Question

Erica Laurel and her father have what the latter describes as an easy but hard job when it comes to screening job applicants.  It is easy because for two important jobs - the people who actually do the pressing and those who do the cleaning/spotting - the applicants are easily screened with about 20 minutes of on-the-job testing.  As with typists, Erica points out, "Applicants either know how to press clothes fast enough or how to use cleaning chemicals and machines, or they don't and we find out very quickly by just trying them out on the job."  On the other hand, applicant screening for the stores can also be frustratingly hard because of the nature of some of the other qualities that Erica would like to screen for.  Two of the most critical problems facing her company are employee turnover and employee honesty.  Erica and her father sorely need to implement practices that will reduce the rate of employee turnover.  If there is a way to do this through employee testing and screening techniques, Erica would like to know about it because of the management time and money that are now being wasted by the never-ending need to recruit and hire new employees.  Of greater concern to Erica and her father is the need to institute new practices to screen out those employees who may be predisposed to steal from the company.  

Employee theft is an enormous problem for Laurel Laundry and one that is not limited to employees who handle the cash.  For example, the cleaner/spotter and/or the presser often open the store themselves, without a manager present, to get the day's work started, and it is not unusual to have one or more of the people steal supplies or "run a route".  Running a route means that an employee canvasses his or her neighborhood to pick up people's clothes for cleaning and then secretly cleans and presses them in the Laurel store, using the company's supplies, gas, and power.  It would also not be unusual for an unsupervised person, (or his or her supervisor, for that matter) to accept a 1-hour rush order for cleaning and laundering, quickly clean and press the item, and return it to the customer for payment without making out a proper ticket for the item posting the sale.  The money, of course, goes into the worker's pocket instead of into the register.

The more serious problem concerns the store manager and the counter workers who actually handle the cash.  According to Erica's father, "You would not believe the creativity employees use to get around the management controls we set up to cut down on employee theft."  He tells of one extreme example, "To cut down on the amount of money my employees were stealing, I had a small sign printed and placed in front of all our cash registers that read: YOUR ENTIRE ORDER IS FREE IF WE DON'T GIVE YOU A CASH REGISTER RECEIPT WHEN YOU PAY.  It was my intention with this sign to force all our cash-handling employees to give receipts so the cash register would record them for my accounts.  After all, if all the cash that comes in is recorded in the register, then we should have a much better handle on stealing in our stores.  Well, one of our managers found a diabolical way around this.  I came into the store one night and noticed that the cash register this particular manager was using just didn't look right, although the sign was placed in front of it.  It turned out that every afternoon at about 5pm when the other employees left, this employee would pull his own cash register out of the box that he hid underneath our supplies.  Customers coming in would notice the sign and, of course, the fact that he was meticulous in ringing up every sale.  But unknown to them and use, for about 5 months, the sales that came in for about an hour every day went into his cash register, not mine.  It took us that long to figure out where our cash for that store was going."

In light of these problems, Erica's father asked her to answer the following questions, and she would like to know what you would do: