If you're this employer (on The Guardian website), you indulge in your own peculiar brand of vigilante HR.

The boss at an Essex firm suspected an employee of theft. Together with another colleague, he decided that the best course of action was to tie up the suspected thief and march him through a busy town centre to the police station, wearing a sign that said "Thief. I stole £845. Am on my way to police station.".

Not surprisingly, the police took a dim view of their actions and, while the suspected thief was arrested, his captors were also taken into custody on suspicion of false imprisonment, assault and, ironically, theft. A spokesman for the police stressed that "it is important to remember that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law".

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