The following memorandum written by a director of a security and safety consulting service discusses a critical issue effecting business in our economy today, that of employee theft. "Our research indicated that, over past six years, no incident of employee theft have been reported within ten of the companies that have been our clients. In analyzing the security practices of these ten companies, we have further learned that each of them requires its employees to wear photo identification badges while at work. In the future, we should recommend the uses of such identification badges to all of our clients." The issue of employee theft is a broad problem and has different labels to identify it, shrinkage for the retail industry and hidden profit loss in the technology sector are serval examples of common terms used for employee theft. The author of this memorandum presents several data points and suggests one recommendation to effect the issue of employee theft based on a sampling of the client population. The overall recommendation of "the use of such identification badges to all of our clients." sounds reasonible. A closer look at the conclusion that identification badges alone will resolve the greater issue of employee theft is difficult to support with the amount and type of data given. In today's complex business environment, an identification badge would not address much greater corporate assets and their protection. To the technology industry for example, intellectual property assets are the heart and arguably the primary essence of success for some companies. There seems to be a great deal of unknown evidence that the author is basing this conclusion on when he states "...we have further learned that each of them requires its employees to wear photo identification badges while at work." To make this recommendation of identification badges more meaningful, it would be advantageous to explore other improvements that could work in ...
