Justice

Personnel audit

HR security is a process, not a result

The lie detection technique  of the twenty-first century is based on a broad scientific base, which is based on the physiology and psychology of a person who is in extreme conditions. In the modern world, the polygraph has become a massive tool in the fight against criminal phenomena in society. In more than 50 countries of the world, it is one of the main means of obtaining information from citizens who, for one reason or another, do not want to tell the truth about the real circumstances of various life situations.

A new direction is being successfully developed – the use of polygraphs in  the selection of personnel  in professions with increased material risk. Employers of all categories began to rely more on the information obtained during the conduct of polygraph tests than on the result of questionnaires when recruiting personnel. After all, applicants quite often write untruths in questionnaires!

Gradually, single personnel checks have passed into the category of mass ones. Currently, in a number of civilized countries, law enforcement, banking and various commercial structures in their personnel work place the main emphasis on polygraph checks of their personnel.

Two reasons influence the popularity of personnel checks with the help of a lie detector:

1. high reliability of results;
2. the possibility of obtaining and verifying biographical and other data that the interviewee hides, and which are practically impossible to obtain or verify using conventional methods.

When hiring, there is always a need to find out a whole set of issues related to the past and present of a potential employee. They can be reduced to six directions:

1. Revealing the hidden motives for joining the job.
2. Criminal past and validity.
3. Propensity to use alcohol and drugs.
4. Gambling addiction.
5. Mental health.
6. Tendency to theft and fraud.

Ignorance of these problems can cause significant material losses for the company caused by unscrupulous employees. The need for active  use of a polygraph  to solve a complex of these problems is due to the fact that obtaining such information by other means is expensive, and the information itself is almost always biased.

Every manager with a sufficient level of self-respect, the head of the security service and the personnel department is obliged to know and use the possibilities of modern instrumental lie detection. After all, everyone has long since abandoned calculators for counting and lockers for storing money, and when working with personnel, they still use the same intuition at the level of “liked – not liked”. The main possibilities are as follows:

Polygraph screening tests

Conducting psychophysiological testing of job applicants.

Preventive polygraph checks

Periodic survey of already working personnel to identify hidden violations committed during the past period of time.

Polygraph checks of the dismissed personnel

Survey of the personnel being dismissed to identify violations committed during the period of work in the company. They allow you to avoid losses from so-called “canned” damage and prevent the theft of commercial information, documents and databases.

Service investigations of events in a commercial structure by order of the management or the security service

Basic theses for a polygraph test

1. Verification of the veracity of the data specified in the questionnaire (summary).
2. Verification of the authenticity of the provided documents (passport, military ID, diploma, employment book, etc.)
3. Valid reasons for dismissal from the previous place of work:

• insufficient professionalism
• negligent attitude to the performance of official duties
• conflict (degree of participation, reason)
• theft
• stealing
• bribery
• receiving “kickbacks”
• using official position and time for personal purposes
• disclosure of confidential information

4. Actual reasons for coming to work (referral by competitors, criminal structures, interested persons, etc.)
5. Drug addiction
6. Alcohol addiction
7. Hidden health problems (including mental health) that interfere with the performance of official duties 8. The
existence of debt and other financial obligations
9. Passion for gambling
10. Committing offenses (criminal, administrative, being under investigation), in particular those hidden from official authorities
11. Propensity to use blackmail
12. The presence of relatives who are familiar with this company or at a competing firm
13. Parallel business (availability of additional income)
14. Involvement and contacts with competing organizations, crime, etc.
15. Storage of unregistered weapons and dangerous substances
16. Presence of the following facts at the existing workplace:

• Theft (including colleagues and employees)
• receiving “kickbacks”
• stealing
• information theft
• bribery
• negligent attitude to the performance of official duties
• conflict (degree of participation, reason)
• use of official position, material means, equipment and time for personal selfish purposes
• disclosure of confidential and commercial information

17. Spreading negative gossip and other intentional damage to the company
18. Establishing involvement in concealing the facts of the task of material damage to the company
19. Intentions (planning) of causing losses to the company.

Example 1

Imagine that a bank is offered a device to detect counterfeit “promissory notes” and the bank refuses to use it. There can be two reasons for this: either the banker has “gone mad”, or working with fictitious documents is the basis of his activity. There can be no other way!

Because the presence of a detector of fake “notices” in the bank indicates its reliability. And what about the cases of identifying unreliable employees, dishonest and acting to the detriment of the company? Unfortunately, the personnel security service and company security do not always fulfill their duties conscientiously. Extortion and robbery committed by employees responsible for the protection and protection of property are often observed. This is due to the fact that the security service is often infiltrated by persons with a criminal past. The purpose of their coming to work in the bank is to find opportunities for illegal enrichment. Moreover, all available means are used to solve this problem – from forgery of documents to bribery and blackmail.

So, a few years ago, in the Moscow branch of one of the big banks, which is one of the top ten banks in Russia, a vault was robbed. Several billion rubles and a significant amount in dollars were withdrawn from it. The investigation conducted by specialists in the usual way did not yield positive results. Then they remembered the polygraph. The first surveys showed that two of the group of alleged criminals worked in the bank and in security. Moreover, one of them held a rather high position. More detailed lie detector tests showed that the suspects had been in prison for armed robbery before joining the bank. Careful falsification of documents, the ability to gain confidence allowed them to commit this crime. A further polygraph check made it possible to establish not only the composition of the gang, but also the location of the stolen money. As a result, almost the entire amount was returned to the bank.

A lie detector test by bank security guards could have prevented a robbery.

Example 2

Now, many private organizations, realizing the possibilities of the polygraph, use it not only when solving crimes, but also when recruiting personnel. Thus, one of the large trading firms selling electronic devices on the Russian markets invited two people with a one-month trial period when recruiting a deputy HR specialist for one vacancy. Both applicants had experience in personnel work and special psychological education.

A thorough polygraph check showed that a criminal case was opened against one of the applicants, who came to Moscow from a near foreign country, for embezzlement of 20,000 US dollars. In Moscow, he was closely connected with criminal structures, which through third parties recommended him for work.

Example 3

The polygraph is widely used in  official investigations . In one of the banks of the city of Krasnodar, several cases of transferring a significant amount of funds to one commercial structure were discovered. The seal and forms of financial documents were genuine. It took a day and a half to identify the perpetrator of this crime, after which it was established not only the person who forged the documents, their number, but also the motives for transferring the money to this particular commercial structure.

Summarizing the above, we can state:

A survey using a polygraph provides reliable information about hidden facts in a person’s biography, which for objective and subjective reasons cannot be sincerely and truthfully stated in the questionnaire data and are therefore hidden.