Fake minutes of meetings

skallywag

Are you completely sure that these meetings never actually happened, as opposed to that he noted down that people attended there who were in fact absent?

If he is really fabricating everything, then it is an extremely serious offence, for which he would be immediately fired in most organisations that I know of. I have seen folk massaging the facts in minutes, or deliberately putting a certain slant on things in order to suit themselves, but I have never come across a case of someone actually making them up completely. I would definitely raise this with him, tell him that he must have been mistaken as you were not there, and see how he reacts. If he is going to blatantly act like this then you really do not want this chap as your boss.

OMM 0000

OMM 0000 wrote: »

If I were you I'd do nothing.

Companies don't work the way schools do.

In school you're told be honest and work hard.

It's a bad lesson because in the real world it's not like that.

Telling HR will likely backfire on you.

The OP said they were for external use which suggests there is some sort of oversight.

If it is a small company where the owner is the boss then yeah they probably already know and don't care. If it is bigger there could be reputational risk or even legal implications.

The OP doesn't agree with the supposed decision. We don't know what the company is like. They might want to know this.

893bet

OMM 0000 wrote: »

If I were you I'd do nothing.

Companies don't work the way schools do.

In school you're told be honest and work hard.

It's a bad lesson because in the real world it's not like that.

Telling HR will likely backfire on you.

Agree. A lot of fake “ethic” and “integrity” departments around. Especially US companies. Far removed from the work place.

We don’t punish for speaking up.

No you don’t today.

But the people on site have a long memory.

seamus

Ultimately you have to ask yourself why you want to bring this up.

If there are specific things that you don't want to agree to, then go and speak to the manager directly and tell them you think there's a better way.

If there's a health and safety risk, a fraud risk, or you think someone is fiddling the books financially, then see if there's a whistleblowing policy in the company. This policy usually requires a dedicated contact for whistleblowing (rather than a generic HR contact), and strict procedures on investigation and anonymity.
If there's no policy, then a journalist is an option.

But if it's not serious; if it's the company basically lying to a client in order to secure their business, then you're not going to achieve anything really bringing this up, unless you know for a fact that your company wants to know about it. They will sacrifice you to keep the client, make no mistake.

I imagine at best the manager will be fired and you'll be slotted into a corner somewhere to keep quiet about this until you leave. Or you will be given money to shut up and go find a new job.

But I go back to the start of my post - if it's just a case that you want the opportunity to discuss things before making a decision on them, then keep going to your boss to discuss his "decisions" whenever he produces the meeting minutes. Eventually he'll realise it's less hassle to just hold the meeting and let someone else take the minutes while he looks at his phone.

_Brian

I think take a laid back approach.
Maybe when your with your manager about something else just drop in

“what’s the story with those minutes, I don’t remember that meeting”

I don’t see your directly negatively affected by this. Making a big deal out of this has no upside for anyone from what I can tell.

Zulu

Your manager is committing fraud. Consider that.

I'd suggest having a quiet word with them setting out that they are making a big mistake (committing fraud) and that there is a better solution. Suggest they right their wrong.
After that it's up to you, but I'd be inclined to err on the side of covering my own ar$e. Will it ever get out that you knew about it and said/did nothing?

TuringBot47

skallywag wrote: »

Are you completely sure that these meetings never actually happened, as opposed to that he noted down that people attended there who were in fact absent?

+1

They could just be amending the last copy of the mins, leaving the header in place (with the attendance etc), and filling out the bullet points.

Or attempting to reconstruct the minutes from e-mails afterwards?

Do they have a laptop in the meeting or paper?

forgottenhills

Alrigghtythen wrote: »

My manager is faking minutes of meetings that never happened. I have just discovered I was apparently attending them(along with a couple of others)

The meetings never happened. What do I do?

Going to senior management may cause unknown outcomes for you. The manager may get fired/demoted but you could end up with a worse manager for all you know, or HR could blackball you in the company in some way as they are wont to do, despite all the lip service about whistleblowers.

Look at the situation another way. You now may have power over the manager if you let him/her know that you know s/he has been falsifying documents (you need to be sure this wasn't just a careless error by the way). What do you most want this manager to do for you? Give you the highest annual rating,allow you flexitime, award you a salary increase or promotion? It may be a cynical way of looking at the situation but you now may have some leverage that you can use to your advantage.

_Brian

forgottenhills wrote: »

Going to senior management may cause unknown outcomes for you. The manager may get fired/demoted but you could end up with a worse manager for all you know, or HR could blackball you in the company in some way as they are wont to do, despite all the lip service about whistleblowers.

Look at the situation another way. You now may have power over the manager if you let him/her know that you know s/he has been falsifying documents (you need to be sure this wasn't just a careless error by the way). What do you most want this manager to do for you? Give you the highest annual rating,allow you flexitime, award you a salary increase or promotion? It may be a cynical way of looking at the situation but you now may have some leverage that you can use to your advantage.

It’s very likely senior management are well aware of what has happened.

forgottenhills

_Brian wrote: »

It’s very likely senior management are well aware of what has happened.

Maybe, maybe not. The OP may have some possible leverage with the manager to use at a future date if the manager has been doing a solo run. One way or another running to higher management is probably not the best play for the employee.

Zulu

forgottenhills wrote: »

Look at the situation another way. You now may have power over the manager...

Maybe, maybe not. The OP may have some possible leverage...

This is some serious Walter Mitty stuff right here, and a good indication of how NOT to handle this like a professional.

OP use this as a benchmark as to what not to do, and why not to do it.

_Brian

There’s two reasonable courses of action here.

Either mention it casually to your boss.

Or leave it alone and keep your beak out of whatever is going on.


Thinking op can be some sort of double agent style individual holding this over their manager is bizarre and if this is something most senior staff know about OP will be labelled a trouble maker for making a big deal out of it.

I know situations where employees forced their managers hand with information, but it’s much higher grade stuff than minutes of meetings. Adultery and embezzlement work, but this is low level stuff won’t.

OMM 0000

_Brian wrote: »

There’s two reasonable courses of action here.

Either mention it casually to your boss.

Or leave it alone and keep your beak out of whatever is going on.


Thinking op can be some sort of double agent style individual holding this over their manager is bizarre and if this is something most senior staff know about OP will be labelled a trouble maker for making a big deal out of it.

I know situations where employees forced their managers hand with information, but it’s much higher grade stuff than minutes of meetings. Adultery and embezzlement work, but this is low level stuff won’t.

I agree 100%.

It's at times like this I wish each user had a real profile: age, education, work experience, etc.

It would a give better perspective on some of the responses.

I worked in a company where staff members were literally faking code, faking bugs, faking releases... I was naive enough to speak up about it. Guess who got shot? I did.

All this stuff is very messy and the best approach is almost always don't get involved. You have to think through what the risk/reward is.

_Brian

People must be living very sheltered lives if they haven’t needed to be creative with paperwork at some stage or another in their careers, even exaggerating a CV ??

Tiddlypeeps

It's all well and good to tell OP to keep their nose out of it, but they have been dragged into it. If the manager is claiming OP agrees with a certain course of action when they don't and that course of action ends up causing harm to the company in some way then the OP would very likely be called up on it. That would be a much worse time to share that the meetings never happened because it would sound like you are just making things up to cover your arse and even if they believe you then they will likely think much less of you for not bringing it up sooner.


It's also very unlikely that senior management know the OP's manager is doing this. If the minutes aren't to give senior management some sort of status updates or whatever then who are they for? Why would the manager bother?

OMM 0000

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

It's all well and good to tell OP to keep their nose out of it, but they have been dragged into it. If the manager is claiming OP agrees with a certain course of action when they don't and that course of action ends up causing harm to the company in some way then the OP would very likely be called up on it. That would be a much worse time to share that the meetings never happened because it would sound like you are just making things up to cover your arse and even if they believe you then they will likely think much less of you for not bringing it up sooner.


It's also very unlikely that senior management know the OP's manager is doing this. If the minutes aren't to give senior management some sort of status updates or whatever then who are they for? Why would the manager bother?

But there's a simple way to handle all this.

He just sends an e-mail to his manager stating his concerns about x or y in the project. He doesn't mention the minutes.

Btw it's also possible the manager is not in the wrong here. It's possible the manager is having this discussion in the meeting, asking for feedback, the OP says nothing, so the manager correctly interprets this as the team are in agreement.

I know there's this weird thing on boards where everyone thinks managers are evil, but as a manager I can tell you people are absolutely deluded about their competency and honesty. Most people cannot admit to their flaws.

Strumms

The manager is falsifying company documentation...

I’d speak to him, ask him why it’s happening. You will be able to gauge from his reaction if angry and or defensive that you’ve highlighted this behavior to him will indicate that he’s just pissed he’s been caught and questioned.

No way would I accept my name being included on a publication that included me as being present if I hadn’t been.

mariaalice

_Brian wrote: »

People must be living very sheltered lives if they haven’t needed to be creative with paperwork at some stage or another in their careers, even exaggerating a CV ??

However, in a lot of jobs a good portion of the time is spent compiling tedious reports that no one ever reads, google bul**** jobs, so after years of checking the black button a dozen times a day the person starts ticking the box without checking the button.

The years go by noting happens but then the one in a million happens and there is an investigation and the person compiling the checking the black button check list is in trouble.

Never fake anything in work or assume its so trivial it dose not matter because one day the Ryanair engine could fall out of the sky on to the building( a metaphor ) and there will be an investigation.

The meeting was probably supposed to be part of a management matrix that the supervisor has to do as part of the project and instead of doing it they faked the minutes and tiked the box.

A mixtuer of not wanting to confront any issues that could come up and laziness.

skallywag

The crux of the issue here is whether or not the meeting ever took place at all.

If it did, and something has been reported incorrectly (these things can often be down to a simple copy-paste error) then it is one thing, which can be pretty common, and easily corrected. I will always end my own minutes with an open invitation to correct me where I am wrong, which does indeed happen.

If, on the other hand, the minutes have been completely fabricated, and the meeting never actually took place, then this is in a completely different league. Do not underestimate how serious this is, this is not someone jazzing up their CV! If this is really the case then I would be getting out of there ASAP.

mariaalice

skallywag wrote: »

The crux of the issue here is whether or not the meeting ever took place at all.

If it did, and something has been reported incorrectly (these things can often be down to a simple copy-paste error) then it is one thing, which can be pretty common, and easily corrected. I will always end my own minutes with an open invitation to correct me where I am wrong, which does indeed happen.

If, on the other hand, the minutes have been completely fabricated, and the meeting never actually took place, then this is in a completely different league. Do not underestimate how serious this is, this is not someone jazzing up their CV! If this is really the case then I would be getting out of there ASAP.

This might be in the realms of urban myth and with modern technology very hard to do, but I have heard of someone getting a job after someone retired or left not sure which, anyway they discovered the person preceding them had been faking most of what they were suppose to do, things they were supposed to supervise and check and had spent most of the day asleep in a toilet cubitical instead.

Zulu

Something else to consider that is perhaps relevant, or not.

It's probably unlikely, but depending on seniority and industry this could be criminal. If you are in a regulated entity their could be reporting obligations, and by not acting you could be putting yourself in a very precarious situation.

Worth noting, just in case.

forgottenhills

Zulu wrote: »

This is some serious Walter Mitty stuff right here, and a good indication of how NOT to handle this like a professional.

OP use this as a benchmark as to what not to do, and why not to do it.

Really? You sound a little naive and a dreamer. I too was, when I was younger.

After many years in all sorts of organisations you will eventually discover that many people are not very nice, don't act for the common good and people like these often get to management positions where they act together for their own mutual benefit. A person not in management lifting the lid on this, if it is not crucial to do so for product safety or other reasons, will only create trouble for themselves.

I am suggesting that the OP has the potential to use this information to their own benefit, rather than to their own detriment. And yes it is a cynical way of looking at things. But I have been round the block a few times and this is how the world works unfortunately. Absolute honesty is rarely rewarded.

Zulu

I dream alright.

ShaneODub

Send an invite to relevant parties and schedule a meeting yourself to discuss whatever it is you want to discuss about the project.