Vital Employee Screening Checks Employers Must Know

Most people will admit to embellishing the truth at some point in their career to impress potential employers. While, most of the time, it amounts to no more than a little bit of boasting and is fairly harmless, there are, however, individuals who take it much further and claim to possess qualifications that they don’t have, steal identities or conceal criminal convictions.

Employers

As their employer, you may be liable for their actions and any damage they cause, and you could be even more at risk if you have failed to carry out necessary background checks before hiring them. This is why it is imperative that you hire the services of a company like ConsumerCheck who specialises in employee screening reports.

Background Checks

To be useful, screening reports should be undertaken before an individual is hired. The depth and nature of the background check will depend on the nature of the position. For example, for people working in social care, with the elderly or children, the emphasis should be on making sure that they have an enhanced DBS check (Disclosure and Barring Service check, formerly known as CRB, Criminal Record Bureau check) with nothing suspicious appearing.

For anyone in the finance industry, their own personal financial history will come under scrutiny, and while motoring offences may not matter so much in most lines of business, it will, of course, be much more significant if you are considering hiring a truck driver for example. Any candidate having access to confidential or private data, such as customer’s personal details, should also be screened in depth.

How extensive the background check needs to be will most likely depend on the level of the position, and it is not uncommon for executives and Board members to undergo strict and lengthy background checks – the more powerful the position, the higher the risk.

But employee screening reports are not valuable only for specialized industries or high-level jobs, far from it, any business can benefit from not having undesirable and dishonest employees in their midst! You could be hiring a sales rep who has a history of inflating expense claims; someone who will use your computer equipment and internet connection to carry out illegal activities from your premises; a warehouse operative who will use your buildings to store hidden goods, not to mention candidates who simply don’t have the right qualifications for the job and could seriously harm your business through sheer incompetence. This is, of course, assuming that they have given you their true identity in the first place.

To avoid potential problems, any company ought to use the services of a screening company to perform, at least, some basic checks, such as identity, date of birth, residential address, right to work in the country and in the position applied for, and previous employment history, including any gaps. Ensuring that they possess the right qualifications will also often be vital.

Employee Checking Consent

However, it must be stressed that checking an employee must be a transparent procedure. You cannot, as an employer, do so without the candidate’s consent. It is essential that you let interviewees know that, should they be shortlisted, they will be screened – which also has the benefit to deter criminals early on - and that they expressly sign a full consent form, a data protection statement and a declaration stating that they have provided correct and complete information in their application.

To make the process really effective, make sure that you have clear policies in place and have determined which criteria make a candidate employable or not once you have been provided with the results of the background check.