The dog ate it...

Endemic theft, seemingly eternal strike action and rampant absenteeism are just a few of the challenges employers the globe over, but perhaps especially in South Africa, have to face. And for the moment we'll leave load-shedding out of the equation, as I've recently tackled the issue, and as I've just sat through two four-hour power outages, so entirely ruining my working day, I am too incandescent to even write about it.

To this now you can add lying employees – and while the word “lie” is indeed a harsh one, there's no point in fencing around with silly euphemisms like “fibbing.”

Now unfortunately while no concrete figures appear to exist for South Africa, the quite engrossing American website anonymousemployee.com cites surveys saying that 15% of employees in today's businesses have been caught lying at work. And please pause to digest the singular fact that these are not just people who have lied, but merely the ones who have been caught.

“Strangely enough, this isn't always done with malicious intentions. In fact, it is common for lying to occur in order to keep the peace, and enable employees the opportunity to make up for some shortcoming or error that has occurred,” claims anonymousemployee.com.

“A very common reason causing employees to lie at work has to do with appeasing customers – this is the motivation for lying in 26% of all cases. Covering up for failed projects and mistakes is the second most common reason for lying at work, making up 13% of all the lies told.”

But the single biggest reason for workplace untruths, apparently, is to change the subject or to avoid a topic and can include not returning calls or claiming that another call is coming through – which is something virtually everyone I have ever encountered in the business world perpetrates at some time or other.

And of course it's almost redundant to point out that employers don't like this one bit – including Greville Howard, CEO of the Durban-based IRS (Industrial Relations Specialists).

“Willful lying by employees is to me one of the single greatest sins,” he says bluntly. And he offers an anecdote or two with a uniquely local flavor.

“We've had a couple of instances where a worker has been caught stealing on CCTV. When confronted with the evidence in a hearing, he'll watch the footage of goods being pilfered, and sadly shake his head, saying, `That's a bad man who's doing that'.

“When we say, 'But it's you!', he'll reply, 'No, that's not me.'”

According to Howard, another perhaps uniquely South African phenomenon is relatives with the supernatural ability to die several times over.

“Not infrequently we'll ask a worker to explain his absence, and he'll say that his father died. This is fair enough, except that the same man's father died the previous year…”

But short of watching every employee every minute of the working day, says the Chrysalis Corporation's website with some justification, there is virtually no way to measure exactly how much lying and its close cousin, pilfering, goes on in the workplace.

“One out of every four adults in the United States may lie to get ahead. 93% of Americans admit to lying at work. Most of us lie an average of three times a day, about as often as we eat,” claims the website.

Again, similar figures for SA don't appear to exist. But given our unfortunate and pervasive culture of corruption, it's not impossible that locally these statistics are far higher.

One way to eradicate at least some of the rotten eggs is to hire employees with ethics – by vigorous pre-employment screening, which local companies like IRS can facilitate. Another way is to ask behavioural questions to get more of an insight into what makes an employee tick.

But ultimately you are going to have to come to grips with the fact that at least some of your workforce will lie some of the time.

“Just as there's incontrovertible evidence that 10% of employees will steal at some stage, 10% will never steal, and 80% will steal if the opportunity arises, so you can at least expect not dissimilar figures for lying,” says Howard. “The trick however is to have mechanisms in place to curb the more damaging and potentially expensive excesses.”