Equal Pay Day 2017

Equal Pay Day 2017 was yesterday, April 4, 2017.   All sorts of news stories have been posted, tweeted and blogged. As of now, it will take 169 years for parity in the work world.  But in the world of embezzlement and fraud I can tell you it is going to take even longer. Here are some statistics to get started. Statistic #1-depending on the position, women have an even bigger glass ceiling. In 2016 women stole on average approximately .56 for every dollar stolen by a male.

Statistic #2-breaking it down by position and comparing male and female employees the women steal approximately .78 cents of a man. Comparing managers, the female managers steal approximately .84 cents. But the biggest variance is between owners and executives. This is where the men rule.  A woman will only steal, on average, .36 as compared to a man. Below is the link for the ACFE Report to the Nations 2016-see page 58 for gender:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/acfepublic/2016-report-to-the-nations.pdf

So what does that say? Anecdotally I will say that women are in “lesser” positions than men on average and therefore have more supervision. If you are a male owner/executive you are going to rob the company blind.   As it has been detailed before, audits do not catch fraud generally speaking. But more positions that are held by women have some internal controls: two signature authorization, limits on purchase cards etc.

Not getting political but Trump has just pulled back the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Act put in by Obama.  This is not going to help matters.

I just was in Philadelphia doing the closing keynote for the IIA Philadelphia.  I now have a survey card that I pass out to attendees.  Just through the initial assessment I will tell you that tips and alert lines are how many people get caught.  That has also been my personal experience.

When workers see something wrong they may say something.   When people don’t think the system is fair they may not speak out or worse they may neutralize their behavior and appeal to higher loyalties and possibly may resort to embezzlement.

Stay tuned for the analysis of the attendees.