The Hindu Business Line : Recruitment demands due diligence

Degree to a dream job: A proud moment for the student. But, are the corporates convinced? Organisations find that many of their employees falsify their educational credentials.

Ganesh Chella

In God we trust, but employees’ credentials must always be verified,” seems to be the adage in corporate India today. From a time when employer–employee relationships were trust-based, sacred and lifetime-oriented we have now hit an all-time low where employers are unable to repose any trust in their employees, leaving the relationship legalistic and process-driven.

Is this a huge issue, is it recent and must we worry about it?

First things first. The origin of this issue is not recent. Most factories have been verifying the police records of their workmen before hiring them. It was also common for many organisations to have informers who kept the personnel manager informed about “undesirable elements” and their “suspicious activities”.

Similarly, most retail businesses have always had the practice of random checks on the cash tills in the stores as well as random stock checks on high pilferage items. This was born out of the belief (often held to be true) that store pilferage was always an inside job.

However, all this was considered a “blue collar” thing. The so-called white collar employees were supposed to be generally clean and trustworthy.

Not any longer. Pre-employment and post-employment background verification has become an almost mandatory process for most large organisations and for good reason.

Organisations are realising to their shock that many of their employees have falsified their educational credentials, work history records, salary certificates and skill levels. Many have concealed their age, police records, their bad credit history, gaps in employment, bad disciplinary track record and so on.

Verifying all this became extremely important when organisations had to send their employees to work on their clients’ premises or handle their clients’ work, including clients’ information and intellectual property.

This became even more critical after fears of terror attacks intensified. Suddenly, it became critical for organisations to really know who their employees were.

Organisations that have discovered falsification post-facto end up firing these employees and a lot of this has been in the news.

My interactions with experts in this field have revealed some interesting facts:

Many of the employees who have been fired for falsification were among the best performing employees.

Contrary to popular perception, women seem to be as involved in this as men.

Even more interesting is the realisation that many of the offenders are from middle-class backgrounds. Those from economically disadvantaged family backgrounds seem to be a lot more wary of indulging in and getting away with such acts.

It also emerges that the most common misdeed seems to be around falsification of academic credentials.

What then are the drivers of this unfortunate trend?

The way we hire is certainly contributing to the problem. Hiring today is faceless — so much about the process and so little about the person.

People are interviewed over the phone, much is outsourced and the people involved in making the selection decisions are themselves so disengaged that quality is the last thing on their minds. The mad rush to fill up the numbers and the problem of scraping the bottom of the barrel are only making it easier for people who falsify information. Unless organisations change the way they hire, they cannot begin to solve at least some part of this problem.

Greed is certainly a major driver of these actions. A large number of aspirants, deserving or not, are desperate to participate in the new world of employment opportunities and rewards. Much like the gold rush, there is quite a free-for-all out there. With getting rich being glorified, the pressure is huge.

Peer pressure is also adding to the problem. If one’s friend has found employment with a large brand, he would not like to be left behind and if that means he has to overstate or conceal, so be it.

The lack of respect for diversity among organisations is also seen as a huge reason for this desperate effort to falsify. How else would you explain the fact that many who falsify are in fact good performers?

Despite all the talk about talent, organisations seem to be too fussy about first division grades, gaps in employment records and so on.

This leads employees to do whatever it takes to meet the “prescribed norms”. While I am by no means condoning such acts, I am also advocating a much more liberal view of talent. This may well ease the pressure on people to adopt devious means.

Organisational values are also quite often weak. From themselves encouraging employees to overstate their credentials to clients to not taking firm action against wrongdoers, many organisations display a huge weakness in standing up for what they value.

This loss of trust, right from the start of the employment relationship, has much deeper ramifications.

Organisations are forever suspicious of their employees. It is now routine for organisations to scan job Web sites to see how many of their good performers have placed their CVs there, especially after a pay cycle.

Similarly, employees who announce their intention to leave are treated with great suspicion given the fear of such employees passing on information to the competition or walking away with IP.

Service agreements (bonds) backed by bank guarantees and non-compete clauses are other measures that organisations are increasingly resorting to, to protect their interests and their investments.

Do all these actions affect the average employee and his level of engagement? Or does it make him happy that the organisation is tougher with those who are deviant?

I would like to believe that good employees do take a big picture view of these actions provided their own moments of truth with the organisation are positive. Whether that is true or not is an entirely different story!

(The writer is the founder and CEO of totus consulting, a strategic HR consulting firm. He is also the co-founder of the Executive & Business Coaching Foundation India Ltd. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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