Startup Employment Applications and Lying

If an Austin startup employee lies on an employment application, it can be a serious issue.  Many employers are scared about handling employees when they do not discover the dishonesty until long after the person was hired.  First, it is beyond important that you perform a background check on employees before you hire them.  If someone cannot be honest with you in the beginning, things are probably not going to go terribly when they are trusted with your company’s assets and reputation.  Background checks are pretty important and I have some resources that that will scale your searches so they are appropriate (and appropriately priced) for the position you are filling.

Dishonesty should also appear in every handbook.  Incidentally, every company should have a handbook.  If dishonesty appears in a handbook, it tends to make discipline or employment termination occur much more smoothly when it is cited as a reason an employer is taking action.  More importantly, discovery of dishonesty should be handled the same, across the board.  This gives managers, or other decision makers, the conviction and standard to guide them when they are faced with disciplining or ending the employment of a liar without hem hawing over the mitigating factors.

An absolute rule about workplace lying will also help a company avoid a claim of discrimination.   It would be illegal to have a blanket rule against hiring anyone with a criminal conviction because of the well-documented incidents of over-convictions amongst minority races.  It is not, however, illegal to avoid employing anyone who lies about having a criminal record.