Book Roots by Alex Haley

¶ … value of photo ID badges for employees from the standpoint of security. The writer examines the issues at hand and presents a logical argument about the topic. There were two sources used to complete this paper.

The memo stating that recommendations for employee photo badges should go out to all clients based on the study of ten companies is based on limited information. The information provided is not enough to be able to ascertain that the badges were the deterrent.

Upon examination of the proposal one can see that there are several areas of missing information regarding whether or not the photo badges were the actual cause of eliminating employee theft.

One of the first things that is missing is whether or not those companies had ever had a problem with employee theft in the past. The study says that there were ten companies in the study and that none of them had any employee theft. However, there is nothing that proves there was a problem with employee theft before the study began. The reader has no idea if the photo badges changed the situation or if it just remained status quo regardless of the badges or lack of badges. The next thing that flaws the assumption being made regarding badges and employee theft is the fact that the reader has no way of knowing what type of companies were studied. While it may well have been the badges that prevented any employee theft it may have been a matter of the businesses not having anything that can be stolen. If the companies were retail manufacturing plants then the lack of employee theft would be something to commend. However, if the ten companies studied were water treatment plants or other such places that had nothing worth stealing the lack of employee theft would be more about opportunity and desire than any photo badge program. Because the memo does not discuss the types of companies that were studied there is no way to tell how much of an impact the employee photo badges actually had on the situation.

If the memo had included descriptions of the businesses at hand and whether or not there had been incidences of employee theft in the past it would have provided more reliable information for the purpose of decisions about photo ID badges.

If the businesses were retail based then the elimination of theft would have been impressive.

Employee theft, shoplifting, administrative error and vendor fraud continue to rob the nation's retailers of billions of dollars. According to the just released 1998 National Retail Security Survey, this loss translates into higher consumer prices and costs the nation's retailers nearly $26 billion annually (Theft, 1998). "

The final thing that was missing from the memo is what other measures were put into place besides the use of employee photo badges to eliminate employee theft. The memo does not discuss whether other security measures were taken or whether security was instructed to recognize the signs of employee theft or not. If the businesses did nothing other than implement a requirement for employee photo badges and there was a problem in the past with theft then it would be more impressive to examine the idea that the badges stopped the problem.