April 1, 2008
Lidl Accused of Going Too Far to Reduce Shrink
By Bernice Hurst, Managing Director, Fine Food Network
Following an article in Stern, a German magazine, discount supermarket Lidl has been forced to deny charges of spying on workers. The magazine claimed that both cameras and private detectives monitored employee movements and kept track of their relationships, personal finances and even trips to the toilet.
Comparing the retailer’s actions to the secret police in East Germany, Lidl was accused of tracking both banal and intimate details. Stern’s catalog of evidence related to branches all over Germany as well as the Czech Republic. The surveillance took place via mini-video cameras installed by detectives. The official reason given to store managers was to reduce shoplifting.
But among the detectives’ reports, according to the UK’s Guardian, were “details of precisely where employees had tattoos as well as information about their friends.” Detectives were also expected to report on whether employees appeared to be “incapable” or “introverted and naïve.”
Attracting wide scale media attention was an internal memorandum that “allegedly advised staff that ‘female workers who have their periods may go to the toilet now and again, but to enjoy this privilege they should wear a visible headband.’”
A Hamburg labor lawyer, Klaus Müller-Knapp, said the transcripts were “scandalous to the highest degree” and breached laws on freedom of expression while both human rights groups and trade unions pledged to take up the case.
While admitting that some surveillance had taken place in Germany, management expressed shock at the accusations, asserting that both cameras and detectives were aimed at shoplifters rather than staff and then insisted that both practices had been discontinued in any case. Despite the company’s protestations of innocence, local officials are said to be investigating.
Discussion questions: Are stores justified in monitoring their employees’ movements? Where is the line to be drawn between what’s acceptable to reduce shrink and actions that constitute a violation of workers’ privacy?
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There’s clearly some pathology in this particular situation! And video cameras can work for you as well as against you as an employee. Case in point: my register once came up a few thousand dollars short, which was a damn scary thing! A review of the evening’s tape showed that I fell for a sleight of hand cash trick when a customer was making a payment. This wasn’t good, of course, but at least my employer could see that I wasn’t a thief, and we all learned from my mistake.
This story is exactly the problem with video surveillance. And Lidl allegedly was using PEOPLE to monitor these actions–a pretty expensive proposition. Just imagine if they were using something like video analytics to catalog all these things. They could have tracked bathroom trips AND actually been monitoring for shoplifters at the same time.
While retailers have been interested in these kinds of capabilities, our research has found that privacy concerns are a big inhibitor. It used to be fights over whether cameras could issue automatic tickets to red light runners, but I fear that retail will be the next battlefront over video and privacy.
Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” is the “now” and George Orwell’s “Big Brother” watches us with security cameras everywhere, even in the lavatory. It’s not going to revert back. Smile, you’re on Candid Camera. Maybe there is a silver lining. More guys will wash their hands before leaving the rest rooms. After all, Big Brother is watching.
Like Mary, I’m not a shrink control expert, but also like Mary, I’m appalled. It’s 2008! How could ANY employer suggest (even for a moment) that menstruating women walk around with a band on their head announcing they were having their period?
This is amazing. I assume that Lidl employees who are aware of the degree they are being watched are actively engaged in ways to “beat the system.” Or, more likely, they are busy looking for other jobs with more flexible employee security procedures, like working in a prison.
This is really a double edged sword for retailers. On one hand, you want to protect your assets. On the other, you want to create a workplace where staff is happy and not stealing. Lidl has obviously gone too far in controlling shrink to such a degree that quality people may choose to not work for them.
Catching the bad guys is good but alienating the rest of your team is very bad. What I tell clients is to reduce and eliminate the temptation for internal theft. Education and awareness are key in preventing internal shrink. Unfortunately, cameras are a fact of life these days but a shrink program that involves staff is far better at curtailing theft than analyzing behaviour and counting tattoos.
The fact that management expressed shock at the accusations show just how out of touch they are with employees and consumers. One also has to ask if this spying was simply to reduce shrink. The employees should be outraged and there should be a public investigation.
It sounds to me as if Lidl has gone way over the line here.
I don’t claim to be an expert in shrink prevention, but I hardly think that the time these human spies are spending writing up reports about menstruating women going to the ladies’ room (and other things) could be worth the loss of the equivalent time the same people could be spending on activities that actually produce revenue.
No, this sounds more like the articles I’ve been seeing on BNET about workplace bullying, only on a grand scale, with one or more bullies having come to power, perhaps idolizing the totalitarian power structures of old or coming from abusive backgrounds. I’m speculating about reasons, and in the end they’re irrelevant.
But it does seem we never learn the real lesson: Poorly treated employees will treat customers poorly, who will then take their business elsewhere. Conversely, engaged employees produce well satisfied, even delighted, customers, who buy more merchandise at full price and come back to the store to get more help from the engaged employee, and buy more stuff.
Note to Michael: Assuming management reaction ought to be appropriate to employee action, i.e., the solution ought to fit the problem, exactly what could these employees be doing that would mandate that management (and other employees) knew when they were having their period? This level of intrusion is so deep there is NO excuse for it. We don’t have to be understanding at all. There is no provocation that could possibly justify such a policy or, as in this case, the toleration of the discussion of such a policy–even fleetingly.
Sure corporate cultures differ by company, industry and country but it’s still the 21st Century in Europe, not the 12th.
While it is more than acceptable for a company to place video and audio surveillance equipment in such a way as to monitor employee behavior in the workplace, provided that surveillance is equally distributed amongst the entire staff, to go to the extent that private bank accounts and conversations, controlling bathroom breaks and what not should never be accepted.
If a crime is being committed, it is the duty of appropriate law enforcement agencies to conduct an investigation. Many LP staffers have a personal interest in making certain their job is justified, and as such have a biased assumption of guilt with every person within that company.
In the retail trade, at least as far as my experience goes, loss prevention is for the majority of effort directed to the individual employee, rather than the shoplifter. The unfortunate result is that it creates a block towards establishing an engaged workforce, while at the same time encouraging shoplifting. People who tend to shoplift know which retailers are willing to risk being sued to prevent shoplifting, and those who do not wish to take that risk.
By treating employees in a fashion that develops feelings of mistrust, the LP industry is merely enhancing the compulsion to steal from the employer. Most people will not bite the hand that feeds them, but if that hand beats them enough, they will be prone to bite back. And they do. I feel that there needs to be a change in direction in the way that LP divisions operate in that it would be more appropriate to view the entire company, and deal with the entire company to prevent loss.
After all, LP is loss prevention, not theft prevention, isn’t it?
Certainly, not to defend the management too much, there must have been reasons for the tightening of the security. Theft, customer complaints of laziness, unkempt store conditions, sexual harassment, whatever drove them to stoop to such drastic measures.
Let’s not throw Lidl management to the wolves without knowing the history driving their actions first. Innocent until proven guilty. If we are going to impose our value system on them, we should at least uphold our ideals as well.
A fairly simple question: would senior managers accept a similar degree of surveillance of their movements, friends etc? It is not conducive to organisational efficiency.
Lidl doesn’t have the monopoly on bad press. Nonetheless, I’m sure many American retail executives, having read this story, breathed sighs of relief that the publicity wasn’t about their businesses. Security professionals have to be good at diplomacy, not just shrink prevention.
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There’s clearly some pathology in this particular situation! And video cameras can work for you as well as against you as an employee. Case in point: my register once came up a few thousand dollars short, which was a damn scary thing! A review of the evening’s tape showed that I fell for a sleight of hand cash trick when a customer was making a payment. This wasn’t good, of course, but at least my employer could see that I wasn’t a thief, and we all learned from my mistake.
This story is exactly the problem with video surveillance. And Lidl allegedly was using PEOPLE to monitor these actions–a pretty expensive proposition. Just imagine if they were using something like video analytics to catalog all these things. They could have tracked bathroom trips AND actually been monitoring for shoplifters at the same time.
While retailers have been interested in these kinds of capabilities, our research has found that privacy concerns are a big inhibitor. It used to be fights over whether cameras could issue automatic tickets to red light runners, but I fear that retail will be the next battlefront over video and privacy.
Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” is the “now” and George Orwell’s “Big Brother” watches us with security cameras everywhere, even in the lavatory. It’s not going to revert back. Smile, you’re on Candid Camera. Maybe there is a silver lining. More guys will wash their hands before leaving the rest rooms. After all, Big Brother is watching.
Like Mary, I’m not a shrink control expert, but also like Mary, I’m appalled. It’s 2008! How could ANY employer suggest (even for a moment) that menstruating women walk around with a band on their head announcing they were having their period?
This is amazing. I assume that Lidl employees who are aware of the degree they are being watched are actively engaged in ways to “beat the system.” Or, more likely, they are busy looking for other jobs with more flexible employee security procedures, like working in a prison.
This is really a double edged sword for retailers. On one hand, you want to protect your assets. On the other, you want to create a workplace where staff is happy and not stealing. Lidl has obviously gone too far in controlling shrink to such a degree that quality people may choose to not work for them.
Catching the bad guys is good but alienating the rest of your team is very bad. What I tell clients is to reduce and eliminate the temptation for internal theft. Education and awareness are key in preventing internal shrink. Unfortunately, cameras are a fact of life these days but a shrink program that involves staff is far better at curtailing theft than analyzing behaviour and counting tattoos.
The fact that management expressed shock at the accusations show just how out of touch they are with employees and consumers. One also has to ask if this spying was simply to reduce shrink. The employees should be outraged and there should be a public investigation.
It sounds to me as if Lidl has gone way over the line here.
I don’t claim to be an expert in shrink prevention, but I hardly think that the time these human spies are spending writing up reports about menstruating women going to the ladies’ room (and other things) could be worth the loss of the equivalent time the same people could be spending on activities that actually produce revenue.
No, this sounds more like the articles I’ve been seeing on BNET about workplace bullying, only on a grand scale, with one or more bullies having come to power, perhaps idolizing the totalitarian power structures of old or coming from abusive backgrounds. I’m speculating about reasons, and in the end they’re irrelevant.
But it does seem we never learn the real lesson: Poorly treated employees will treat customers poorly, who will then take their business elsewhere. Conversely, engaged employees produce well satisfied, even delighted, customers, who buy more merchandise at full price and come back to the store to get more help from the engaged employee, and buy more stuff.
Note to Michael: Assuming management reaction ought to be appropriate to employee action, i.e., the solution ought to fit the problem, exactly what could these employees be doing that would mandate that management (and other employees) knew when they were having their period? This level of intrusion is so deep there is NO excuse for it. We don’t have to be understanding at all. There is no provocation that could possibly justify such a policy or, as in this case, the toleration of the discussion of such a policy–even fleetingly.
Sure corporate cultures differ by company, industry and country but it’s still the 21st Century in Europe, not the 12th.
While it is more than acceptable for a company to place video and audio surveillance equipment in such a way as to monitor employee behavior in the workplace, provided that surveillance is equally distributed amongst the entire staff, to go to the extent that private bank accounts and conversations, controlling bathroom breaks and what not should never be accepted.
If a crime is being committed, it is the duty of appropriate law enforcement agencies to conduct an investigation. Many LP staffers have a personal interest in making certain their job is justified, and as such have a biased assumption of guilt with every person within that company.
In the retail trade, at least as far as my experience goes, loss prevention is for the majority of effort directed to the individual employee, rather than the shoplifter. The unfortunate result is that it creates a block towards establishing an engaged workforce, while at the same time encouraging shoplifting. People who tend to shoplift know which retailers are willing to risk being sued to prevent shoplifting, and those who do not wish to take that risk.
By treating employees in a fashion that develops feelings of mistrust, the LP industry is merely enhancing the compulsion to steal from the employer. Most people will not bite the hand that feeds them, but if that hand beats them enough, they will be prone to bite back. And they do. I feel that there needs to be a change in direction in the way that LP divisions operate in that it would be more appropriate to view the entire company, and deal with the entire company to prevent loss.
After all, LP is loss prevention, not theft prevention, isn’t it?
Certainly, not to defend the management too much, there must have been reasons for the tightening of the security. Theft, customer complaints of laziness, unkempt store conditions, sexual harassment, whatever drove them to stoop to such drastic measures.
Let’s not throw Lidl management to the wolves without knowing the history driving their actions first. Innocent until proven guilty. If we are going to impose our value system on them, we should at least uphold our ideals as well.
A fairly simple question: would senior managers accept a similar degree of surveillance of their movements, friends etc? It is not conducive to organisational efficiency.
Lidl doesn’t have the monopoly on bad press. Nonetheless, I’m sure many American retail executives, having read this story, breathed sighs of relief that the publicity wasn’t about their businesses. Security professionals have to be good at diplomacy, not just shrink prevention.