34 minute read
ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT
New Findings in Employee- Theft Research
As many of you know, I have been researching employee theft, occupational crime, dishonesty, and workplace deviance for nearly thirty years. Regularly I peruse the scholarly journals and academic publications in the library looking for new research studies that can help us all better understand this phenomenon. This column will feature a couple of studies that may shed some new light on this continuing problem. I have included the full citations so you can find these publications online or in your local library to read and share with your staff. If you can’t find the articles, send me an email, and I will try to get the original sources to you. If you do not have direct access to a major research library, try using googlescholar.com.
The first article is authored by Elizabeth Ehrhardt Mustaine (University of Central Florida) and Richard Tewksbury (University of Louisville) and published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice 27:1 (pages 111 – 127, 2002). This is a relatively recent study of employee theft that surveyed a large population of college students attending a number of major universities. Since existing research suggests that many dishonest employees are younger, part-time, untenured, and dissatisfied, these two researchers concluded that college students would make an ideal sample of employees to survey about their occupational criminal behavior.
They conducted a self-report survey of 1,531 students in the fall of 1996 asking them to report personal demographics, opportunity, and previous theft activities. The findings are consistent with a number of other studies (including mine), but with some rather unique results. The authors found that three factors differentiate between those who admitted stealing at work from those who did not. Some of these predictors included theft behaviors that occurred in other settings.
For example, most impressive was the fact that students who have admitted that they recently have broken into a motor vehicle were almost fourteen (13.87) times more likely to steal from their employers. Moreover, students who have recently stolen something from a stranger were over four times (4.35) more likely to steal at work. Also of significant interest was the fact that ex-convicts were nearly four times (3.59) more likely to admit stealing from their place of work than those respondents who have never been sent to prison.
There were a few other findings of interest. Alcohol use was related to admitting stealing at work. Public intoxication, but not drug use, predicted admitted workplace theft. College students who reported that they have been drunk in public were 1.56 times more likely to admit stealing while at work. Finally, the more jobs that a
by Richard C. Hollinger, Ph.D.
Dr. Hollinger is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is also director of the Security Research Project, which annually conducts the National Retail Security Survey (soccrim.clas.ufl.edu/criminology/srp/srp.html). Dr. Hollinger can be reached at rhollin@ufl.edu or 352-294-7175. © 2012 Richard C. Hollinger
student has had in the past and the more often these jobs involved cash handling was also related to workplace theft, but at a lower level of predictive power.
We must remember that this study was conducted with college students and used self-reported indicators of workplace theft. Nevertheless, even with this caveat about the sample, the policy implications are significant. ■ First, drug testing may be a good indicator of current and future drug use, but may not be the best indicator of theft behavior. ■ Second, criminal background checks that screen out applicants with prior convictions that resulted in incarceration are obviously supported by this screening practice. ■ Third, as we know in social science, the best indicators of future behavior is past behavior, especially when we consider that stealing in non-employment situations is a very good predictor of workplace theft.
The principal paradox of this study is the finding that with the exception of the above factors, most of which retailers screen
for already, the average college student who does not steal is not dramatically different from the one who does. Since we rely on these young people for a substantial proportion of the retail workforce, there is clearly no “silver bullet” that can distinguish those who will steal at work from those who will not.
The second study that I would like to draw attention to is an excellent master’s thesis written in May of 2009 by Edith Marie Fikes who studied at the University of Texas in Arlington. Unlike many studies, such as the one above that rely upon self-report methodologies, this study reviews the characteristics of associates who were terminated for instances of employee theft by a single anonymous retailer. All of these cases were detected between the first of July 2007 and the end of June 2008. This study employed
the classic theoretical theft triangle of motivation, opportunity, and rationalization first introduced by the renowned white-collar crime and embezzlement scholar, Donald Cressey.
Fikes was granted access to the files of all 502 employees apprehended for theft during this one-year period. She reports that the most common associate apprehended was a white male (59%) between the ages of 18 to 22 years old (48%), employed on an hourly basis (88%), who worked on average no more than six months before being caught (36%). The amount stolen averaged $523, usually occurred at the point of sale (38%), and was discovered by management (53.5%), but not reported by a fellow associate (only 15.4%). Not surprisingly, termination without criminal charges filed was the most typical final disposition of these cases (87%).
What really makes this study unique is that the researcher also inquired as to whether the employer inadvertently created an opportunity for the crime to occur by not creating a credible set of control policies and procedures designed to reduce the opportunity for dishonesty. She found that theft increased significantly when management failed to do any of the following: ■ Damaged merchandise case not secured, ■ Entering or exiting the building alone allowed, ■ Failure to check returns for contents, ■ Failure to inspect trash, ■ Failure to process non-receipted returns, ■ Failure to inspect refund report, ■ Failure to scan product, ■ Failure to secure case pick-up, ■ Failure to secure customers credit cards, ■ Failure to secure merchandise, ■ Failure to secure product per merchandising guidelines, ■ Improper or unauthorized use of company funds, ■ Incorrect register access, ■ Poor key controls, ■ Lock-up door propped open, ■ Bag checks not conducted, ■ Manager not present at the front lanes, ■ Password integrity problems, ■ Unauthorized associate in lock up, and ■ Unauthorized price over-rides.
In short, if the loss incurred was partially the fault of the actions or lack of action by management, the incident was coded as such. Using these well-used criteria, the author found that “77% or 369 of the associates terminated for theft had an opportunity created for them by management to steal.”
While this research does not intend to “blame the victim” for the dishonesty of retail associates, it does raise valid questions about the role that inadequate controls and poorly implemented asset protection policies play in creating the ideal opportunity for a motivated offender to act on various temptations to steal.
More to Come
Well-designed, peer-reviewed research studies conducted by qualified criminologists often do not find their way into the reading lists or desks of retail and LP executives. My hope is that these two studies, as well as other articles to be discussed in future columns, will provide plenty of material to stimulate discussion and reassessment of the policies and practices used to deter, prevent, and detect dishonesty by retail sales associates in the current business and social environment.
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Globally industry loses billions of dollars each year to
counterfeiters. Some industries find themselves in direct competition with counterfeiters that are producing higher quality fakes to compete with the genuine items. eBay has aggressively pursued counterfeit merchandise sellers thoughout the years as these criminals can cause serious issues for buyers, sellers, and retailers. As retailers continue to migrate to our platform for an additional revenue stream, the detection and removal of counterfeits has become more important. In response the Global Asset Protection (GAP) team has expanded its operations to include a team dedicated to combating counterfeit goods.
The Anti-Counterfeit Operations (ACO) team was launched in July 2011 and is comprised of eBay veterans who are adept with the many processes and systems across our platforms. In a short period of time, we developed a roadmap with the mission of protecting eBay users against counterfeits and assisting our cross-functional business partners to create a retail-like trust for our buyers and sellers.
As we tackle this issue, we seek to apply the findings from our stolen-goods efforts and utilize existing eBay and PayPal data points, analytics, and reporting to flush out counterfeiters as well as develop programs to deter them from our platforms.
The ACO group has conducted meaningful reviews of sellers who contributed to the counterfeit challenge while operating on our platforms. We have successfully identified problem sellers and have been aggressive in our approach on how we deal with them. Our findings and recommendations have been shared with our cross-functional stakeholders and have proven to be an effective learning tool.
Our team has developed processes and systems to utilize data from all platforms to leverage the anti-counterfeiting efforts. We audit and measure performance of all anti-counterfeiting efforts, with improved tracking of performance, successes, and anti-counterfeiting strategies. These efforts led to the development of more effective exception reporting that can identify eBay accounts with a PayPal nexus to counterfeit actions. The results of these efforts have led to the establishment of suspicious-supplier reporting that focuses on the sources of counterfeit product, making it increasingly difficult for counterfeit sellers.
The ACO team piloted an approach of reviewing the top sellers of popular products. These sellers were scrutinized and vetted with new tools and techniques to identify counterfeit sellers. The team was able to accurately identify counterfeit sellers and have them removed from our site.
Anyone who has worked on a counterfeiting case knows how difficult pursuing counterfeiters across borders can be. ACO investigators successfully identified and referred a case involving the sale of counterfeit cell phones and accessories to the Chinese Public Security Bureau (PSB) in Shanghai. PSB authorities are now pursuing the lead.
The ACO team is developing work streams to support early identification and removal of suspected counterfeiters from eBay marketplaces with an emphasis on top fashion brands. Our aim is to facilitate outcomes to remove, restrict, and, in some instances, educate sellers who have played a part in the counterfeit issue.
The team has established creditability and valuable relationships with other departments to work cross-functionally in order to understand and shape future plans related to anti-counterfeiting tool development. The goal is to integrate findings and results into cross-functional teams throughout eBay, including trust and safety, customer support, filters and rules, policy, government relations, and legal. The ACO group continues to support the eBay’s intellectual property team in their efforts of building relationships with rights owners, retailers, and brands respectively. eBay and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA)
launched YOU CAN’T FAKE FASHION, a campaign to raise awareness against counterfeit goods and celebrate original design. We have collaborated to produce a collection of original canvas tote bags bearing the tagline to start conversation around these important issues. The bags will be available starting March 20 exclusively on eBay.com. All proceeds benefit the CFDA Foundation to support this important cause.
There are a number of important next steps in the works: ■ Develop a more cohesive anti-counterfeit approach and help eliminate cross-departmental redundancy by compiling and creating dynamic solutions and recommendations for appropriate global organizational design, structure, tools, dashboard expenditures, and processes for future anti-counterfeiting procedures. ■ Improve counterfeit investigations with quality training to ensure appropriate action is taken with counterfeit sellers. ■ Explore methods to recover losses and expenses related to counterfeiting activity on eBay and pursue legal action and criminal prosecution against counterfeiters where appropriate.
Counterfeiting continues to be a global issue that threatens our industry, and everyone needs to do their part to thwart this crime. eBay is doing its part and will continue to communicate our progress and successes as we strive to create a retail-like trust for our buyers and sellers.
Dave DiSilva is a member of eBay’s Global Asset Protection team. Counterfeiting continues to be a global issue that threatens industry, and everyone needs to do their part to thwart this crime.
DATA-DRIVEN ReSulTS
AT RITE AID
Delivered with Leadership, Hunger, and Passion
By James Lee, Executive Editor
Rite Aid Loss Prevention Leadership Team
Dave Pimer
Director of LP Divisions 3 and 5
Cathy Langley
Senior Director of LP
Sandy Chandler, LPC, CPP
Regional Director of LP Division 1
Sophia Lai
Director of Pharmacy LP
Jon Collins
Regional Director of LP Division 3
Frank Hopkins
Director of LP Division 1
Tierre Chappel
Regional Director of LP Division 4
Keith Harmon, LPC
Director of LP Division 2
Note shown is Shawn Jenkins, LPC
Regional Director of LP Division 2
EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert “Bob” Oberosler is group vice president of loss prevention for Rite Aid, one of the nation’s leading drug store chains with nearly 4,700 stores and over $25 billion in annual sales. He has thirty-plus years of varied retail loss prevention and operations leadership experience with Pathmark Stores, Lowe’s, and May Company. Just prior to Rite Aid, Oberosler was president of Universal Capital Management, a boutique small venture capital company. He is known for identifying talent and building diverse, results-oriented organizations.
EDITOR: You have had an extraordinary career with several top retailers. When you arrived at Rite Aid in May 2010, what were the initiatives that you identified early on that were necessary to take Rite Aid’s loss prevention department to the next level? OBEROSLER: The first thing I found was we had a boatload of talented, passionate loss prevention professionals. However, they didn’t have a deep toolbox of tactics at their disposal. There didn’t seem to be much discussion around creating overt controls, the factors that drive a store’s shrink, classification of stores based on risk modeling, and other proactive measures.
So, one of the first things we had to do was reset the agenda to make sure that our loss prevention professionals knew that the scope on the business was going to change dramatically. They were going to become resident experts in many areas that they weren’t experts in before, for instance, inventory and the replenishment process. They were going to get more involved in facets of the business beyond loss prevention, to develop a complete understanding of all the factors that affect the store P&L. We were not going to focus on apprehensions, but how to help the stores improve sales, improve EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization], and control shrink.
EDITOR: How was that change received? OBEROSLER: I think it caught people by surprise. Here was the new VP of loss prevention saying—more for dramatic effect, frankly, but, certainly, to set the tone—“I don’t really care if we catch another shoplifter or employee ever. As a matter of fact, that would be the greatest thing ever.” Why? Because we were a company that was focusing on the number of apprehensions we made, the number of recoveries we made, and not as focused on the sales number, the EBITDA number, and the overall shrink number.
This was a big change for everybody in the LP department. This required us to restructure how we evaluated our store-level LP agents. It wasn’t going to be about showing up for work every day and how many shoplifting cases they made. What we told them was, “You’re going to be responsible for the shrink number, and we’re going to give you a big toolbox to help you.”
EDITOR: So you completely moved away from apprehensions. OBEROSLER: Well not exactly, we still make many cases each year. I just don’t think we need to motivate loss prevention agents to make shoplifting cases. It’s in their
DNA already. But for that to be their number one criteria on their evaluation isn’t the right priority. When I think about the perfect loss prevention agent, it’s not the person who goes out and apprehends the biggest, baddest shoplifter. It’s the person who knows every single thing that’s going on in their store, has great relationships with everyone in the store, takes guardianship over their high-theft items and categories, knows the items that they’re losing, and has applied the appropriate tactics to drive sales and control shrink. So, one can have the person who delivers a phenomenal shrink number, or a loss prevention agent who’s making 300 shoplifting cases a year while shrink is out of control. I know which of the two I want in my organization.
EDITOR: I’ve heard you talk before about controlling shrink versus eliminating shrink. OBEROSLER: I’m not the zero-shrink guy. If you want to try to get zero shrink, hire somebody else. I’m going to aim at getting shrink down below a certain percentage number where we have that careful balance between maximizing sales and controlling shrink. You have to understand the customer shopping experience. You are going to have some shrink if you want your customers to have a great shopping experience. EDITOR: Earlier you mentioned “risk modeling.” Talk about what you mean by that. OBEROSLER: Risk modeling is a way of classifying our stores that helps us determine how best to apply our resources. For example, our front-end shrink risk model scores every store by class and risk—class being their historical shrink with five being the highest to one the lowest, and risk being that element outside the four walls noted as high, medium-high, medium, medium-low, or low. So, if I’m talking about a store that is “five high,” then everyone understands that it’s a high-shrink store probably in a high-crime area. That store will require a particular set of tactics. On the other hand, if we’re talking about a “five low” store—that’s high shrink in a low-crime area—then obviously something else is driving shrink besides shoplifting. So, that store requires different tactics.
EDITOR: Are there other risk models you use? OBEROSLER: In a way Rite Aid has two businesses in one—the front end and pharmacy. So, we also had to create a risk model for pharmacy, which is broken down even further into pharmacy robbery and pharmacy burglary. Now we have models for these three big chunks that we’ve separated and can apply the right resources and tactics to.
EDITOR: We’ll come back to pharmacy. Let’s stick with the front end for a moment. One of the key programs that you’ve been partial to throughout your career has been the establishment of merchandise protection standards and the management of those programs. Talk about how you monitor and manage internal and external incidents and how they relate to your overall merchandise protection programs. OBEROSLER: We had kind of a one-size-fits-all program to merchandise protection. One of the tools we had was source tagging, which certainly has its place. But then, we kind of leapfrogged all the way to locking glass cases, which I simply despise.
“In the late 80s I was a rookie LP manager at May Department Stores in Los Angeles. My partner, Claude Verville, and I were assigned the weekend closing shift at our dreaded warehouse clearance sale. While discussing the anticipated arrival of our new VP of LP, we noticed an unidentified individual sneaking and crawling around merchandise fixtures. We observed the individual for some time before identifying ourselves and offering assistance. The individual looked up and replied, ‘Hi, I’m Bob, your new VP, and you guys are burning my dishonest employee pass-off case.’
“That’s Bob Oberosler. He’s what you’d call a player’s coach. He wouldn’t ask you to do anything he hasn’t done before or wouldn’t do himself. He began his retail career as an entry-level store employee and has never forgotten his humble beginnings. As a result he’s always been passionate about self-learning, mentoring, training, internal promotions, and taking a good risk once in a while.”
- Leo Anguiano, Chief Risk Officer, Central Parking Corporation
EDITOR: Why is that? OBEROSLER: When I was running store operations for a few years, I saw how locking glass cases hurt me on sales, hurt me on labor productivity, and hurt the customer shopping experience. Plus, locking glass cases cover entire categories, when it’s only certain items within that category that might be driving that loss. So, you’re overprotecting certain items and hurting the customer shopping experiences in others.
Data shows the highest stolen items are also typically the highest selling items. That’s why they’re stolen. There’s no mystery to that. That’s why I talk about high-theft items, not high-theft categories. The question becomes—how do you create that careful balance?
The loss prevention executive today has to be the captain of the strategic plan for selling and controlling the loss of high-shrink items. We have to understand all the different points of view throughout the organization, such as the pressures on the category manager to drive sales and make margin and their valid concerns over “restrictive” selling. Or why shoplifting in a store is personal for the store team and why they may do certain things to protect their product that may end up hurting sales.
We developed a data-based matrix that dictates different levels of protection for different levels of risk as opposed to rolling out one company-wide tactic. The matrix goes from least restrictive tactics up to most restrictive with multiple points in between. This gives operators a clear decision-making process based off the data, based off their risk-and-class modeling, and based off their experience in the store to implement different tactics to find that careful balance of sales and controlling loss.
EDITOR: How do you implement that strategy? OBEROSLER: Our loss prevention district managers are becoming the resident experts on the strategic plans, and they have the data. They work with their district operations partner to find the proper balance for a particular item. For example, take a high-theft item like Prilosec. If you’re in a high-shrink store, you may have ProfitGuard™, which is basically a plastic shield over the shelf that sets off an alarm that gets louder the longer it stays open. Plus, you may have that in a vault. You may also be on quantity control. So, you have three or four layers of protection. The key is the customer can still pick it up and buy it, but at the same time you are controlling loss. On the other hand, a low-shrink store in a low-crime area may not need quantity control or ProfitGuard. Just having a vault protector on it is enough.
EDITOR: Given these multiple layers of protection and the need for a bigger toolbox, what are some of the technologies and programs you’ve put in place to help control loss? OBEROSLER: One of the first things we had to do was address the issue of losses due to internal theft and procedural errors. Because we’re a company that’s in a turnaround stage, we don’t have all the CAPEX [capital-expense] dollars that other companies have. That meant we had to really rely on our data to drive decisions on where to spend our capital and find proven solutions that provided a significant return on investment.
One of the first vendors we signed up was Agilence, which is now in a thousand stores. Agilence gave us the capability of having a POS interface with exception reporting and live video feeds. That changed the way we looked at internal losses dramatically. Instead of relying on Retail Expert and
NaviStor reports only, now we can react in real-time. We had some very clever people out there who had figured out ways to defraud the company and stay under the radar. Agilence was able to detect them. Other things Agilence helped us identify were coupon abuses and procedural losses that aren’t in the shrink bucket, but in the gross margin and promotional-spend buckets, but EBITDA nonetheless. It also gave us the connectivity to look into stores from a remote location, and that is becoming a big game changer for us.
We have a team at headquarters that’s run by Cathy Langley, who is senior director of loss prevention and a very sharp, analytical person with twenty-plus years at Rite Aid. Her team is looking at more complicated transactions and will soon be looking to use our system to create better overt controls and, maybe just maybe, branch out into improving operating efficiencies, such as manager overrides and authorizations, where we might be able to improve productivity without giving up controls.
EDITOR: What about product-protection devices? OBEROSLER: We’re working with Universal Surveillance Systems (USS), and here’s the reason why. There are several companies in the product-protection space, but here was something that separated this company from the others—they listened. “I can honestly say that Bob was the first supervisor I ever had that inspired me to want to be great, not just good, at my profession. He was a master at motivating and creating a healthy competitive environment between many of his direct reports. Although not understood at the time, Bob was developing and establishing the core competencies and behaviors necessary for successful leaders. Most of all, Bob taught me humility, a strong sense of loyalty, and the art form of deferring successes to his subordinates rather than focusing on himself.”
- Claude Verville, Vice President, Loss Prevention, Safety, and Hazmat, Lowe’s
One thing I do that maybe other retailers don’t is I share all of my information. When I bring vendors in, I give them my entire database of over four-million entries representing millions of known theft by SKU. I say, “Here’s the file. Give me your best solutions.” We have a model store inside a local warehouse that is an exact, up-to-date store with everything set up and every planogram. I tell them, “Go down there. Go through the shelves. What’s your least restrictive solution that helps control loss and will enhance the customer experience? And, yes, I also want a good return on investment.”
USS sat down with us and didn’t say a word. They listened. They took the data. They went through the store. And then they went away for two months. I thought, “Well, here’s another company that I won’t hear back from or will try to force through their solutions.” But to my surprise, they came back with a catalog of solutions; exactly what we were looking for.
EDITOR: That’s a great retailer-vendor partnership example. OBEROSLER: Bass Security is another small vendor who listened to what we needed and earned our business.
Incidentally, one other thing USS did. They listened to me regarding a mistake the industry made years ago. That mistake was allowing the introduction of the portable hand detacher. It didn’t take long for every ORC crook to have a hand detacher. USS agreed that they would never, ever create a portable detacher.
EDITOR: So, now all of these various vendors’ solutions make up your expanded toolbox. OBEROSLER: Now we have an overall strategy with a variety of tools, each with an associated ROI that Cathy’s team has developed, that allows our district LP managers to sit down with their district operations manager or district pharmacy manager to determine the appropriate item or layer of measures that meet the needs of their individual stores.
EDITOR: Since you mentioned pharmacy, let’s turn our attention to that side of the business. What are some of the issues and programs you’ve implemented there? OBEROSLER: One of the programs that was already here… and I compliment them…is they had created a director of loss prevention for pharmacy position with a small team dedicated to detecting and controlling losses in the pharmacy. What is critical is that director is a licensed pharmacist. That is important for a couple reasons. First, only a pharmacist really understands the things that happen behind that counter. Further, there are many times we’re dealing with private information that only a pharmacist is allowed to see. So Sophia Lai, our pharmacy LP director,
looks at information that I’m not even allowed to see, which is especially helpful in drug diversion investigations.
EDITOR: Is drug diversion the primary problem in pharmacy? OBEROSLER: There are really three areas that affect pharmacy shrink. One is drug diversion by a pharmacy associate. The others are robbery and burglary. Again, we’ve created risk profiles for each one of these that we can now apply the proper resources.
We already had a lot of controls built into the pharmacy when I arrived. It was a fantastic program, but you can always sharpen the knife. So, we started focusing efforts on the top issues within each risk profile, be it diversion, robbery, or burglary, and created a toolbox of tactics for each.
On the drug diversion side, we started focusing on those stores that had historical shrink, as well as focusing on the most commonly diverted drugs. There are thousands of drugs behind the counter, but only a fraction of those are diverted. We started redoing our NaviScript reports, which is an offshoot of Retail Expert, and combined them with our NextGen system, which is basically the system that runs all dispensing, inventory, and patient information.
continued on page 38 “Bob Oberosler has had a profound effect on my career and my management style. He gave me my first management position and promoted me several times after that. I’ve learn countless things from Bob that have now become part of who I am and how I do business. The things that everyone recognizes instantly about Bob are his infectious energy, his natural motivational style, and the amazing ability to establish trust. He gains his team’s trust because he in turn shows trust, embodies that trust, and fosters an environment where you are allowed to get to the result through your creativity and not by following a rigid path.”
- Cornel Catuna, Executive Vice President of Club Operations, BJ’s
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continued from page 37
By combining these two, the pharmacy LP team is able to detect many drug-diversion cases to the pill level.
EDITOR: That’s impressive. OBEROSLER: What we’ve seen is exactly what we thought we would see. We first saw an increase in the number of drug-diversion cases, and now it’s starting to fall. To be accurate, the number of cases hasn’t fallen much, but the dollars-before-detection amount has fallen dramatically, which is exactly the way you want those arrows going.
EDITOR: What about robbery and burglary? OBEROSLER: First, we identified the stores that were most susceptible to pharmacy burglary. We worked very closely with other drug-store retailers to get some of these rings that were hitting us. For those stores that are most susceptible to burglary, we created tactics to stop it and built different levels of fortification. That has worked tremendously well for us. We’ve seen our losses from pharmacy burglary in the past year drop by high double digits.
EDITOR: Is the same thing true for robbery? OBEROSLER: Robbery is not a big dollar loss item, but it’s certainly something that the industry is struggling with, especially because of the impact it has on store associates.
“Working with Bob Oberosler is a unique experience because he is very different than your typical executive. He pushes his entire team to get outside of their comfort zone. He is also not bound by traditional roles. He encourages everyone to think of where they can add value to the business regardless of expertise. This type of thinking is very unique and creates an environment for personal and professional growth that is not commonly found in most organizations. Bob’s unique management style and mentoring foster a group of people that are soon ready to take on other challenges, which is one reason why so many executives in retail trace their earlier careers to Bob. There are few people in leadership positions with the courage to put their team in front of their own personal ambitions, but those that do create a lasting legacy such as Bob’s.”
- Pedro Ramos, Vice President of Sales, Agilence Inc. We are very aggressive and have many different initiatives in place. As we started analyzing pharmacy robbery, we noticed something absolutely amazing that I’ve never seen in my thirty-plus years in LP. That is, the vast majority of these robberies were happening in stores in low-crime areas—exactly opposite of what you would expect.
When we dug down to root cause, we came to the fact that pharmacy robberies were driven by people with an addiction to prescription medications. They are addicted to a high level of opiate, then run out of money or run out of insurance, and they believe their only recourse is to go and rob a pharmacy. People ask me, “Why aren’t pharmacies robbed in urban stores?” Well, it happens from time to time. But what normally happens in urban stores is they rob the front end because they can take that cash and get better, more drugs on the street than they can behind the pharmacy counter.
EDITOR: That’s very interesting. OBEROSLER: Let me first say robberies are very hard to predict. What we attempt to do is create predictive models and deploy tactics for where we believe we are most susceptible to robberies. The results have been dramatic. Based off the best data we have, pharmacy robberies across the industry are up, while ours are down and continuing to drop year over year. We are very aggressive in using every
continued from page 38 available resource to apprehend a person that robs our pharmacy, and I am happy to say we are very successful. We need to be for our associates and our customers.
EDITOR: One of your first comments when we started this interview was about the talented professionals in your organization. Looking back at your career, you’ve had a large number of excellent LP professionals who have made great LP executives. Why is that? OBEROSLER: I’ve been blessed to work with a number of smart, passionate professionals, whether they were in the organization when I arrived, like here at Rite Aid, or whether I had to recruit them. For some reason, God’s given me a gift for recognizing talented individuals and putting them in the right position to excel.
“I was fortunate enough to work for Bob when the loss prevention and safety department was created at Lowe’s. Bob has the ability to select the right talent, develop each individual, and drive toward a strategic plan that’s aligned with the company. His personal drive and passion are contagious. If you measure Bob’s leadership by the number of people who worked with him that are now executives, you’d have to say he’s one of the best. Bob has been a mentor and friend to me, and I’m a better leader having worked for him.”
- Jon Grander, Vice President, Asset Protection, Brown Shoe Company
EDITOR: What type of person do you look for? OBEROSLER: The type of person that works best with me is someone who is data driven, analytical, passionate about what they do, and hungry for results. I’m a numbers guy, and I like people who are focused on numbers. Give me a person with those skill sets, and I’ll teach them the loss prevention part.
One of the other things I strongly believe in is building a staff of diverse individuals and putting them at all levels of the organization where they can have impact. There was a powerful, diverse team here at Rite Aid; I only had to bring in one person from the outside. Everyone else was already in the organization; we just had to find them. And, oh, by the way, I think there are three or four people on this team now who will be vice presidents or higher in companies one day. EDITOR: That’s not surprising if you look back at your career with May Company, Lowe’s, and Pathmark. There are fifteen or more who are now executives in this industry today either on the vendor or practitioner side. Why is that? OBEROSLER: The truth is I don’t know. Here’s what I do know. If you’re someone who wants your day scripted, who wants a checklist of tasks to do, you’re probably not going to do well with me. Now, that’s not wrong. There are certainly successful programs that do that. That’s just not me.
On the other hand, if you are someone who says, “Give me the list of tools. Show me what you want built. Give me the data. Focus me in the right direction. Hold me accountable. But then, let me go out, learn, make mistakes, and find my own way.” Those people tend to do a lot better in my organization and down the road.
EDITOR: Most people are afraid to make mistakes. OBEROSLER: I tell my people, “There’s not a mistake you can make in doing your job that I can’t help fix. So, don’t be afraid to go out and push the edge of the envelope. That’s how you learn and make an impact.”
EDITOR: Another common denominator of those people who are now leaders in their company is they’re all very strong, confident individuals. OBEROSLER: In addition to being smart, I really want someone who has a very strong voice. Having a strong voice, being able to express yourself, having confidence in your data, and having the ability to motivate people are all important components of leadership, which, when it comes down to it, is one of the most important characteristics for success—leadership, hunger, and passion.
EDITOR: What about education? OBEROSLER: I think retail is still one of those places where a person with a master’s degree and a person with a high school degree can still excel if they do the things that we talked about. Some of those people who you referred to who are now executives do not have college degrees. But…and this is important…they have a Ph.D. in business experience, not loss prevention, in retail.
When someone asks me about becoming a vice president, I tell them, “If you don’t read the business section or click on the business link every day before you read the sports page, you’re not ready to move to a higher level.” If they’re not a business person first and an LP person second, they’re not ready. Why? Because it’s not their passion yet.
EDITOR: There’s so much more I’m sure we could talk about. What final thought do you want to give our readers? OBEROSLER: Love what you do every day because it’s a blessing to work. Don’t say, “It’s not my job.” And don’t wear a watch, but always make it to your first meeting on time. The day’s over when the day’s over. If you’re checking your watch, you’re not focused on results and getting the job done no matter what.
