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•Loss Prevention: The Bridge That Connects You

By Gus Downing, CEO Downing & Downing, Inc.

Our industry delivers a service to the nations' retailers that deals with the negative aspects of its customer and employee populations. This negativity in effect automatically creates defensive and, in some cases, adversarial responses that have an impact on the relationships we have with others in our organizations. While our productivity is scrutinized, monitored, measured, and expected, it has a direct correlation to increasing the risk of negatively affecting our future success by creating barriers within the employee populations that we audit, train, and investigate.

This double-edged sword of increasing risk as a result of increased performance is present in all industries. But nowhere else is it as pronounced as it is in the loss prevention industry.

At its core our industry is expected to audit, train, and investigate its employee and customer populations for theft and procedural compliance. These actions alone automatically separates us as a social group within these populations and creates an us-versus-them atmosphere that everyone feels, but few talk about or even admit exists.

Especially at the entry-level positions, this relationship is fueled by a lack of business maturity and the fact that our functions can be self-perceived as increased control over others, which feeds the ego and ultimately decreases our ability to communicate within the employee populations that we are so dependent upon for information, behavior modification, and acceptance.

Click Here To Download:
•Loss Prevention: The Bridge That Connects You