Tips to curb Employee Pilferage, the killer of retail pharmacies

Any person or organization can own a pharmacy provided they employ the qualified personnel to operate it. Apart from pharmacists or pharmaceutical technologists, when they are operating their own single pharmacy, they are usually engaged in other activities leaving the day-to-day running of the pharmacy to an employee. However, finding trustworthy staff is challenging, and theft by pharmacy employees is a significant threat to the business.

Staff pilferage has led to the failure of many retail pharmacies, giving pharmacy owners a hard time implementing workable solutions to protect their businesses. Some pharmacy owners believe that using a cloud-based pharmacy POS system, which allows for inventory monitoring from anywhere, can prevent theft. However, this approach is not more effective than an offline POS system. Neither does being able to access your inventory remotely increase the number of clients buying from your pharmacy.

Employees steal physical items or money, not just figures in a system. Monitoring remotely can give a false sense of security, as the system may show a product as available while it has been stolen. Operating without an inventory management system, whether web-based or on-premise, is the worst scenario.

Potential points of theft at Retail pharmacy

It is important to understand the unique nature of your pharmacy and the potential loopholes that your staff may take advantage of and economically sabotage your business. Here are a few.

1. Failure to record a purchase

Some undocumented and unauthorized individuals hawk pharmaceuticals at a cheaper price than mainstream wholesalers. Popularly known as cargo. Due to untraceability of such transactions, staff may purchase and sell such items without recording and pocket the profits thereof.

2. Selling own products

Some pharmacy staff have their own pharmacies. In some instances, some crooks may take the opportunity and sell their slow-moving stock at the pharmacy where they are employed.

3. Item lifting

This may occur when the staff may take medications for themselves or their family and fail to pay for them. In other cases, the staff may shoplift to sell to another pharmacy.

4. Cash Theft

Most pilferage in retail pharmacies occurs through cash transactions. Staff may dispense products without recording the transactions, leading to discrepancies between system records and actual stock.

Strategies to Minimize Pilferage

1. Stable and Reliable Inventory Management System:

Invest in a dependable POS system, either web-based or offline. Ensure the system is free from functional bugs to maintain credible and reliable records. This way, any errors can be attributed to human mistakes, not system flaws.

2. Dedicated Cashier:

Assign specific staff members to handle payment at designated point to ensure accountability and reduce the chance of theft.

3. Mandated Receipt Policy:

Display posters informing customers to ask for system-generated receipts for every transaction. This ensures all sales are recorded, making it harder for staff to cheat.

4. Legal Employment Contract:

Include clauses in employment contracts that hold staff accountable for any unaccountable variance between system records and actual stock. Ensure your POS system is reliable and traceable to support this clause.

5. Considerate and Human Approach:

Balance strictness with motivation to ensure staff morale. For example, it is better to treat extra money paid by customers and product samples from medical representatives as personal gifts to staff rather than demand they be counted as pharmacy income and stock respectively.

6. CCTV

Most pharmacies have implemented this security measure, but it is not efficient by itself. It is time-consuming and uneconomical to watch whole-day recordings unless you are reviewing a specific time. With the increase in internet connectivity, it is now possible to monitor your CCTV footage remotely.

Security Investment:

You cannot fence a person morally and a determined thief will find ways to bypass any security measure you may put in place. The most secure and foolproof anti-staff pilferage system is having trustworthy staff. Unfortunately, it is hard to find one. Therefore, the above measures are an attempt to minimize the loss due to staff theft.

Investing in security systems, despite the initial cost, is crucial. The return on investment from reduced pilferage and increased stock accountability justifies the expenditure.

Dawascope PIMS:

This is a reliable and stable Pharmacy POS system that is designed with the considerations of the above challenges and embedded with proper security measures that are to help minimize staff pilferage. With continuous updates, you get new features that are useful to your pharmacy business. Read here a case study of some of the pharmacies that are using Dawascope PIMS.

It is easy to deploy Dawascope PIMS in your pharmacy. Visit https://dawascope.co.ke, and register your pharmacy to download and install.