Workers must be swayed towards honesty

DURBAN – With research showing 40 per cent of employees to be inherently dishonest, only 15 percent honest, and 45 per cent in between, companies are advised to sway those 45 per cent towards honesty.

This came from corporate security specialist Jenny Reid during an address to the SA Revenue Protection Association’s annual general meeting in Durban recently. A statement from her company, GriffithsReid, read that she told the function that employees were responsible for more than 70 per cent of incidents relating to unauthorised access to confidential company information.”The cost of an average intruder attack (when somebody within the system hacks information) is R16,5 million whereas the average outside attack (by a general hacker) costs R360,000,” said Reid.In Britain, fraud losses amounted to R215 billion and in the United States in 2002 it was close to R5 trillion, she said.”In South Africa this cost is estimated to be in the region of R40 billion per annum,” she said.Reid said the best way to influence worker behaviour was to introduce awareness programmes to build a culture of honesty and integrity.She said that in addition to mechanisms to motivate and support the 45 per cent “middle group” to work with the 15 per cent “honest group”, companies could stem losses through staff-screening policies.”Between 13 and 18 per cent of people we screen have criminal records, 19 percent have bad credit ratings and between 25 and 30 per cent of all qualifications we check are invalid.”-Nampa-SapaA statement from her company, GriffithsReid, read that she told the function that employees were responsible for more than 70 per cent of incidents relating to unauthorised access to confidential company information.”The cost of an average intruder attack (when somebody within the system hacks information) is R16,5 million whereas the average outside attack (by a general hacker) costs R360,000,” said Reid.In Britain, fraud losses amounted to R215 billion and in the United States in 2002 it was close to R5 trillion, she said.”In South Africa this cost is estimated to be in the region of R40 billion per annum,” she said.Reid said the best way to influence worker behaviour was to introduce awareness programmes to build a culture of honesty and integrity.She said that in addition to mechanisms to motivate and support the 45 per cent “middle group” to work with the 15 per cent “honest group”, companies could stem losses through staff-screening policies.”Between 13 and 18 per cent of people we screen have criminal records, 19 percent have bad credit ratings and between 25 and 30 per cent of all qualifications we check are invalid.”-Nampa-Sapa