Small-scale office fraud costs UK £800m a year
Fraudulent activities such as submitting false expense claims and making long-distance phone calls from the office cost UK businesses £831m a year.
One unusual example of fraud discovered, found employees posting out their wedding invitations at the expense of the company, according to online recruitment company fish4jobs.co.uk.
While nearly half of the respondents in the survey admitted that expense fraud was dishonest, this did not stop them committing it, with many feeling they were just taking back what employers were taking from them.
The most common forms of office fraud, the survey found were taking home office stationary, putting personal mail through company postal services, adding £10 on expense claims, and inflating travel expenses.
Fish4jobs.co.uk CEO Jonathan Turpin warned against company pilfering:
‘Individually most activity is minor, but if you take an organisation with 100 employees into account, the amount it costs is staggering.’