Stopping the clock on employee time theft

Time thieves can become time fraudsters in the right conditions. Protect your employees and organizations by suggesting to top management and human resources departments that they embed sophisticated time-tracking software, procedures and training.

A growing subtle threat of time theft in the workplace jeopardizes developing organizations, according to time-keeping software companies. Employees can unknowingly and casually steal time. Or they can willingly and fraudulently malinger. Time theft can morph into serious crimes, such as payroll fraud schemes. (See the sidebar, Ghost employees haunt organizations' payrolls.)

Charlie worked as an hourly, full-time staff accountant for a CPA firm. He usually punched in the digital time clock at 9 a.m. and punched out at 9 p.m. He always scattered his desk with files and papers to give the impression that he was overloaded with work. After punching in, he’d wander the building socializing with many of the employees and partners for up to 90 minutes each day.

Back at his desk, Charlie would spend a couple of hours catching up on his personal emails. Because both the firm and Charlie used Gmail for business, only the firm’s computer division could tell if he was sending personal or work messages. So, the perception to everybody else who passed by his office would be that he was working and using Gmail to send business emails.