It happens every day. People get unsolicited offers and “gifts” meant to influence the job holder’s decision making in favor of the giver. High profile cases of people found guilty of bribe-taking in doing their salaried jobs, have been reported too many times to count.

As an employee, depending on the nature of work you do in your company, you may find yourself frequently faced with this challenge.

So what do you do if someone offers you a bribe? This article assumes you won’t want it

It discusses 5 factors you need to consider – and take action to cater for – to protect yourself from any negative outcomes, in the event that you reject a bribe offer.

1. Your Job Type

Employees who occupy positions which involve deciding how large amounts of money are spent, or how high value items are used, often get exposed to bribe offers.

Examples include warehouse or distribution managers; accountants/finance managers, sales managers, marketing managers in charge of large promotional campaigns, purchasing managers – and so on

Contractors eager to gain an unfair advantage over their counterparts may choose to go the route of offering bribes.

If you find yourself in similar positions to the above, be sure to establish and maintain close relations with your superiors. Tactfully ask around to establish which ones you can trust. Keep such individuals abreast of developments, and make sure you protect yourself by keeping accurate and detailed documentation of all your dealings.

If/when the need arises to show yourself to be free from any wrong doing, you’ll be able to call on your senior manager confidant(s) – and also furnish your carefully kept records as proof.

2. Your Colleagues

Your social skills are of crucial importance here. Honing your intuitive ability to perceive insincerity may just save your career (or as you may know, your life, in certain climes!).

This is because sometimes before the bribe offer finds its way to you, some of your colleagues may have been bought over already. And they may even have committed to getting you on board: These could be peers, direct reports, superiors or a mix of all.

Watch for signs amongst your team members, of those who seem to lean towards pressuring you to accept the bribe offer. Make a show of inviting their advice, to see what they say. Ask them in separate “confidential private sessions” (which you can – indeed should – document using your smart phone audio or video recorder), what you should do.

The answers they give will reasonably guide you to know who you can trust – not just for that occasion, but in the future. I have personally found acting the fool, pretending to know much less than I do, helps me get duplicitous people to show their true selves.

I’ll tell you this: listen to your gut level instincts when you’re doing this, and you will rarely go wrong.

3. Your Integrity

Burt Dubin, speaking on a SpeakerMatch Teleseminar, shared an interesting perspective of integrity. Here’s what he said:

“There are no degrees in integrity. There’s no such thing as a partial virgin. You are or you aren’t. Well that’s how integrity is. You have it or you don’t.” – Burt Dubin

I think that really says it all. And the best part is that once you have integrity, those who work with you will immediately see it. They might decide to test you, but more often than not, resolute integrity – as Burt Dubin – puts it, will outlast anything they throw at you.

Demonstrating integrity at work can help you by making unscrupulous others avoid making dishonest offers to you. It can also make those you work for take positive note of you as being one they can trust to do right at all times. These will likely count in your favor if/when you have to report an attempt to bribe you or intimidate you to accept it.

4. Your Company’s Policy

Sometimes you have to be proactive. If you’re yet to encounter a bribe offer, take action now to find out your company’s policy about accepting gifts or other forms of gratification. If an offer has been made to you, stall while you make your enquiries.

At this stage don’t go telling just anyone what’s happening, except you’re sure none of your colleagues is on the take. Otherwise, you could get framed: It has happened before!

You should also seek out an experienced – and preferably senior – person in the organization, and table your challenge before him.

By so doing you’ll likely achieve three things:

First, you remove suspicion of guilt from yourself – and it may help your career later on in the company.

Secondly, you’ll give the company’s decision makers valuable information and insight into issues they would probably never have discovered on their own.

And thirdly, the burden of handling that issue may get taken off your shoulders by those senior persons. And they’ll probably coach you on ways to deal with future issues.

5. Your Ambition

Ambition has both negative and positive connotations.

Some people are driven by negative ambition. That makes them seek dishonest avenues to make progress towards their goals. This is related in a way to integrity, in the sense that it reflects such a person’s lack of it i.e. integrity.

However, it is the positive sense in which it can be used that I am concerned with here. To climb the corporate ladder without having fears of your past haunting you, you need positive ambition. This kind of ambition will make you avoid following dishonest avenues to achieve career advancement and/or financial reward.

In other words, you would reject any attempts to bribe you or compromise your integrity in doing your work. It would not matter to you how much you are offered. Nor would the value of the gift item make any difference to you.

What You Can Do: Reply With A Thank You Letter, & Donate It To Charity!

Most companies have written guidelines about what you can accept from a 3rd party. A magazine article I read on this theme years ago provided a “safe” strategy for dealing with anyone who insists on giving you money/gifts beyond what your company allows:

1. Do a formal letter (preferably on company letter head) – thanking him for his kindness.

2. Next, state that you will be donating the money or gifts to one or more charities that are supported by your company, to boost her Corporate Social Responsibility efforts.

3. Make sure you copy your boss (if you have one) and the Corporate Affairs Manager or whoever else you believe needs to be aware of what you’re doing.

4. End by saying you look forward to being of further service in doing your job. More often that not, doing this will make the giver realize that cannot be influenced negatively, or compromised. And he’s likely to move on to others.

Final Words

Everything I’ve said here is based on the assumption that you work in an organization in which a good majority of decision makers despise bribery and other vices etc. If that is not the case, you may have your work cut out for you.

For instance, influential managers involved in the dirty deals will try to stop you from exposing them. And they can do that in many ways, including setting you up/getting you fired. People have been assassinated while working to expose such bad deeds.

If you’re clever enough and determined, nothing however stops you from turning the tables on the bad guys – with a good plan, and help from trusted others. Otherwise, your best bet – if you do not wish to fight the system – would be to quit, and find another job!