Liar, liar, employees’ honesty on fire

Amid the uproar about top executives cooking the books, another ethical meltdown has gone largely unnoticed. Rank-and-file employees are lying more often at work, by some measures. Employees calling in sick have hit a five-year high in the US, and three-fifths of those who do so aren’t sick at all, but are tending to personal needs or just feel entitled to a day off, says a 2004 survey of 305 employers by CCH Inc. In a separate survey last year of 1,316 workers by Kronos Inc, a labour-management and consulting concern, more than one-third of workers admit to having lied about their need for sick days. Groups that track federal family-leave use say more employees are stretching the reasons for taking time off, even claiming that a common cold warrants a medical leave.

In another indicator, job applicants reporting false academic credentials have hit a three-year high, with 12 percent of r?sum?s containing at least some phony information, according to a survey by a recruiting firm. One factor may be stresses brought on by accelerating corporate change. There is evidence that misconduct increases in companies where mergers, acquisitions and restructurings are under way. In other cases, employee dishonesty is a sign policies are outdated. One healthcare company prohibited employees from using personal software on company computers. But the company shifted gears after realising that time-pressed workers were secretly installing personal-banking and calendar software on laptops.

Dishonest one time or another   
Almost all of us are dishonest at work at one time or another, of course. Common workplace sins — from lying about one’s reasons for missing work to stretching expense accounts, employees in a survey  confessed to at least one. Last year, a “family emergency’’ was cited as the reason for a manager rescheduling an interview when in fact, her only problem was an angst-ridden teenager who needed to talk. It’s easy to blame top executives for creating the kind of environment that fosters dishonesty. Amid a lack of strong policies and an abundance of bad examples at the top, everything from regularly calling in ‘sick’ to stretching revenue forecasts was “acceptable.”

Workplace ethics
Corporate culture does shape employee truthfulness, but the roots of rank-and-file dishonesty run deeper. Research has shown a persistent gap between lower- and higher-ranking workers on certain measures of workplace ethics. Rank-and-file employees are less likely than managers to report misconduct they observe: 44 percent say they resist doing so, compared with 28 percent of managers, according to the Ethics Resource Centre survey. And younger managers with three years or less experience are nearly twice as likely as older or more experienced managers to say they feel pressured to violate ethical principles.

Some employees, of course, simply harbour a larcenous sense of entitlement. Phyllis Hartman, a consultant with PGHR Consulting, Pittsburgh, who has worked with many clients on family-leave issues, says she has seen an increasing sense of entitlement among employees , with a growing number taking time off for minor illnesses or questionable family needs. The aged father of one auto-industry employee has “died” three times, by the employee’s reports, gaining the worker-bereavement leave at each of three successive employers.

Sticky situations
While it’s never okay to lie at work, the complexities of workers’ lives thrust them into some sticky situations. Is it better to tell your boss you can’t take a business trip because of non-existent client appointments, or to admit that your spouse may take the next step toward divorce court if you go? There are some excuses bosses just don’t want to hear. You might get tired of hearing the same time-off excuses over and over — the sick nanny, the travelling spouse who can’t share child care.

What if the truth will do so much career damage that a face-saving lie seems better? A human-resource director says her boss is so demanding that she lies to protect family time, fabricating work-related reasons for missing staff meetings, taking time off or refusing business trips. But any lie has hidden costs, not only in teamwork and productivity, but in an employees’ own self-respect. Once you start stretching the truth, it’s easy to forget where to stop. The human-resource director also pads her travel-expense reports, adding an occasional extra meal, to help cover the high cost of child care while she’s on the road, she says. If you find yourself in compromising situations, it probably means you need to make a change.