Look around your office. Do you trust your colleagues? Most of the time, the answer will be a resounding “yes”. But with security experts cautioning that fraud by employees is now costing the UK £78 million a year and rising, employers are increasingly recognising the vital part that PAs and secretaries can have in cracking down on fraud and “white collar ” crime.
Last month the accountancy firm BDO Stoy Hayward said that employee fraud had shot up from £43 million in 2003 to the £78 million figure, a staggering 81 per cent rise. Such fraud, it added, now represented 20 per cent of total reported fraud, and that even this was likely to be an under-calculation as most fraud goes unreported.
While most corporate crime is relatively minor — taking a taxi on expenses when you shouldn’t have, or walking off with a box of paperclips — it all adds up and is often tolerated far more than it should be, says Simon Dawson, head of corporate investigations at The Risk Advisory Group, a security firm.
Larger-scale fraud, corruption and embezzlement are less common but often the more senior someone is, the bigger the crime will be, he adds.
That is where the PA or secretary can come in. While being expected to whistle-blow or prevent fraud may be asking too much, the fact that most secretaries and PAs act as their bosses’ “eyes and ears” can give them a pivotal role.
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“They can also be made more aware of how to protect the information they have in their possession,” Dawson says.
People may be happier to pass on suspicions to a secretary or PA than to go straight to a manager, says Andrew Durant, forensic accounting partner at BDO Stoy Hayward. “They are an alternative way of communicating with management.”
Common warning signs include inexplicable changes in cashflow patterns, unusual variations in stock orders, accounts that don’t balance and increased levels of customer complaints.
Fraudsters will often be long-serving staff members, but in recent years professional criminals have emerged, often part of organised gangs or syndicates, who use temporary staff such as IT contractors, security guards or cleaners to gain access to sensitive data, adds Durant.
So when it comes to day-to-day office security, even little things, such as putting sensitive documents in a PDF format so they cannot be altered, using shredders properly, having secure bins and storage (either electronic or physical), can all help, Dawson argues.