Application of Polygraph in Business Field

It was in 1895 when an equipment was used in lie-detection for the first time by Ceuare Lombroso, an Italian criminologist who successfully detected many cases by such way. From then on, the polygraph technique has developed for over one hundred years. The modern polygraph instrumentation adopts the computer science and mainly collects such physiological parameters as electrodermal activity, breath, pulse, blood pressure, blood capacity, brain wave and so on. In practice, the accuracy of such polygraph technique has reached 98 percent.

In foreign countries, especially in the US, the polygraph technique is not only used in the investigation of crimes and other judicial affairs, but it also was used in the filed of business, mostly in employment scanning.

1. Regular Polygraph Examination of the Incumbent Employees: which is used in checking the loyalty or the misconduct of the employees, such as crimes, secrets releasing, commercial spy activities and so on.

An American citybuster factory had ever taken such examination in February 1946 on its 690 employees and acquired significant effect. Among the examinees, 129 employees confessed various matters, which was 18.7 percent of the total number of the examinees. In 1951, even a spy involved case was found out by another polygraph examination in the factory.

Such inner examination is quite helpful to the enterprises on maintaining the safety of the properties and confidential information and on acquainting with the loyalty of the employees. All those experience is good reference for our domestic modern companies.

2. Polygraph Examination of the Applicants: which is used in investigating the important background information of the applicants, which is not enclosed in related files or is hidden by the applicants.

By polygraph examination, the enterprises can obtain many concernful information of the applicants, such as criminal records, drug abuse, homosexuality or other bad hobbies, as well as that whether the applicant is a member of some illegal organizations, or whether he or she is a commercial spy from foreign countries or competitive companies, the truth of which is normally hardly to be got through other ways.

The competent employees are the treasure of an enterprise. The moral characters of such persons even control the development of an enterprise. However, most of the domestic companies just rely on the files and resumes provided by the applicants, while not checking and verifying their backgrounds under legal rights, accordingly some passive effects of such operation will remain and cause the big and even terrible losses. It is a significant matter that must be paid more attention and be solved as soon as possible.

At present in China, the polygraph technique has been used widely in the civil cases and some courts have utilized such technique in their justice, mainly in solving the contradiction of the evidence. The results of polygraph examinations are regarded as the quasi-proofs to support related evidence.

Many companies and law services organizations often encounter some spiny civil cases, for example, the cases without any evidence and the statements of the involved two parties are opposite, or the testimony of the witness is doubtful. When facing such problems, the polygraph technique will be very helpful if the companies or the law services organizations adopt it and use the examination results as the supports to their claims rationally.

Besides the above, the polygraph technique also can be used in the following fields:

1. Insurance and Finance
Insurance and Financial investment are both industries providing special services to the clients, in which, with the considerable profits, there also high risks exist. Therefore, to those industries, the most concerned issue is how to obtain the maximum economic profits with the minimum investments and risks.

Sure, polygraph technique can assist the insurance and financial companies in avoiding risks and losses by the following ways: detecting the motivation of the policy-holders or the loan applicants; testing the parties involved in the insurance accidents to distinguish the insurance frauds; taking polygraph examinations of the debtors to verify whether the loans have been used according with the loan agreements; investigating the debtors with improper or fraudulent purpose into their real assets situation thus avoiding or reducing the losses.

2. Polygraph Examinations of Individuals
An incumbent employee or an applicant can take a polygraph examination on his or her own initiative for the purpose of showing his or her loyalty to the employer or testifying the individual comprehensive ability, moral character, psychological endurance and background. The result of the examination is a reference for estimating that whether the individual is competent for a certain position.

Once an individual passes a polygraph examination, he or she may provide the employer a formal examination report, which indicates that the individual has proper ability, his or her background is true and he or she is quite loyal to the company. On the other side, if the individual fails, some problems will be concluded by the examination report. The examinee may overcome the shortcomings and prepare for another examination at a proper time.

Obviously, it is an inevitable trend to apply polygraph technique to the field of business. Before starting the polygraph services, sufficient research is necessary on its basic knowledge, applicable fields and main functions. The propaganda certainly shouldn’t be neglected, by which the clients can know the new technique better and then trust it more and more. At the same time, the design of the service products is also important. Two or three successful key products may promote the application of the polygraph technique in various fields of civil affairs and business.