Almost every employer has had the experience where they said to themselves, "If I had only known this person's background, _____would have never have happened. The blank can be filled in with words like, tragedy, lawsuit, injury or even death. The bottom line is the best predictor of the future is the past. As an employer, you want to protect your business and it's employees from legal action or physical harm by detecting potential problems BEFORE the hiring offer is made. Pre-employment (P-E) screening is an effective risk management tool that has been proven to significantly reduce the risk of a "bad hire". Employers engage in P-E screening for many reasons: To DISCOURAGE APPLICANTS with something to hide. It is estimated that about 33% of the people who apply for a job put false
information on the application...from adding to their education or leaving out a criminal record. To ELIMINATE UNCERTAINTY in the hiring process. You don't have to wonder if you did the right thing by hiring this person.
To demonstrate DUE DILLIGENCE. Employers have a reasonable duty to show care in the hiring process. That means an employer MUST take reasonable steps to determine if this employee is fit for a particular job.
It is COST EFFECTIVE. A company can spend a great deal of money to train a new hire, only to learn that person is not right for the job. The cost of a P-E screening is small when considering the cost to litigate a neglent hiring or retention suit.
It is important to understand that a P-E screening is aimed at how a person performed in the public aspect of his life with respect to former employers, his criminal record, and education...this is not an invasion of their privay. You have the right to know who is working for you.
As an employer, you need to know that a "bad hire" may result in: Lawsuits by a third party or current employees.Violence in the work place, loss of business, customers or both.Theft, embezzlement or even property damage.Time wasted in training.
The list goes on and on...but I think you get the idea.
Now that you know why it is important to have a P-E screening program in place or improve the one you have, now what? In house or out source? Who to out source to? All excellent questions which I will try to answer.
There is a growing trend among profitable companies to out source services that do not represent the company's core strength. It is an ineffective use of their time AND energy ($$$) to attempt to perform services that a third party can perform efficiently and cost effectively. To do P-E screening in house, a company would have to devote time ($$$) to learning the many complicated state and Federal laws that goven what you can and cannot access. Laws such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)the Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) HIPPA and the Grann-Leach-Bliley Act to mention a few. An honest mistake made by a good employee doing the P-E screening could result in a Civil Rights Violation suit filled by the applicant. If that were not enough, more valuable time ($$$) is spent tracking down the past employers, references or education institutions listed on the application. Don't you have better things to do with your companies time than play "phone tag"?
Now that the decision to out source has been made you need to go to a professional pre-employment screening service. I recommend locating a LICENSED private investigation agency. No, they are not like the guys on TV (thank heaven). The vast majority are former law enforcement or federal agents who know the importance of P-E checks and have knowledge of the laws I mentioned earlier. Ture, there are hundreds of companies that will gladly take your money and access basically the same database that are availabe to you on the web. Most(if not all) private investigators use database companies that are ONLY available to licensed professionals. Sometimes,the information obtained is not complete, a pirvate investigator will to go the local court house to pull a record...not to many on line companies will do that. Some agencies will customize the searches so you are getting only what you pay for and neeed.
By turning your P-E needs to a licensed private investigator, you are freeing your HR department of this time ($$$) consuming and specalized task so they can devote their time to the many vital functions of a HR department. Now the employee that your have given the task of P-E screening is free to do your companies business. The best way to locate a licensed private investigator is by going to the National Association of Legal Investigators web site or your states private investigators professional web site.
