Lying Liars and the Lying Lies They Tell

The challenge of protecting employee privacy is becoming more and more difficult yet it is important that companies have procedures in place to do so.  Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, author of The Business Guide to Legal Literacy: What Every Manager Should Know About the Law advises, “Companies do have the responsibility to protect the privacy of their employees.  Any type of personal information request should be routed through human resources.”             

Part of being an HR person is playing the role of detective. You must try to find out if the person calling is legitimate. For example, here is a telephone conversation I had last week:

Caller: “Hi, I need to verify employment for xxxx

Me: “I am sorry, I do not give out verbal information, do you have a signed release from the individual you are calling about?”

Caller: “Yes, I do.” 

Me: “Ok, you can scan it and email or fax it to me.”

Caller: “Well, it will take me three days to get a signed release and I need the information now.”

Me: “Oh, so you lied, you do not have a release.”

Caller: “I just need to verify employment for xxxx.”

Me: “I just need you to stop lying and get me a signed release.”    

Needless to say, he did not get any information. Please note that I did not even confirm if xxxx was an employee, I referred to him as “the individual.” 

A ploy that many sales people use is pretending to know the person they are calling to speak with. Often someone will call and try and guess a person’s nickname such as asking to speak to Bill or Billy if the person’s name is William.  This can truly backfire if William goes by Bubba. I also like when they call to speak to someone who has a gender neutral name such as Evan, Casey or Jamie and they guess wrong. “Hi, can I speak with Evan?”  “Who shall I say is calling?”  “Tell him it’s Sally, we are good friends, he is expecting my call.”  “Really? I am sure SHE will take your call immediately, Sally.”   

Employees are not exempt from creative approaches to non-truth telling. An HR friend of mine told me about a time he was working for a large corporation that used a call-in telephone system for employees to log their hours. This worked great for one young lady who called in her hours at the same time every week…from prison! 

Similarly, I once had an employee who handed in timesheets from two different work sites with overlapping times. A miracle, he was in two places at once. When I terminated him he claimed he made a mistake he wrote the wrong times on one of the timesheets because he was looking at his calendar from the prior year.  Nice try—he did not work that day the prior year. In the words of Donald Trump, “You’re fired.”

Bottom line—honesty is the best policy. Lies are difficult to keep track of, the truth never changes.