How To Prevent Employee Theft And Other Fraudulent Activities From Happening On Your Farm

©Shutterstock Chicken farm, preparing to move in a new location.

Many poultry farmers complain that employees steal from them and this has discouraged some farmers from even attempting to hire people. Remember, it will be very difficult to grow your farm without the help of some farmhands so deciding not to employ anyone could mean losing out on some great opportunities. With that said, the concern about some employees engaging in fraudulent or inappropriate activities is legitimate and here are some tips to safeguard your investment.

1. Keep track of the average number of products produced within a given period: So let’s assume you raise 1000 Layers for egg production and you have studied that the birds produce around 19 crates per day on average, the moment the laying rate drops drastically to say 15 crates per day, you can suspect something fishy going on. In short, employees would be deterred from stealing a significant amount of egg or products when they know they’ll be found out.
2. Open a bank account specifically for your farm: Keeping large amounts of cash in-house may not exactly be the brightest strategy because the cashier may steal some of the money collected and connive with the person collecting the eggs to report that lower number of eggs were collected on that day as compared to what is usually collected but storing the bulk of the company’s money in the account reduces the risk of theft. Obviously, you may need some amount of money to handle minor expenses such as the purchase of supplies such as rubber bands so you can set aside a small amount for that purpose.
3. Separate employee duties: So let’s assume you rear broilers and usually, farmers sell broilers on credit in large quantities to restaurants, cold stores, etc. so you may decide to hire salespeople to help sell your products and one way to motivate them to sell more is by giving them bonuses for every product sold. So now let’s suppose the very same people who are meant to sell your products are the same ones who approve credit. What do you think they do? Since they’ll receive bonuses for every product they sell, they may not due diligence on the creditworthiness of a potential customer, they’ll only care about inflating sales figures to beef up their bonuses.  Once you separate these two functions there will be less fraud as the person approving credit wouldn’t want his/her image to be tarnished by approving credit sales to unworthy customers.

Conclusion

Employees may not necessarily be inherently evil but sometimes, people can get tempted to engage in unethical practices for reasons best known to them so it is in your best interest as a farmer to safeguard your investment by implementing controls aimed at preventing or drastically reducing unethical behaviour.