Think an employee’s faking an illness to get a day off? Try strapping him to a polygraph machine.

The British Department for Work and Pensions has starting using a similar approach to weed out applicants who lie to claim benefits.

Granted, it’s not quite the big machine they use on murder suspects in the movies. What they’re using is a technology known as Voice Risk Analysis (VRA), which plugs into a telephone to examine a caller’s voice for signs of deceit.

The DWP says it’s working just fine, and some Human Resources consultants across the pond think the technology could be used by bosses to keep workers from “pulling sickies” (that’s what the Brits call “playing hooky”).

Are they on to something? All bosses know people fake being sick all the time. They might be more reluctant to if they knew they were being judge by a machine.

But there’s also an issue of trust to consider, as well as the reluctance of managers to act as the employee’s babysitter, which is why a lot of companies are offering simple paid time off (PTO) banks these days instead of dedicated sick and vacation time. And, of course, lie detectors are known for their fallibility.

Who knows. But it may be easier just to train managers on how to identify phony coughs.

Tags: absenteeism, DWP, lie detector