Discover the most effective control HR can implement to mitigate the risk of employees fraudulently taking unearned leave time tracked in spreadsheets. Learn best practices for leave tracking and verification.
Table of Contents
Question
An organization’s human resources (HR) department allows employees to take their leave time prior to it being earned. The employees track their leave time in a spreadsheet, which they provide to HR. Which of the following controls implemented by HR would best mitigate the risk of employees fraudulently taking leave they have not earned?
A. Periodically review the spreadsheet data and reconcile leave taken and accrued with the organization’s timekeeping system.
B. Annually require ethics training for all employees that includes information on proper reporting of time attendance and leave.
C. Frequently publish links to the organization’s fraud reporting hotline.
D. Randomly select employees and require them to attest to the accuracy of the leave time they report in their spreadsheets.
Answer
The best control HR can implement to mitigate the risk of employees fraudulently taking leave they have not earned is:
A. Periodically review the spreadsheet data and reconcile leave taken and accrued with the organization’s timekeeping system.
Explanation
Having employees self-report their leave time in spreadsheets without any verification creates the opportunity for abuse. Employees could easily claim more leave time than they have actually earned.
The most effective mitigating control is for HR to periodically audit the employee-provided spreadsheets against the official timekeeping and leave accrual records maintained by the company. This allows HR to identify any discrepancies where the leave reported by an employee exceeds what they have officially earned per the timekeeping system.
While ethics training, publishing hotline information, and requiring attestations may help deter fraud, they do not actually detect fraudulent reporting that has occurred. Only reconciling the spreadsheets to the authoritative HR systems can reveal concrete cases of employees taking unearned leave.
Therefore, answer choice A, periodically reviewing and reconciling the spreadsheet data, is the best control for HR to implement to mitigate this fraud risk. The other choices may supplement this control but cannot replace the need for actual verification of reported leave time.
IIA-CIA-Part1 certification exam assessment practice question and answer (Q&A) dump including multiple choice questions (MCQ) and objective type questions, with detail explanation and reference available free, helpful to pass the IIA-CIA-Part1 exam and earn IIA-CIA-Part1 certification.