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City workers show no qualms over fiddling expenses

A fifth of City workers claim they would fiddle their expenses, if they didn’t get caught, a recent survey has found.

The survey, conducted by Project Brokers, revealed that nearly half of workers in leading City jobs claim they would ignore expenses rules if they saw their boss being frivolous with company money.

Over a fifth of respondents stated they would be tempted to submit a fraudulent expenses claim if they new they wouldn’t be found out and would be even more likely to do so if they were struggling to pay bills and basic essentials at the end of the month.

20% also admitted they would exceed the budget for client entertainment, without permission, if it would increase the chances of winning new business.

This thinking was most prevalent amongst respondents in the banking and financial sectors, closely followed by those in professional services.

Daren Cox, CEO and Founder of Project Brokers commented: “This is the first time we have conducted this kind of a survey and the results are a serious cause for concern.

“Most notably, a third of all respondents rated fraudulent expenses claims among the least serious of offences to commit in the workplace.

“Whilst theft of company IP and property are undoubtedly very serious offences, it is worrying that fraudulent expenses claims are not, themselves, considered as theft. Although those under the influence of drugs or alcohol are much more likely to be caught before too much damage is done, someone who is consistently cheating on their expenses is often hard to expose and their actions can have an especially damaging effect on company culture and mind set.

“Expenses fraud can often be left unnoticed, sometimes up to a period of several months or even years if the organisation does not have the appropriate systems and procedures in place to identify mis-placed expenses at an early stage.”

A majority of respondents claimed the most serious offences to commit at work were both theft of company property and theft of company intellectual property.

Drug and alcohol use were deemed to be only ‘moderately serious’ and fraudulent expenses were rates as ‘not very serious.’

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .