Providing higher wages to your employees may prevent increased instances of employee theft, a new study by California researchers reveals.

Chen and Sandino have documented the effect of higher wages on employee theft as measured by cash shortage and inventory shrinkage.
"A seminal study conducted in the field has examined what happens after a firm cuts workers' pay. What's different in our paper is that there's no such shock as a pay cut, whose effect is typically short-lived and does not persist. The fact that we can document the relation in our study using cross-sectional data suggests that the effect of wages on employee theft can persist over time," Chen said.
The researchers argue that paying relatively higher wages discourages employee theft for two reasons.
First, employees receiving higher wages are less inclined to commit theft because they wish to retain their higher-paying job or as a gesture of positive reciprocity. Second, firms that offer relatively higher wages may attract a higher proportion of honest workers.
There is also a "wage tipping point" for employers to consider, when the cost of paying more toward employee wages is greater than the cost of employee theft.
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"It accounts for about 39 percent of the cost of a wage increase. If you add other benefits like reduced turnover, reduced training costs and greater efforts, the benefits of paying a wage premium may outweigh the costs. So an employer may find it beneficial to raise employee wages if other benefits from wage increases translate into at least 61 percent of the cost of the wage increases," she said.
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"We show that the effect of relative wages on employee theft is more pronounced when there are multiple workers," Chen said.
"Relative wages influence the type of norms that develop among the co-workers. So in industries or businesses that use multiple workers to staff a store or a retail outlet, it's even more beneficial to pay a wage premium."
The results of the study have important practical implications for managers, as employee theft accounts for 200 billion dollars in losses for U.S. businesses annually.
"Our research provides systematic empirical evidence that wage premiums do play a role in reducing employee theft and fostering more ethical norms within an organization," Chen said.
"The takeaways from our study are likely to apply to other types of retailers, such as restaurants, department stores and drug stores, and to service or consumer products firms with similar monitoring environments, where the payoffs from stealing are not disproportionately high relative to potential wage premiums," she said.
If an employer can't afford to pay higher wages, Chen says there are other ways to induce positive reciprocity among employees.
"Paying employees higher wages is not the only way to cultivate positive reciprocity, but it certainly is a good way to foster employee loyalty and honesty," she added.
Source-ANI