Digital Dialogue By Jacque Brittain, LPC
No One Winning Approach to Loss Prevention Culture
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have worked in loss prevention for a number of years now and recently joined a new company. At my new company, I have grown a little frustrated over what they claim to be effective loss prevention strategies. They don’t seem to know what they’re doing. While the company likes to give the illusion of having a strong LP presence, there is no loss prevention culture to speak of, and it’s just about impossible to get things accomplished or have the type of impact that we should have.” Does this sound familiar? It should. For anyone who has been in retail loss prevention for any significant length of time, it’s probably something that we’ve heard repeatedly. In fact if we’re being honest, it’s likely something that each one of us have voiced ourselves at some point in our careers. Having spent many years in executive search and working as a loss prevention career consultant, I interviewed thousands of loss prevention professionals working for just about every retail organization that has a loss prevention department in this country. Yet regardless of the particular organization, there are always those who think they have a better way to get things done. While it may bruise an ego or two, there isn’t a single leader out there that hasn’t been criticized at some point by members of their own team. The individual that forwarded this message provided some additional details and thought it would be a good subject for an article. I believe it is—but perhaps it won’t be the particular message that they were expecting. It has always been common to hear “at my previous company we did things this way…” or “where I used to work we did things that way…” from the occasional new hire when they come on board. And our response? “You no longer work for that company—you work for us now.” That response wasn’t about stifling ideas or discouraging a new or different way to accomplish our goals. Rather, it was about breaking down rigid perceptions and seeing things in a different way. It was about opening eyes to a different approach to loss prevention. If the loss prevention professional isn’t receptive to changing the way that they do things, there’s very little chance that they’re going to be successful in their new company. In fact, lacking the ability to adapt, there’s very little chance that they’re going to have long-term success in loss prevention as a career.
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may–june 2016
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Brittain is editorial director, digital, for LP Magazine. Formerly a director of learning design and certification, Brittain managed the development of the LPC and LPQ certification programs in collaboration with the Loss Prevention Foundation. Prior to that he was vice president of operations for the industry’s largest executive search and consulting firm. In his thirty-plus years in the LP industry, he has helped build and enhance many learning initiatives and provided career counseling for thousands of industry professionals. Brittain can be reached at jacb@lpportal.com or by phone at 704-246-3143.
In many ways this is expected. We are all products of our own environments and will tend to fall back on the things that we know and the ways that we’ve learned. Our professional identities are largely shaped by our professional experiences, and we often fall back on what is familiar and comfortable. Often the comments are made with the best of intensions. But we always have to remain open to new and different possibilities. And while we often associate this practice with a particular career level, it can—and does—happen at every level of a professional career.
If the loss prevention professional isn’t receptive to changing the way that they do things, there’s very little chance that they’re going to be successful in their new company. Establishing a Culture
How do we go about establishing the loss prevention culture within a particular organization? What makes a particular strategy successful? This is the challenge that loss prevention leadership must face on a regular and consistent basis in the retail setting. Retail organizations are extremely diverse. It’s fairly simple to recognize the differences in the way that we might have to approach loss prevention in a grocery store versus a department store, or a department store versus a specialty environment. With the physical and organizational differences in the stores, the sizes and structures of the staffs, the products and store resources, and other philosophical and practical variables, the loss prevention needs and strategies quickly stand out. But there are many other factors that will come into play, and each much be addressed by loss prevention leadership in order to establish a successful program.
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