Five Ways to Tell if Staff are Lying

With unemployment on the rise, more people will do anything to get jobs or keep them. This can mean being economical with the truth, on CVs, at job interviews, in disciplinary sessions and reviews.

Some companies resort to bringing in professionals like Darren Stanton to observe these meetings and advise on whether the subjects are telling the truth. A clinical therapist working in the Prison Service in a past life (where he came across quite a few accomplished liars) Stanton has this to say about lying in the work environment:

Employees generally use two methods of deception -- falsification and concealment.

Falsification involves the employee openly providing incorrect information. For example, exaggerating sales figures or blaming others for their mistakes.

Concealment involves conveniently ignoring the truth and is used when the employee wants to cover up their actions and the associated accountability. For example, a job applicant may fail to mention they were sacked from their last job for gross misconduct or incompetancy.

Both methods of deception are found in everyday life and are used in the workplace by employees hoping to use them to climb the corporate ladder.

When a person lies they are unable to control their body's responses, letting off physical 'tells' which, to the trained eye, can easily be picked up.

According to Stanton, a dishonest subject suffers a greater degree of detection apprehension depending on the level of consequences if they are found out. Put simply, the greater the crime, the more pronounced the tells will become.

Here are Stanton's five most common signs that a deception is taking place:

1. The employee/applicant may shake or nod their head while speaking to enforce their statement, as if to say "I do agree with what I'm saying."
2. The employee/applicant may shrug one shoulder very subtly.
3. Right handed people tend to look left when recalling information. Glancing right infers that the information is being made up on the spot. For left handed people the process is reversed.
4. The employee/applicant's face may suddenly become pale as blood drains from their cheeks and lips as part of the 'fight or flight' response to confrontation.
5. When the employee is confronted with an allegation, 'Did you do it?' a liar will generally respond using the accuser's language, such as -- "No I did not do it". This is a response to being unexpectedly accused of something and as a result the employee/applicant chooses the quickest answer possible.