6 tips to spot a lying employee

Sometimes, spotting a liar can be tricky. Here are six quick tips to help you determine if your employee is telling the truth or sporting flaming trousers:

1. Ask questions you already know the answers to: Like a good investigator, don’t reveal all your information. Ask questions and give the employee the opportunity to talk freely. If what they say is consistent with what you already know to be true, they’re most likely being honest. If you find serious flaws in their story, it’s a safe bet they’re not telling the truth.
2. They lag in conversation: Do they stare at you agog? Swallow excessively? Take a long time to answer? Refuse to answer at all? If they seem like they’re searching for a believable answer, they probably are. And if it takes them time to find the answer, you can beat they’re not telling you what really happened. Or, sometimes the opposite is true…
3. Their answers are too ready: Quick! Know what you did last Sunday at 4 pm? Could you rattle that answer off or would you have to pause and think about it for a moment? If your employee offers answers too readily to questions that would normally make you think, it’s probably because they’re trying to hide something.
4. The pitch of their voice changes: Is their voice cracking or is the pitch changing? Vocal chords constricting with the stress of lying can be a dead giveaway.
5. Read their body language: It’s not just the voice that changes during a lie. Has the employee’s body language changed? If a confident person suddenly doesn’t make eye contact, if they remove non existent fuzzies from their sweaters or if they touch their face excessively, you might have a liar on your hands.
6. They swear to their honesty a little too often: Do they say things repeatedly like “I swear,” “I’m telling the truth” or “God as my witness”? If they’re constantly proclaiming their honesty, they may be anything but. In the words of Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Anyone who asserts their truthfulness too much may be anything but.