You would be amazed to find out the kind of things that get stolen from offices right under the boss’s eye. It’s not money, or machinery or something of great value you would think of protecting. Employees simply want to get hold of meager office supplies, which Homer Simpson aptly mentions (while sneaking into the supply cupboard, one might add) they can easily afford otherwise. It is annoying, yes, and you’ll feel silly confronting a hardworking employee about a lost pen, but it is also quite costly on your company. ABC news estimates that businesses have lost as much as $50 billion from this malpractice.

So what exactly are the employees nicking from those supply rooms, anyway?

But How Much Money Can a Company Lose from One Pen?

As inconsequential as it sounds, office supplies don’t come cheap. This infographic will give you some insight…

It all begins with slipping a pen between their folder on the way out. Who’s going to be looking for a pen anyway? But once they’ve written away their notes with the company pen, they realize, well, these papers aren’t going to keep themselves together are they?

So they grab paper clips too, and while they’re at it, maybe grab a stapler or two, who’s noticing? Well. Your profits are. The office supply section of your balance sheet will start to look ugly.

You wouldn’t know what to protect if you don’t know what’s being stolen. So this is what you need to keep an eye on…

The Most Commonly Stolen Office Supplies

Pens, pencils and notebooks are frequently nicked

Boston.com says people have admitted to stealing

• Pens/pencils/markers
• Notebooks
• Paper clips
• Post-ids
• Staplers

So, why would anyone want to pocket something as trivial as a pen? Take a look at this:

What You Need to Do

You might go up to Joe from marketing and accuse him for stealing a paper clip, but let’s face it. It’ll be embarrassing for the both of you.

Start off by talking about the ethical integrity of your workers. What you are essentially doing is ringing some intrinsic moral bells so that realize their wrongdoings on their own.

The trouble occurs when they don’t realize what they’re doing is wrong. In this case, you need to rely on a third eye, like a security camera, another employee or iPhone spy without jailbreak software.

Relying on a security camera will help you catch them red-handed. While that sounds like an excellent plan, they might tell you they were only taking that wad of papers for office work.

That’s when another employee comes in. Assigning someone in an office as the moral monitor can do wonders. They would guilt-trip the others into doing the right thing.

The real problem occurs when it is more than just office supplies that an employee is stealing. Valuable data and trade secrets, if invaded can cost companies a lot more than the $50 billion we talked about. Iron Mountain has the stats. That’s what you need to monitor more closely.

This is where both your security cameras and an extra pair of eyes and ears fail and iPhone spy software like mSpy software reviews prove to be most useful. What apps like these enable you to do is set up alert words, so you will know if valuable company information is being shared with someone else. So, for example, if Joe from marketing is emailing out “company brand strategy” to your rivals, you will know right away.

Make Sure You Play it Wisely

The best thing you can do to prevent office supply theft is to incorporate an honor code within your company. This should make everyone their own moral monitor. But if this fails, take a while studying these monitoring tools before you decide to place the blame. This should reduce your amount of embarrassing conversations.