Background Screening

Pre-employment background screening is a key way for employers to meet due diligence requirements to hire safe, qualified employees and to reduce negligent hiring exposure and workplace violence. Post-employment background checking, or rechecking, has emerged as an equally critical practice to monitor safe and legal activities and mitigate ongoing risk.

Compliance issues, fraud, workplace violence, and negligent hiring liability—and the risk of personal liability—are all significant drivers for increasing corporate concern about the most effective and efficient background checking methods.

Background checking companies estimate between 7 and 12 percent of applicants are turned away because of background issues: about 5 to 6 percent are due to criminal issues, 2 to 4 percent due to false employment or education, and about 1 to 4 percent based on motor vehicle record or credit problems.

Survey Says

A Taleo Research survey of large companies found:

• Fifty-seven percent of survey respondents believe that their organization should be doing a better job of screening employees before hiring them.
  
   
• Only 19 percent consider their current background check process very effective at weeding out candidates that do not meet the criteria for employment at their company.
  
   
• Twenty-seven percent of organizations experienced a major problem—workplace fraud (10 percent), employee theft (10 percent), or workplace violence (7 percent)-with an employee who was screened in, but ended up having a criminal record that was not found. The resulting impact to the company was considerable:
  • Employee termination or turnover (58 percent).
  • Negative media exposure (5 percent).
  • Lawsuits, union conflicts, or other impact (26 percent).
  
  
   
• Two-thirds of organizations do not conduct ongoing background checks on employees. Only 29 percent have ever run an audit of their current screening provider to determine the quality of their screenings⁵.