding complacency with respect to meeting your internal customer needs. To provide this level of consistency, your “WOW” customer service model will need systems, training, and alignment with the corporation’s goals.

Continual Professional Development

The second fundamental component of establishing your personal loss prevention brand is continual professional development. Being a frequent reader of leadership and self-help books, I often refer back to a quote by Rick Warren in his book A Purpose Driven Life. He states, “The moment you stop learning, you stop leading.” My father ingrained this philosophy in me since my childhood.

Continual development doesn’t always include pursuing advanced collegiate degrees and certifications. However, it does take an unwavering passion to always work on your foundation as a professional in an effort to improve your skills as a leader. This can be achieved by identifying leadership publications by authors such as Jim Collins, Franklin Covey, Peter Drucker, and my personal

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favorite, John Maxwell. All of these authors provide unique methods of establishing leadership characteristics within yourself, which directly impacts your professional brand. Professional development has become a daily quest for me as a loss prevention practioner within the retail environment.

I’m often reminded that establishing a professional brand correlates closely with becoming a person of influence. You must first connect with people, empower others, and reproduce other influencers.

This evolutionary process doesn’t transpire overnight. Loss prevention professionals must learn to create a sustainable personal brand that others desire to emulate and carry on long after you have parted ways. Establishing a loss prevention brand isn’t the easiest.

My guidance to this beginning LP executive was development of both a “WOW” customer service model and a continual professional development plan.

This allows loss prevention professionals in the industry to create a set of positive attributes and characteristics associated with themselves throughout their journey in the industry.

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PERSPECTIVES

How Do Successful LP Leaders Lower Shrink?

By Leading T

By Brent Onan Onan is a seventeen-year veteran of loss prevention.

He was a director of LP at Nordstrom, prior to which he served at Old Navy. Onan is currently vice president of sales at USS, a role he’s had for the past two years. He holds a bachelor’s degree in criminology.

LP leader serves a dual role—preventing loss and enabling sales.

Unfortunately, some companies tend to focus on cutting costs so much that they also cut labor, leaving stores understaffed or without sufficient training. This can be short-sighted, I believe, because with fewer staff the customer service inevitably suffers as well.

Preventing Internal Theft

by Setting a Personal Example

hieves are not the only ones who impact shrink. In fact, they may not even be the biggest factor in a store’s overall shrinkage. The most important lesson I learned in my seventeen years in loss prevention is that what shrink depends on the most is the store culture created and maintained by the store leader. A responsible leader who coaches and develops people, who addresses issues in a timely manner, and who leads by example will instill the sense of ownership in his or her employees. The result is a store environment that fosters higher sales and lower losses.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of loss prevention knows that shrink comes from three sources—process errors, internal theft, and external theft. A responsible leader can impact employees’ decisions in all three of those areas. Here are some specific examples that I have witnessed firsthand.

Lowering External Theft through Better Customer Service

I recently visited a customer’s store in Yulee, Florida. Within thirty seconds of walking in, I was greeted by an associate at the register, an associate in the accessories department, and the manager on duty. I was duly impressed. I remember thinking that to an honest customer, that’s one welcoming and attentive store, but to a thief, what an intimidating environment. And for the store, it’s a win-win.

Thieves don’t like attention. They don’t want to be remembered and recognized. So for external theft, the ultimate deterrent is great customer service. From this it follows that the LP leader’s first job is training the store employees to respond in the right way when they see a person walking in. This training is best done outside the classroom in the store environment, working side-by-side. As the leader sets the example, the employees tend to follow. This is how a positive store culture begins to be established.

Great customer service does not just deter theft, of course; it also keeps good customers coming back to shop more. So this is a double-edged sword in a good way—less shrink and more sales equals more profit. By focusing on customer service, the

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In my early days in loss prevention, one of my mentors taught me an important lesson. A small percentage of people we encounter, he would say, are inclined to do bad things, and no one will change them. Another small percentage of people would never steal under any circumstances—they are just built that way.

The rest—the majority—we can influence one way or the other.

And here is, perhaps, the most wide-reaching way the LP leader can impact his or her organization.

An employee’s decision to steal from the company, whether it’s to take cash, pass merchandise to a friend, or participate in refund fraud, is often tied to how he or she perceives the store and the company. Does the employee think he or she is treated unfairly by the management? That the company does not care?

That the store is disorganized, so no one will notice funny business? Does the employee see the manager break rules, take shortcuts, waste resources, or behave in a questionable manner?

The yes-answer to any of these questions can tip the employee’s attitude in the wrong direction, and he or she may do something dishonest should the opportunity arise.

From all this it follows that the leader’s job is two-fold when it comes to internal theft. First, the leader must behave in the way he or she expects the employees to behave. Nothing new there—this is the Golden Rule that’s been in the books since there were books.

And second, the leader must foster the culture of open and honest conversation within the organization, starting with himself or herself. Employees must feel empowered to take action when they notice something amiss. They should also feel confident that when they bring something to the manager’s attention, the manager will take appropriate action while protecting the whistle-blower’s identity when needed and possible.

Reducing Process Errors

by Active Involvement

A seasoned LP professional can tell a lot about a store’s likelihood to have a high shrink level by simple observation. Are

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employees smiling? Are they offering assistance or standing behind the counter on their cell phones? Is the store organized, clean, and clutter-free? Are the fixtures dusted? The store does not need to be perfect—it’s retail after all—and merchandise does not stay in its place for too long. But it should be apparent that everyone from the top down cares and has a sense of ownership.

Sloppiness in the general look of the store usually betrays sloppiness in all other aspects of the store’s operation. Take for example re-ticketing errors: a customer brings an item with no price tag to the register. If the employee doesn’t know that the store is supposed to be neat and organized, will he or she know the process for finding the right price? And will such an employee care enough to follow the process or just make up the price on the go? Sloppiness impacts shrink especially in shoe departments—shoes get split up, and you end up with a bunch of boxes with just one shoe in each. There go your sales. Profit erosion from sloppiness is also evident in buy-X-get-one-free promotions. Free does not mean don’t ring one up.

To combat shrink from process errors, an LP leader should be engaged every single day—not just checking boxes off the clipboard, but really engaged with the daily operations and with each employee. My favorite slogan for many years has been this—see it, say it, do it. One of the best practices I’ve witnessed many times over my career is watching a leader roll up the sleeves and do something that isn’t pleasant. Truck late? The leader rolls up the sleeves and helps unload it. Bathroom seen a better day, but associates are busy? The leader grabs a mop and

cleans it personally. When you show that you are not above those tasks, people recognize that. In fact, you often don’t have to say anything—people recognize when they see you set an example.

Developing Future Leaders

The LP leaders that I have observed to have the biggest impact on shrink are those who do all of the above, plus take the time to develop more leaders. This makes perfect sense since one person can only do so much, but a whole team of like-minded people, spread throughout the organization, can accelerate company performance exponentially.

How does one start to develop people? I noticed that it’s the small things that can make a big difference, for example being there to greet the new folks on their first day, having the training plan ready before they show up for work, and working with employees side-by-side and setting a positive example.

At the same time, it is important to encourage employees to navigate on their own. Allow them to make mistakes and then coach through the process.

My mentor from my first LP job is still with the company, still excelling at his work. But even more importantly, he developed and placed more than a dozen excellent people in leadership positions throughout the organization. Some of his protégés have gone to other companies where they are making a positive impact thanks to the culture they’ve lived under. We used to call this the tree with many branches. And it’s a wonderful tree—one that delivers results for the organization, helps people better themselves, and one day leaves a legacy of excellence behind.

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DIGITAL DIALOGUE

“All Thumbs” Has Taken on New Meaning F

By Jacque Brittain, LPC Brittain is editorial director, digital, for LP Magazine. Formerly a director of learning design and certification, Brittain managed the development of the LPC and LPQ certification programs in collaboration with the Loss Prevention Foundation. Prior to that he was vice president of operations for the industry’s largest executive search and consulting firm. In his thirty-plus years in the LP industry, he has helped build and enhance many learning initiatives and provided career counseling for thousands of industry professionals. Brittain can be reached at jacb@lpportal.com or by phone at 704-246-3143.

or generations the term “all thumbs” has generally insinuated someone who is physically awkward or clumsy, lacking skill or grace, especially with respect to the hands. While the term has always inferred a certain lack of coordination, it has taken on new meaning in the new age of technology, especially in reference to the use of hand-held smartphones. Given the relatively diminutive size of smartphone keyboards, it is absolutely astounding and perplexing to watch the skill and dexterity by which so many today are able to manipulate the devices and deliver messages with just these digits.

The thumb, unlike other fingers, is opposable. It is the only digit on the human hand that is able to oppose or turn back against the other four fingers and thus enables the hand to refine its grip to hold objects that it would be unable to do otherwise.

The opposable thumb has helped the human species develop more accurate fine motor skills. Can you image trying to zip a zipper, button a shirt, open a jar, or tie a shoe without your thumbs? In fact, most scientists hypothesize that by enabling fine motor skills, the thumb has in many ways helped to promote the development of the human brain.

In many ways, smartphones and other mobile devices have become another appendage that may very likely influence human evolution as we move forward. We are changing our personal and professional habits in direct response to these tools, and it’s transforming the world.

Bookmarking the Present

The knowledge and information of human and global history is literally at our fingertips, along with the rhetoric of the masses as they share their thoughts, ideas, and opinions on everything from world peace to pizza. We can use our smartphones to communicate in any number of ways using words, voices, and vision to express and articulate our message to someone in another room or another country. We can take photos and videos, read a story, get directions, buy merchandise, organize our schedules, and manage our loss prevention programs with the touch of a screen and the slide of a finger. We can even use our phones to monitor our heartbeats or our sleep patterns.

By the same respect, the grip that loss prevention professionals have on their smartphones is changing the way that we interact and communicate. While attending the latest industry conferences and watching the attendees maneuver through the sessions, exposition halls, and other events with their phones in hand, the influence that mobile devices have had on our profession was quite apparent.

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Conference apps help us navigate through the conference events. Smartphones allow us more freedom to multitask, taking messages, making phone calls, sharing information, and managing ongoing responsibilities from the conference floor. In many ways, these events bookmark the industry from year to year, and it’s a much different world than it was just a few short years ago. So much has changed, and it’s only just the beginning.

The same holds true for those throughout the industry as loss prevention professionals continue to work through their daily responsibilities. Advancements in loss prevention technology are compounding the value of these devices on almost a daily basis, with endless possibilities to the ways that they can be used to monitor, review, report, investigate, and manage the loss prevention function.

The tools of technology have become the norm, expanding our reach and reshaping how we approach the business in ways that we never saw coming. And as millennials continue to forge their place in a new age of loss prevention, these current trends will only continue to escalate, establishing a new standard that will lead to more original and innovative possibilities.

Growing Pains

No matter how progressive or amazing these innovations might prove to be, there is still a period of adjustment that takes place as we respond to the changes and accept a new way of approaching the world. And as we adjust, we are going to make mistakes.

An obvious example involves the dangers of texting and driving. Those using a mobile phone while driving are four times more likely to be involved in a motor vehicle accident, and current statistics indicate that nine Americans are killed every day as the result of distracted driving such as texting or using a mobile device.

But there are other health concerns. Recent studies indicate that those age eighteen to twenty-four send and receive almost 4,000 texts per month on average, and many of those who are frequently hunched over their mobile devices are experiencing headaches, neck pain, and shoulder pain in rapidly growing numbers.

“Text neck” is the term coined to describe pain that manifests from the curved posture created by extensive use of a mobile device. An adult head weighs ten to twelve pounds in a neutral position, but by tilting it forward, the force it exerts on the neck can surge—up to sixty pounds when the head is tilted by sixty

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so that we don’t injure ourselves. Other lessons may only be learned through the school of hard knocks. But each of us needs to remain aware of how the technology is altering our lives and our habits to minimize the pain and maximize the value.

degrees. Medical reports indicate that this may lead to early wear, tear, and degeneration of the vertebrae in the neck as a result.

Missed Opportunity

Social interaction is also impacted in different ways. For example, when five or six people are standing together, none of them are talking to each other, and all of them have their eyes glued to their smartphones, we can conclude that the world is changing; or when someone takes—and remains—on a phone call when they are in the middle of a discussion with someone standing right in front of them; or when someone regularly texts a friend, coworker, or family member in the next room rather than making the effort to stand up and walk to speak with them. When someone pretends to be on a phone call or will only send emails or text messages to avoid talking to others, we know we’ve had a shift in our paradigm.

There are those walking into traffic or off a cliff because they have their heads buried in their phones. In one recent story, video captured a man sitting on a boat so focused on his smartphone that he never noticed a whale jumping out of the water right behind him.

As these new devices are being introduced, the rules are changing, and new habits are being formed. Some are easy fixes, like practicing better manners or learning to better manage posture

Rule of Thumb

Digital Dialogue was founded as a direct result of how we interact with the world of technology and digital communication.

Smartphones and similar mobile devices are revolutionizing retail, the loss prevention industry, and the way that we are able to bring information to you. This is a time of tremendous opportunity and an exciting time to be part of a dynamic and evolving industry.

But as a rule of thumb, we have to respect the power of these devices as much as we enjoy the benefits that they bring.

We have to remain aware of the different ways that they are influencing our habits as well as the ways that they are improving our lives. We have to make sure that we continue to manage the devices, rather than allowing them to manage us.

We’ve all heard the expression, “You can either jump on board, or get left behind.” The answer to that has always been pretty simple—no one wants to be left behind. But when we make the jump, it’s still a wise decision to minimize the bumps and bruises that we get along the way.

CALENDAR July 18–20, 2016 Security100 Summits Security100 Retail Chateau Elan Winery & Resort Braselton, GA security100summits.com

August 24, 2016 Georgia Retail Association 6th Annual GRAORCA Retail Crime Conference AmericasMart, Atlanta, GA graorca.org

July 24–27, 2016 Restaurant Loss Prevention & Security Association Annual Conference La Cantera Hills Resort San Antonio, TX rlpsa.com

August 25, 2016 Chicago Cyber Security Summit Hyatt Regency Chicago cybersummitusa.com

July 25–26, 2016 Organized Retail Crime Association of Idaho Second Annual Conference Boise State University, Boise, ID orcaid.org July 29–August 1, 2016 Florida Retail Federation Third Annual LP Conference Marriott World Center Orlando, FL frf.org August 8–10, 2016 Axis Retail Leadership Forum Grand Hyatt Denver, CO axis.com/retailforum

September 7–8, 2016 International Supply Chain Protection Organization 2016 Conference Fossil Group Headquarters Richardson, TX iscpo.org September 8, 2016 Carolinas Organized Retail Crime Alliance Annual Conference Renaissance Charlotte (NC) Suites Hotel corca.org September 12–15, 2016 ASIS International 62nd Annual Seminar and Exhibits Orange County Convention Center Orlando, FL asisonline.org

September 21, 2016 New York Cyber Security Summit Grand Hyatt New York cybersummitusa.com September 27–29, 2016 Loss Prevention Magazine Loss Prevention Foundation Annual Meeting Sanibel Harbour Marriott Resort & Spa Fort Myers, FL info@lpportal.com October 3–5, 2016 Loss Prevention Research Council 12th Annual IMPACT Conference University of Florida Reitz Union Gainesville, FL lpresearch.org October 25–28, 2016 Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail Seventh Annual CLEAR Training Conference Silver Legacy Resort Reno, NV clearusa.org October 27, 2016 Los Angeles Cyber Security Summit Fairmont Miramar Hotel cybersummitusa.com

For more information about these and other industry events, visit the Events page at LossPreventionMedia.com.

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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE Alexis Flores González is now East Coast ORC Manager at Abercrombie & Fitch; Caglar Ari is now Sr. District Manager, AP for Abercrombie & Fitch, UK / Ireland; and Sassy Sarr is now District Manager, AP for Abercrombie & Fitch, France.

Randy Nickerson was promoted to Managing Director of LP, Audit & Firearms Compliance at Dunham’s Sports.

Ben Borer, LPC is now Director of LP Operations/Omni Channel at American Eagle Outfitters.

Kristine Gentilella was named VP of LP at Family Dollar Stores.

Derrick Boyd was also named Market LP Manager for the retailer.

Dave Norville and Jake Sawyer are now Area LP Managers at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

John Goldyn was named LP Director at BevMo! Tom Meehan, CFI was promoted to Director of Technology and Investigations at Bloomingdale’s.

Andrew A. Porterfield was promoted to Area LP Manager at The Exchange.

Jim Kallin is now Regional LP Manager at Finish Line.

James Grinevics was promoted to Sr. Regional LP Manager at Forever 21.

Jim Kerr was promoted to Sr. Director of LP at Group O.

Ken Boremi, CFI, LPC was promoted to VP of Store Operations and LP; and Marc Lambert, CFI, LPC was promoted to Director of Field LP at Brookstone.

Charmion Robinson is now Regional LP Manager at Gymboree.

Robert Street and Brian Maxwell were promoted to District LP Managers; Pamela Nuzzo was named Internal Investigations Coordinator; and Brooke Robinson was promoted to Regional LP Manager at Burlington Stores.

Tonia Rees is now Regional LP Manager at GameStop.

Trish Benney is now Regional LP Director at CarMax. Jesse Young was named Corporate LP Manager at Charlotte Russe.

Joseph Biffar, CFE, CFI was promoted to Director, LP and Security, at Chicos, FAS. Stefanie Hoover, CFI was named National Account Manager at CONTROLTEK USA. Ted Dulles was named Director of Internal Audit at Crate & Barrel.

Bradley Zaretsky is now Regional LP Manager at CVS Health.

Ean Bressack was named VP of LP at David Yurman.

Dan Jackson, Ciera Hilton, and Reggie Moore were named Regional LP Managers at Delhaize America.

Nelson Badillo, CFI, LPC, and Justin Voss, LPC are now District LP Managers at DICK’S Sporting Goods.

Leo Anguiano, LPC was named Sr. Director of LP at Dollar Express.

Alex Jones and Alicia Beebe-Allen are now Sr. LP Agents at The Duck Store.

Andrew Barborak, CFI was promoted to Director of LP at Gander Mountain.

Omar Kahn was named Sr. Manager, Forensics at Hilton Worldwide.

Kathleen Eaton was promoted to VP of AP, and Brad Bullock was named Corporate LP Manager at The Home Depot.

Sonia Haro and Matt Hollingsworth were promoted to District LP Managers at HomeGoods.

Dale Loope, SRT, ATO was promoted to Retail LP and Safety Business Partner at HSN. Adam Myers is now Regional LP Manager at HVHC Visionworks.

Lewis Jones was named Regional LP Director, and Jason Hobbs is now Area LP Manager at JCPenney.

Wally Crosno was named Sr. Manager Investigations, and Michael Bruce II was promoted to District LP Manager at Kohl’s Department Stores.

Amanda Pritters is now Area LP Manager, and Wade Kelly was named Regional LP Manager at L Brands.

Steven England is now Regional LP Investigator at LIDS Sports Group.

Brett St. Martin was promoted to LP & Operations Support Director, and Aaron Wilson was named District Manager of LP & Safety at Lowe’s Home Improvement.

Zachary Smith was promoted to Director, LP and Corporate Security, at Lucky Brand.

Kevin Uhe was promoted to District Manager of Investigations at Macy’s.

Suzanne (Castle) Clift is now District LP Manager at Marshalls.

Vincent Petitclerc was promoted to Director, LP & Inventory Control, at Canada chez Michael Kors.

Garrett Atkins, LPC is now District LP Manager at NAPA Auto Parts.

Stan King, CFE was promoted to Corporate LP Manager, Shortage/Audit at Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM).

Michael Lynch is now Regional LP Manager at Neiman Marcus.

Laura (Berry) Brown CFI was named Corporate LP Manager/Director at NEN National Entertainment Network.

Steve Fahey was named SVP of Operations, Brad King was named Sr. Director of LP, and John Pappas was named Sr. Regional LP Manager at New York & Company.

Mike Triesch was promoted to National LP Program Director, and Michael Hutto is now Regional LP Manager at Nordstrom.

Ryin Francis is now Market LP Manager at Old Navy.

William Biggins was named Director of LP at Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.

Randy Bock was named Director of LP at Phantom Fireworks.

Scott Evans was named Director of National Sales at NuTech National.

David Arena is now Regional LP Manager at Payless Shoesource.

Chance Bowlin, CFI was promoted to Director of LP Support at PETCO Animal Supplies.

Protection 1 made the following changes: Dwain Prochaska as Commercial Sales Manager for Small Business, Tim Kudela as Branch Sales Manager for the Seattle office, Rob Barker as General Manager in Las Vegas, Jim Cannon as Commercial Sales Manager in Charlotte, Mike Hansen Branch Sales Manager in San Diego, and Tatum Mathis as Branch Sales Manager in Wichita.

Scott Byers was named Corporate LP Manager at Rexall.

Martin H. Lisitza, CFI is now Regional LP Manager at LP Innovations.

Rocateq USA named Tim Bartkowiak, LPC as VP of Sales and Marketing, Steve Kromdyk and Craig Swayze as National Account Sales Managers, and Michelle Stratton as Sales Representative.

Chuck Lindow, LPC is now District AP Manager at Rite Aid. Jared Brown is now District LP Manager at Safeway.

Jason Crisp, CFI is now Regional LP Manager at Sally Beauty.

Vk Moore was promoted to National Field Safety Manager at Sears Holdings.

Jennifer (Gisbert) Reutgen is now District LP Manager at Sephora.

Rick Casey, CFI was promoted to Regional LP Supervisor at Shopko Stores.

Sean Finegan, CFI is now Regional LP Manager at Signet Jewelers.

Allan Watters was named SVP of AP at Stage Stores. Sean Schmidt, Yvonne Zapalac, Christopher Dyess, and John Watson were made Market AP Managers.

Kate O’Connor was promoted to Group VP, Adam Kupchella was promoted to Sr. Director of AP, Emy Johnson was promoted to Director, Theft & Fraud Operations AP, and James H. Kendall, MS was promoted to Lead Business Partner, ORC Special Investigations at Target Stores.

Oscar Lopez was promoted to ORC Investigator, National Task Force, and Marc Marraccini, LPC was named LP Investigator at TJX. Michael Jones was promoted to National Investigations Manager for TJX Europe.

Marc Abramson, CFI was promoted to Regional LP Manager, and Tobias Sorrell, CFI and Meghan Fechko are now Area LP Managers at Ulta Beauty.

Claude Verville, LPC was named Chief Operating Officer at USS. Jonathon Burris, LPC was named Regional Director, AP Solutions, and Mary Ross Cuestas is now Multi-Unit AP Manager at Walgreens Boots Alliance.

Joni Gehrs was promoted to Global Investigator, and Rory MacDonald, CFI, LPQ, Jesse LaFan, Jesse LaFan, and Troy Ware were promoted to Market AP Managers at Walmart.

April Burke Doyle is now District LP Manager at Winners.

To stay up-to-date on the latest career moves as they happen, sign up for LP Insider, the magazine’s daily e-newsletter, or visit the Professional Development page on the magazine’s website, LossPreventionMedia.com. Information for People on the Move is provided by the Loss Prevention Foundation, Loss Prevention Recruiters, Jennings Executive Recruiting, and readers like you. To inform us of a promotion or new hire, email us at peopleonthemove@LPportal.com.

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PARTING WORDS

Thinking About Things I’ve Been Thinking About

I

’ve been thinking about the two major retail conferences I attended this year, both of which catered to the young person. A big hats off to those retailers who bring mid-level executives and require them to attend the sessions and visit the exhibit hall.

Here were the attendees’ choices—receptions, parties, sitting in a bar, staying up late, exhibit hall, non-LP speakers, LP educational sessions, vendor-sponsored events, sightseeing in the city, golf, seeing old friends, making new ones, and eating. I might have missed a couple. Been thinking that is a lot of choices.

Been thinking that I need to work on my attitude. It should be a work in progress, not a completed work. I need to admit that when things don’t always go well, it may be my fault. I need to say why I like things, not why I don’t. I have to be more willing to help others without expectations.

Being cynical is a trait you learn in this business, but don’t bring it home.

Been thinking that there is really only one real objective in loss prevention—protecting the company brand. Would not every C-level executive be happy if everything that was done protected the brand and did not cause any embarrassment?

That goes for the vendor world as well. People lose their job for failing to deal with an exposure or creating a mess. Rightfully so, executives react quickly to this and make a change.

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Jim Lee, LPC Executive Editor What is not right is when they get it wrong, and C-level arrogance makes an emotional change. Been thinking about those mid- and top-level executives who have been victims of such naive decision making. Good that these people have the fortitude and resiliency to get back in the saddle; we need them in the industry.

Been thinking about the little things that the best in this business seem to have in common. Here are a few to think about. They start each day by believing it is going to be a great day. They don’t waste their time on negative people who can bring them down. When you shake their hand, they smile and exude enthusiasm. As bad as a situation might be, they respond to it in the positive.

Been thinking about the counsel I can give to young people in the business wanting to climb the ladder and make a great career. I would tell them it is a lot like baseball. I love going to the ball park, enjoying the evening and sounds of the game. I would tell them that to be successful, you must learn how to avoid the tag. If you are cocky, self-centered, arrogant, and a know-it-all and try running into second base standing up, you will eventually get tagged out. You must be a good listener, be accepting, be positive, and learn how to slide to avoid the tag—and head first is okay.

Been thinking that I need to work on my attitude. It should be a work in progress, not a completed work. I need to admit that when things don’t always go well, it may be my fault. I need to say why I like things, not why I don’t. I have to be more willing to help others without expectations. Being cynical is a trait you learn in this business, but don’t bring it home. Also, all of us need to count our blessings.

Been thinking about how many times I have heard someone say to me, “See you later and don’t work too hard.” I always take that as a positive that someone thinks I am working hard and trying to be successful; I hope so. So to all of you, “Don’t work too hard.”

Lastly and in keeping with our fifteenth anniversary, I leave this question for the magazine historians. We have interviewed over ninety executives. Only three have been interviewed more than once. Who are they? Hint: they all retired from their last jobs.

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