My Employee Lied About Meeting With a Client

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.

A reader asks:

I caught my employee skipping work to nap at home when she said she was meeting with a potential client. It was total happenstance; I happened to meet the potential client at a social event that night. When I asked my employee the next day why the client had no idea who I was or what our company did, the truth came out: she hadn’t met with anyone, she’d gone home to take a break and a nap. She apologized for lying, but said she’d been feeling burned out and was struggling with seasonal depression. She is my top performer and best employee all around, and we are coming off of our busy season, so a little burnout is understandable. She volunteered that she had done something similar twice before in her six-year career with us, but I don’t know if I can trust her accounting of it — we were in a meeting about her lying, after all.

I can’t quite determine how big of an issue this is. She lied about the meeting and who it was with, and she was likely prepared to lie about how it went, if I hadn’t caught her before we had a chance to debrief. We meet with a lot of potential clients, many of whom never pan out, so I don’t know how I can trust her going forward when she says she has one of these meetings. But, on the other hand, she is consistently our best performer and doesn’t just meet her goals — she exceeds them. If she’s able to do that while occasionally taking siestas, is it really my business? But if she’s lying about where she is … Ugh, this is the loop I’ve been in for two days. Help!

(Perhaps helpful: we have good, but not exceptional, PTO. It’s not a culture where people take much time off, though I frequently encourage my team to take as much time as they need. This employee takes time off for doctors appointments and vacations, so I know she’s aware of the policy.)

Green responds:

I think the reason you feel stuck is because you need to have another conversation with your employee in order to fully understand the situation. Since she’s your top performer, it’s worth taking the time to fully understand what happened and why. Why did she lie about having a meeting rather than just taking a few hours off to go home? What’s going on that made her feel “I’m under the weather and heading out early today,” wasn’t an option, and that concocting a highly specific lie about a prospective client was a better choice?

Because this wasn’t just a vague lie (not that that would be okay either). This was “I am meeting with Specific Person X from Specific Company Y” and I suspect you’re right that she would have lied about how it went if she hadn’t been caught — which means that she would have given you false client data! If she told you the person wasn’t interested, that’s a prospective client you’d then presumably cross off your list. That’s a big deal.

So what’s going on? Did she lie because your work culture made her feel she couldn’t get the break she needed any other way? Is she out of PTO or saving it for a health need down the road? Or does she not see lying as a big deal as long as no one finds out about it?

Each of those requires a different response from you. If the culture around PTO is what caused this, this is a sign that you’ve got some serious work to do on this aspect of the culture, considering what it drove your best performer to. If it’s a PTO scarcity issue, then it’s worth looking at whether there’s other support you can offer her (either with time off or with workload) so she can take care of herself and not burn out.

Those might sound like overly soft responses to a serious trust violation — but context matters. If something in your culture is driving your best employee to this, or if she’s struggling personally, you want to address what’s really going on. That doesn’t mean you’d give the lying a complete pass; you wouldn’t. You’d still have a serious conversation about how this has affected your ability to take her at her word, and what that means in practical terms. (For example, at least for a while you probably need to do more verifying and spot-checking of things you previously trusted her on implicitly.)  But when you’re dealing with someone who’s been outstanding up until now, you should factor in context too, not use a black-and-white, no-nuances approach.

On the other hand, if she doesn’t think casual lying is a big deal, that means that she’s probably been less than straight with you other times too, beyond the times she just confessed to, and she’ll probably do it again when it makes her life easier, and she might be cutting other corners you don’t know about. And if that’s the case, you’ve got to take a fresh look at your entire assessment of her approach to work.

But I don’t think you can sort through this without a better understanding of how she ended up here.

Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org.