Security

Managing loss prevention is one of the main challenges faced by a modern organization. The three major reasons for the great complexity are:

1. Security versus current conduct - while loss prevention involves all the organization's activities, an attempt to restrict them may disrupt the organization's current conduct and evoke resistance. For example, a thorough check of workers and customers at all exit points would prevent theft, but it would also detain workers and customers, let them feel they are not trusted, and require valuable resources.

2. Lack of boundaries - the information revolution extends the struggle for loss prevetion beyond the organization's physical boundaries.  Information leakageage or theft have become easy to commit and hard to trace, and they have a destructive potential for the organization.

3. Measuring economic success - in an era where everything is measurable and success is presented in a simple numerical form, it's hard to quantify the value of loss prevention. Is the economic value of apprehending a thief measured only by the cost of the product he/she has stolen? And what about deterrence and the cost of severance pay for the corruptly behaved employee? And how can we quantify the value of information loss, trade secrets' leakage and reputational damage?

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In order to protect the organization, while maintaining the other departments' cooperation, a compromise must be made. So, for example, instead of hermetically closing the organization, we'll find other ways to minimize the risks:

1. Placing cameras and detectors will create deterrence and allow us to investigate the event after it has taken place.

2. Inventory counts and surveys will allow us to discover loss in retrospect.

3. Training and including the staff will help recruit them to support loss prevention.

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Minimum loss, maximum profit for the organization

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If we can think of the workers as our partners in the struggle rather as a threat, we'll profit on several levels:

1. Motivation - by creating an interest-based partnership between the workers and   the  organization.

2. Cooperation - recruiting the workers to take part in our struggle to prevent loss  from being caused by internal or external factors.

3. Minimizing the internal threat - minimizing the risk of sabotage being perpetrated by intra-organizational factors.

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In order to achieve cooperation between the organization and the workers we should find a balancing point between blind trust and suspicion and alienation:

• Preventive activity - a thorough scrutiny of candidates in order to prevent the entry of negative elements into the organization.

• Training and inclusion - recruiting the workers to support the organization's goals will prevent internal loss and provide preventive information.

• Supervision and control - periodical checks for the purpose of troubleshooting will help minimize the risk and increase the workers' awareness.

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However, the key-point in achieving balance between prevention and current activity is dealing effectively with the organizaiton's most significant entry gate - the recruitment department. Optimal cooperation with the recruitment department will allow the organization both to protect its assets and to find the right people at the right time, in order to maintain leadership, stability, speed and flexibility.

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The most advanced reliability tests in the world

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In order to fascilitate the cooperation between the departments and make the best of it, we developed the Integrity Meter reliability tests (detailed information is provided below). The tests are easily integrated into the work-processes of both departments and provide maximal protection to the organization's assets and wellbeing.  
 

Based on our acquaintance with the organizational world,  we formulated a few points that may promote optimal cooperation:

• It's important to recognize the recruitment challenges as well as the challenge of preventing physical and conceptual loss.

• One should recognize the similarity and the difference between the two departments' work processes: CV collection versus background checkups, personality and skills tests versus reliability tests, and job interviews versus questioning sessions.

• Besides meeting the recruitment goals, one should take into account that employees may  drop out of the organization (due to stumbling, among other things).

• The process has to be clear and respectable, and emphasize that preventing the entry of negative elements into the organziation is the candidate's interest no less than it is the organization's.

• Disqualifying a candidate after he/she has been chosen leads to loss of resources and bad feelings. Testing the candidate's reliability at an early stage prevents damage to the organization and conflicts with the security department.

• In cases where problematic findings emerge regarding a candidate, it's important to include the security team in his/her questioning and in making decisions about his/her reliability, while integrating into the department's current work.

• Recruitment budget is limited, therfore it's better to choose a reliability test which would minimize the need for complementary questioning (the most expensive component of the reliability diagnostic process), without harming the test's capablities.

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In addition, one should bear in mind several points regarding the recruitment department's work:

• The recruitment department is the organization's face and its conduct affects the way the organization is perceived.

• The department's staff is aware of the importance of reliability, but it must consider other factors, such as suitability for the job and for the work environment.

• The department's managers operate  under constant pressure to recruit candidates, according to quantitative, qualitative and time goals.

• In the recruitment world it's common to make use of statistical tools to assess personality and skills.

• With no reliability testing tools, it's  hard to turn a job interview into a questioning session which deals with intimate details.

• The department's resources are limited, and therefore it's important to find the balance between investing in external tests and tools and achieving the desirable outcome. ​

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Optimal combination of reliability tests and questioning in the recruitment process

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An average recruitment process includes the following steps:

Finding the candidate, holding a job interview, a suitability test (personality and skills), reliability tests, questioning (when needed).

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In order to balance between the speed and effectiveness of the process and the cost of its various components, we'll construct it based on the following assumptions:

• The most expensive components are the duratioins of the job interview and the complementary questioning.

• The duration of a personality and skills test is significantly longer than the duration of a reliability test.

• Steps that require coordination between departments (questioning or interviewing by a senior executive) are more complex.

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As a result, the following process is recommended:

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