Working Time Fraud and Expense Claim Fraud | Review of Field Service Employees

In a European and global comparison, Germany is a country with both very high living standards and a high employment rate: 43.172 million people were in employment in March 2016 and, with a population of 81.9 million at that time, formed an employment rate of almost 53 per cent. Considering the refugee crisis that had not yet been overcome and the many job cuts, this is a clearly positive sign which, however, not all employees seem to appreciate equally.

The commercial detectives of Kurtz Investigations Nuremberg are increasingly commissioned to monitor field service employees who have attracted attention either through particularly high expense claims or through implausible working hours, and whose criminal conduct is generally confirmed in the course of our investigations. These breaches of the employment contract naturally constitute a serious breach of trust against the employer, because field staff in particular are granted extensive trust and a high degree of personal responsibility for their casework. While at fixed office workplaces it quickly becomes noticeable if the regular coffee breaks increasingly last more than 20 minutes, it is considerably more difficult for a personnel or company manager to keep track of and verify the actual weekly working hours of field service employees. Accordingly, our private detectives from Nuremberg assist with checks throughout Franconia, Bavaria and the Federal Republic of Germany: +49 911 3782 0154.

Payment Without Performance Plus Loss of Orders and Customers

Field service employees bear a high degree of personal responsibility for the actual performance of their working time. Temptations such as extending the lunch break by half an hour on a beautiful spring day or charging private restaurant visits outside working hours as expenses occur time and again. Even though no reliable figures are available regarding the ratio between contractual and actual working time of an average field service employee — a survey would hardly produce honest answers — our Nuremberg detectives confirm from their case experience that many employees working away from company premises like to round up their time sheets and expense claims. Work starts later and ends earlier, or is sometimes not carried out at all.

Especially in an economically so productive city as Nuremberg, such behaviour results in high losses when calculated over the year: employees paid by the hour unlawfully siphon significant sums of money from the company, while fewer customers are acquired due to their time fraud and consequently less turnover is generated. The company is therefore hit twice, while the field service employee benefits from gained leisure time and illicitly obtained money.

Procedure in the Event of Conspicuous Time Sheets

Do you have one or more employees who are supposed to work for you outside the company, but who are increasingly attracting attention with suspicious working hour and expense claims? Do you have the impression that one of your field service employees is conspicuously unsuccessful compared to others, resulting in lost revenue? Have you confronted the relevant persons with your suspicion and received no satisfactory explanations, only evasions and specious arguments?

In such cases, contact the private detectives of Kurtz Commercial Detective Agency Nuremberg to receive comprehensive personal advice on possible courses of action. Regardless of whether your field service employee is fully responsible for their own working time and scheduling or is assigned a fixed work plan, observation over several working days is advisable in order to dispel all doubts. The employee is discreetly observed by one or more of our Nuremberg detectives from the beginning to the end of the working day, in order to document any behaviour in breach of contract photographically and thus in a manner admissible in court.

Not All Field Service Employees Are Automatically Time Fraudsters – Case-by-Case Observation Permitted

Where substantiated grounds for suspicion exist, action should therefore be taken according to the principle “trust is good, control is better” in order to prevent damage to the company and loss of turnover. As mentioned above, double financial losses arise when employees shamelessly exploit the goodwill and trust of their superiors and enjoy an early — and involuntarily employer-funded — end-of-work beer.

Of course, not every individual field service employee may be arbitrarily monitored as a preventive measure against working time and expense fraud. The privacy of employees must be protected and weighed more highly than any employer interests as long as employees do not display suspicious behaviour. However, if employees have repeatedly attracted attention through remarkable and sometimes contradictory statements and expense claims that do not correspond with the data of the allegedly or actually serviced clients or customers, Kurtz Private Detective Agency Nuremberg can take action and observe the appropriately suspected employees. Our detectives work professionally and effectively; all evidence gathered is admissible in court, can be used in claims for damages against field service employees and — in the event of a breach of the employment contract — may lead to the conviction of the fraudulent employee.

Extreme Case: Customer Poaching by Field Service Employees

As if the breach of trust and contractual misconduct were not enough, matters occasionally become even worse for employers. In addition to excessive wage payments and loss of turnover, a field service employee can harm the employer even more severely if, during customer meetings, they covertly offer company services and pocket the resulting undeclared income, or if they poach long-standing customers of their employer for a privately run side business operated in secret. In such cases, the field service employee damages the company even more than through falsified expense and time sheets, because few things affect an entrepreneur more severely than losing good customers in seemingly inexplicable ways. In such a scenario, the employee becomes criminally liable to such an extent that, in addition to summary dismissal, a conviction may entail contractual damages amounting to several thousand euros, plus the incurred detective fees and potentially even expected losses of turnover.

Due to the criminal energy fostered by a mindset of achieving as much money and or leisure time as possible with as little effort as possible — the path of least resistance — companies regularly suffer damage amounting to millions. The deployment of our commercial detectives in Regensburg, Bayreuth, Nuremberg or Amberg is therefore not only advisable but essential if fraudulent field service employees are to be caught in the act, so that affected companies can be awarded fair compensation. After all, the German economy is the strongest in Europe and should remain so in the future. In the event of such a case, contact our detectives in Nuremberg and obtain non-binding information on our procedures and fees: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-nuernberg.de.