Detecting deceit! Fewer Jamaicans resisting company-mandated lie detector tests
Published:Sunday | June 9, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Tyrone Reid, Senior Staff Reporter
The Jamaica Polygraph Association is reporting that more and more Jamaicans are warming to the idea of undergoing a polygraph test at the workplace.
Deryck Dwyer, president of the Jamaica Polygraph Association and managing director of Global Integrity Services, told The Sunday Gleaner that fewer people are refusing to take a company-mandated lie detector test.
"What has certainly happened is that more people have been more receptive as there is a greater understanding as to why employers have utilised this service," said Dwyer.
"When I started out 12 years ago, there was a lot more resistance to polygraph testing. They have recognised that companies need to take steps to mitigate against practices that defraud and cut into their bottom line," added Dwyer.
Polygraph (lie detector) tests have been largely feared because some critics believe they can be intrusive and time-consuming.
Experts say that a polygraph test usually lasts for approximately two hours, but can go up to four hours.
But Dwyer told our news team that more business owners are utilising lie detector tests to get to the bottom of incidents involving theft at the workplace.
According to Dwyer, a growing number of local companies have incorporated the use of lie detector tests in the recruitment of potential employees and the promotion of existing employees to sensitive posts within their organisations.
"The reality is that persons are out there who have been involved in unscrupulous activities that should be precluded from certain positions but they don't have a criminal record. That's why the polygraph is so important," argued Dwyer.
good scores
He also revealed that the majority of persons to whom he has administered a polygraph test, locally, score well or "not deceptive", which is the language used by those in the business of deciphering truth and lies.
Captain Basil Bewry, vice-president of the Jamaica Polygraph Association, told our news team that he had a different experience when he started out as a polygraphist in 1999.
"Polygraph was novel (back then). Most people didn't know about it, and very few people would object. They didn't know it worked and us Jamaicans feel that we can beat anything," he quipped.
While employers have been utilising polygraph tests, employees have also used lie detector tests to show their employers that they are telling the truth.
"I have had a situation where people have lost their jobs and have called for a polygraph test which resulted in them being reinstated," the ex-army man revealed.
Bewry explained that there are two broad categories of lie detector tests - single issue tests and multiple issue tests.
The latter test is used either in the pre-employment phase or as a means of in-service screening when an employee is being considered for promotion.
The ex-army man, who is a director at Atlas Protection Limited, said his company has performed more than 6,000 pre-employment tests and approximately 500, or less than 10 per cent, of them scored as being deceptive.
He also revealed that men tend to be more dishonest than women in the workplace. "But when you come across a dishonest woman, she puts the men to shame," Bewry opined.