Your employees – how far can you trust them? Employee theft is a big problem, and the question has been asked: how honest is your workforce[1]? The 2010 Global Retail Theft Barometer report[2]states that disloyal employees account for 35.3% of shrinkage or £24.3bn worth of loss. There is clearly a serious need to get to grips with dishonesty in the workplace, and to assess the integrity of potential recruits during the selection procedure. It certainly makes good sense to screen out those who might pose a threat. The question is, though, is this really possible?
Shades of grey
No one is a hundred per cent honest about everything, and this ambivalence is a major problem. In fact, we are all dishonest to some degree. To say that you have never told a lie will be untrue for just about everyone (with the possible exception of the occasional saint). Indeed, spin and the slight bending of the truth is a key component to advertising, politics, sales and many aspects of personal life. Dishonesty is not a black and white issue, more of a sliding scale with shady areas and room for interpretation.
Assessing integrity
Despite this, there are some ways in which integrity and dishonesty can be assessed. The first method would be to directly and overtly ask employees about their attitudes, what they say about their feelings and views towards dishonesty, typically in the form of a standardised questionnaire. Those with a more accepting attitude of theft may be more likely to feel that it is justified and to engage in it. This could be on the scale of minor tax avoidance, skipping train fares or making personal phone calls from work. Integrity questionnaires invite you to describe your attitude towards honesty using items that are close to the line between what is acceptable and what isn’t, like the following items:
- I never make personal phone calls from work.
- If asked, I always give people my true opinion.
- I have never lost my temper.
- In my CV, I have been perfectly open and straightforward.
Interviews are quite poor predictors of workplace performance generally, and can quickly be disregarded as a safe method for assessing integrity in the workplace[3]. Furthermore, dishonest people have a flair for being able to charm their way through a job interview, making a good first impression.[4] However, if they are emotionally turbulent, impulsive, volatile or resentful, reservations about potential employment quickly multiply. Such dispositional traits and combinations of personality characteristics can be linked to dishonesty and other counterproductive behaviours and are classically known to be disproportionally represented in prison populations [5].
In the area of personality assessment there has been a long tradition of ‘lie scales’ to detect whether a candidate is faking their responses to enhance the impression they create, what is known as ‘impression management’, and this is likely to be a desirable component of any standardised integrity assessment.
Candidate values
The final domain to consider should be the candidate’s values; what they identify with and believe in. The values of a candidate are important because they can override other problematic dispositions; the culture they have been brought up in acts to restrain natural impulses. We learn the difference between right and wrong through the society we are brought up in, through the religion we are taught and the legal justice system that operates around us. It may have been an evolutionary advantage to be dishonest for our early ancestors, but in today’s civilised society, we rely on being able to trust one another and to be able to co-operate with one another. Thus, most of us will believe that lying, cheating and stealing are untenable. It is not unreasonable to consider that integrity has more to do with nurture than nature. Integrity depends on the values instilled in us through our upbringing and acculturation and acts to restrain antisocial behaviour.
A question of judgement
In view of the dynamics of integrity described above, tests should be used with caution and should be deployed alongside interviews and other employee screening strategies. Integrity assessments undoubtedly contribute constructively to decision making about staff selection but not in the absolute way that one might wish. In the final analysis it will be a matter of judgement. However good that judgement may be, some honest candidates will be rejected and some villains will slip through the net but a good understanding of the nature of integrity and the use of well constructed integrity tests will certainly improve your hit rate.
There is a real need to acknowledge this problem and to work to minimise dishonesty in the workplace. The additional element of integrity testing as a part of candidate screening should be a real benefit to the business. Though integrity testing should be used with care, the fact remains that this is the most objective strategy available and this is as good as it gets for assessing an employee’s honesty and integrity in the workplace.
At the big picture level, integrity needs to become a part of the organisational culture. If a high integrity culture can be established, the mores and working practices will consolidate those values and will attract like-minded people, discourage the less honest and restrain the incidence of employee theft.
[1] See ‘Employee theft, do you have a problem?’ The People Bulletin, 24 November 2011
[2] www.retailresearch.org/grtb_globaltrends.php
[3] Wiesner & Cronshaw (1988). A meta-analytic investigation of the impact of interview format and degree of structure on the validity of the employment interview. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 61, pp. 275-290.
[4] See also ‘Snakes in suits – are there psychopaths in your boardroom?’ The People Bulletin, 10 November 2010.
[5] Barrett, P.T. (1987) Validation and Technical Report: Attitudes to Honesty Questionnaire (ATH-1). London: Permetric Ltd.