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ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT
Coworker Competition
A Motivator for Your Loss Prevention Staff?
This column is devoted to featuring and summarizing the academic viewpoint utilizing research that should be of interest to the readers of this magazine, namely, loss prevention executives, managers, and field personnel. Often I find scholarly articles that are published in both academic and practitioner journals to review. This month I did not have to go very far, since this column will feature the recently completed University of Florida doctoral dissertation research of one of my top graduate students, Ron Floridia. He successfully defended his dissertation research to his committee and will be awarded his doctorate in criminology at the end of the spring 2015 semester.
Floridia’s findings were part of a larger study that examined the influence of loss prevention officers’ peers on their training. As part of his doctoral dissertation research, Floridia interviewed thirty proprietary hourly loss prevention officers employed by two national retailers. The confidential interviews were conducted in northern and central Florida, but the officers’ store locations ranged from South Carolina to central Florida. While Floridia interviewed the respondents about the various techniques companies use to incentivize loss prevention officers, he stumbled upon something very interesting in the course of his research. Specifically, he discovered a very influential, informal culture that existed between the officers that was built on peer competition.
The overall trend that emerged from the interviews was that strong camaraderie existed between a loss prevention officer and his or her peers. Roughly 95 percent of officers in the study responded that their peers provided them with an important source of positive encouragement when the officer performed his or her job well. This encouragement was displayed through verbal channels, such as phone calls, as well as written channels, including emails and text messages.
When Floridia asked the officers about peer encouragement, one officer remarked that there is always feedback, there are always congratulations, and the feedback was uniformly positive. The verbal recognition was displayed in various forms, such as an officer telling his or her peers, “Good catch,” “Hey man, I heard about that stop and the way you handled it—I wanted to do it myself,” or “Way to pull those dollars up.” Floridia found that the officers identified characterized well-performing peers by saying they have “good eyes” or they made a “good spot” regarding how they are able to identify shoplifters.
This praise was part of a much larger informal culture of competition created by the officers. This informal competition motivated the officers more than any monetary incentives, promotional inducements, or verbal praise given by a supervisor. This competition became a game of statistics based mainly on who could obtain the greater number of apprehensions. One officer described the atmosphere as “very competitive,
always going over numbers, but it’s more of a friendly competition.” The officers compared themselves to other LP peer groups as well as other individual officers. For example, one officer asks his peers, “How many did you get?” Other officers send messages to their peers saying, “I caught you,” or “I’m five up on you.” In one case, officers made unofficial bets with one another, and whoever lost bought lunch for the winner.
Officers disseminated their apprehensions to other officers through verbal and written channels. Officers
by Richard C. Hollinger, PhD
Dr. Hollinger is professor and chair of 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. Dr. Hollinger can be reached at rhollin@ufl.edu or 352-294-7175. © 2015 Richard C. Hollinger
placed phone calls or sent emails to one another. As one officer mentioned, “You will hear it verbally from peers. With any high-dollar amount, people will hear about it and call you.” The most common form of communication was through text messaging. Officers were placed on group-feed texts, and whenever an officer made an apprehension, they would communicate it to the other officers in the retail chain on their group feed, such as “just got one for 200” to inform the others of their good work.
When loss prevention officers performed their jobs well, they were met with praise from their peers. However, officers who underperformed were often subjected to goading or teasing by their fellow officers. One officer recounted missing an opportunity to apprehend a known shoplifter. This officer’s peers informally heckled him for not completing the apprehension. Another officer discussed that officers who underperformed were subjected to questions such as “what’s going on?” (as in why are you not making apprehensions) or “when are you going to clock in?” All of the officers stated that this teasing was good natured, and none was performed with malicious intent. As one officer mentioned, “We are all tight, and bust on each other.” Although the ribbing was good natured, most officers took measures to avoid it. As one officer explained, “There is tight camaraderie among the LPs. You don’t want to be that guy with nothing,” (as in nothing to show for your work). The result of this informal competition usually ignited an officer’s motivation to work harder. As one officer put it, “It’s very competitive. You want to be at the same level as them, or you get ribbed.”
Officers competed with their peers largely to make themselves better known to their supervisors. Since the competition was largely statistics based, making apprehensions improved their productivity and subsequently gained positive recognition from their supervisors. One officer commented that good apprehension statistics were the best reflection of the officer’s abilities. Officers who made a lot of apprehensions were always recognized positively by their supervisors. As one officer commented, the “one who gets the most apprehensions shines.”
The results of this study provide an innovative outlook for incentivizing officers to increase their on-the-job performance. Supervisors should consider incentives that ignite the natural competitive spirit between their LP staff, but are cautioned to do so in a way that does not inadvertently promote unethical behavior. Supervisors also should not conclude from this research that peer competition is the sole source of staff motivation. The findings from the study, albeit very interesting, are merely a piece of the larger puzzle of how to most effectively enhance loss prevention officer productivity.
