20Jul

Are Social Media Employment Background Checks Legal?

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Are Social Media Employment Background Checks Legal

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FTC and Social Media Employment Background Checks

When it comes to social media employment background checks, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has indicated that it plans to hold employers gaining information about potential employees over the internet subject to the same accountability as employers who obtain information about prospective employees in more traditional ways.

This means, among other laws and regulations, that social media employment background checks must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

As the consumer protection branch of the federal government, the FTC works in part to protect the privacy and reputation value inherent in people’s names. This protection has extended to the FTC enforcing regulations whereby employers must do diligent research into the accuracy of data provided to them about potential future employees.

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15Jul

I Flunked My Social Media Background Check. Will You?

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Mat Honan

Your next job application could require a social media background check. Odds are, you have no clue what that means. Nobody does. It’s new and scary and probably scours the Web for pictures of you puking on the beach.

But screw speculation. We wanted to know. So we ran background checks on six Gizmodo employees. Here’s what we found, and why you should both freak out about and embrace it.

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23Jun

The Importance of Education Verification in Employee Background Checks

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Education verification is an important part of your general employee background check. If you believe that this has lesser importance than a criminal background check, consider the case of Laura Callahan who resigned as Director of the Department of Homeland Security in 2004.

It was established that Laura Callahan’s doctorate was obtained from Hamilton University, a known ‘diploma mill’. That is a so-called educational establishment that offers diplomas and doctorates to students after little or no study. Subsequent investigation discovered that a minimum of 28 other senior employees had obtained their qualifications from diploma mills. In other words, they were not suitably qualified for the jobs they were holding.

 

Diploma mills are commonplace, and Columbia State University, for example was shut down in 1998 after an advertising campaign offering degrees within 27 days! That was another diploma mill, and that is one of the reasons for education verification being so important.

The requirement for qualification has become very widespread, and it is little wonder that so many job applicants are tempted to at least overstate their qualifications if not downright lie. Most company positions now require an education qualification of some form or another, and if you search for ‘fake degrees’ on Google you will find several pages offering them. It’s a problem.

The temptation to provide false educational credentials is overwhelming since the rewards for success in fooling your potential employer can be high. The General Accounting Office reported in 2004 that up to 200,000 federal employees had falsified their resumes. These are the ones that were detected. How many more are there that were not detected, and how many in all occupations are involved, not just federal employees? So do not think that you are immune to this; you probably already have employees on your payroll that have falsified their resumes.

This is a serious problem, and a breach of faith on the part of the employees who do this, especially where the knowledge provided in studying for a degree is necessary in the job, and its absence could affect all of the other employees in the company. It is also a serious error on the part of the employers who offer them employment without carrying out suitable education verification.

As more and more qualifications, diplomas and degrees are requested for more and more jobs where previously they were not required, education verification becomes increasingly important. Candidates are highly motivated to provide degrees, obtained by whatever means they can, and up to 20% of employers in the USA now require verification of diplomas and degrees from the college or university that awarded them.

Some universities offer an online verification service that involves providing the student with a password that they can pass on to a prospective employer. This provides the employer with a portal into the student’s records that confirm the qualification awarded. Although this does not address the problem of diploma mills, it at least provides some security. A list of accredited educational facilities would help reduce the need for full education verification and the issue of not knowing what is and is not a diploma mill.

Diploma mills may be breaking the law if they offer these diplomas to students in the knowledge that are being used for job applications, and the applicant is committing a criminal offense in many jurisdictions by presenting them. A federal law is required on this issue, and that would possibly help employers with this problem.

In the meantime, employers must not overlook education verification when carrying out employment background checks. It is easy to omit this essential factor of employee screening, but the employment of an unqualified nurse or doctor can be just as damaging as that of a shop floor employee with a record of violence. The cost to the employer could ultimately be considerably higher.

It should not be assumed that any qualification is genuine, and if a specific diploma or degree is required for a job, it should be verified that the candidate does indeed possess that, and that it has been awarded from a recognized educational or training establishment.

Education verification should be included in the employee screening that all companies should carry out, preferably by hiring a professional investigator to carry it out. It is too important and skilled a job to try yourself unless you have employees trained in how to carry out background checks, and the penalties for failure can be very high.

Source: andreaweckerlecopywriting
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19Jun

Survey: Social Media Background Checks

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by Syed Faiez Hussain

There is such a lot of talk around about social media background checks, where employers check your profile out on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like. But how many do, and how seriously do they take the information they can access, and more to the point, what are they actually looking for?

We were curious so we asked a few questions of a number of employers we interviewed. Here’s what they said:

Employer 1

Q: Do you check people out on social media and what do you think when you do?

A: “This is the big mistake of the younger generation. Everything is fair game and they need to learn that if I saw behavior that I felt didn’t fit with the team, or I discovered things about them that reflected negatively on their employer, or there is a pattern of behaviour that’s likely to lead to work performance issues, then they won’t be getting the job. People should assume that I am checking them out.”

Employer 2

Q: As part of your hiring procedure, do you routinely check people out on MySpace or Facebook?

A: No we don’t check

Q What if you became aware of something that was compromising an employee on a public forum?

A: “If it was a public facing position then we would have to talk to them about it because undoubtedly it could be seen publicly. To a degree what people get up to in their own time is up to them, but when that private persona interferes with that corporate requirement then there has to be an intervention, especially if they are representing the company as part of that corporate persona. Fundamentally I don’t really care. Can they do their job? Are they able to do their job? Will they do the job? Are they in a compromising position? If they are not part of the public face (or they are not seen as representing) the company, then I don’t have a problem with it.”

Q: Do you check people out on social media and what do you think when you do?

Employer 3

A: “I wouldn’t want an employee’s personal life to be reflecting on the business, especially because we are a public company. For me it’s about having the right appearance….We check potential employees on Facebook etc. It’s really important people be aware of this because the internet is so powerful.”

Employer 4

A: “We don’t do those sorts of checks. If something came to my attention of course we would look at it. Then I think you would be bound to take those things into consideration, generally however I think these are a social tool, not a business tool.”

Employer 5

A: “No I have never thought of it, I will normally, depending how long they have been in their previous employment, ring up three of their previous employers.”

Employer 6

Q: What would you do if you found something negative about an employee on social media?

A: “I would put it on the table in front of them and ask them about it. You would at least give this person the opportunity to explain. We haven’t been checking these forums as a matter of course, but we are doing in more often, particularly with contractors or recruitment consultants.”

So what’s the point I am trying to make here? Yes you will be checked out.

Always assume that anyone checking you out is making a subjective judgment– what some people thinks fits with the team, others may think is bad form.

Always assume that whoever is checking as part of a reference check will only have a partial picture of what you’ve been up to, good or bad. They will never know the context until they meet you, and depending what it is, they may not even be able to question you about what they saw to raise their eye-brows.

While by law employers are not able to discriminate, how would you know if you missed out on a job based on something they personally didn’t like?

You could liken this stuff to simple reference checking, but it is reference checking on steroids, given that employers can gather a lot more personal information than they’d ever be able to ask a referee.

On Thomas Shaw’s blog recently, he posted information about an application that will allow you to click to allow employers and recruiters access to your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. You could soon find them soon on careers sites.

One click is all simple and convenient, but when friends can do things like post unflattering photos of you on the wild night of your high school break up, would you really want your Facebook profile to be your resume?

Source: Interview IQ

 

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19Jun

The Process and Pitfalls of Education Verification

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by Syed Faiez Hussain

While employers have long conducted education verification checks on their employment candidates, it appears that increasingly more staffing and recruiting groups are being made responsible for conducting this and other background checks as part of the employment screening process.
Education history, of course, outside of criminal records, is one of the more significant searches. For many positions, education is not just a prerequisite but also vital to employment candidate’s incumbent skill sets and the legitimacy they bring to the job. Those employment recruits who claim to but who do not possess the required skills can cause untold embarrassment to employer or recruiter alike. Both can lose clients over it, and in the extreme cases incur law suits.

Most notable, if a candidate lies, chances are he is lying about his education. With employment history, a fair number of applicants will exaggerate their role at a job or otherwise stretch the truth. But seldom do they out and out lie about working for an employer. This is not so much the case with education histories. Here is where the employment candidate will attempt to magically transform his two years of college into a full blown Bachelor’s Degree. Or in some cases, they never set foot inside the school.

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I have often wondered why the candidate decides to select the school he has never been to. Did he like the football team? The debating club? The school colors? Or was it a large university with high levels of enrollment and he thought any degree verification efforts would somehow get lost in the shuffle? But then sometimes they speak a smaller school, an ivy shrouded liberal arts college in New England or somewhere, where they might think no one would bother searching. It’s hard to say what goes on in their minds, but I have considered the implications of the schools they select.

To be sure, most employment candidates do not lie about having their college degrees. the overwhelming majority in fact are reputable and honest when it comes to claiming their certifications and degrees. Verifying education with most recruits is a fairly simple and straightforward process. Once we get from the client the type of degree the candidate has obtained, the name of the school, the location of the school, type of degree, major and year of graduation, the rest is pretty simple. Either we obtain verification from the school registrar’s office, the name and position of the verifying party, or we get it from the third party databases. All fine and valid.

There are exceptions. But for the most part, again, these are honest mistakes or simple oversights that are easily rectified. With common names, sometimes the degree is not enough. The researcher may require the major and the actual campus of the college or university. The campus is always important as most colleges and universities, despite the myriad branches, do not centralize their databases. The records for graduates and post-graduate degrees are housed with the registrar of that particular campus.

The wrong graduation date can cause confusion when conducting an education verification background search. With the wrong graduation date, it is sometimes difficult to find the student in the database. In some cases, and good to remember, those applicants who are lying about actually graduating from that college or university, will provide a fictitious graduation date. By doing so they try to hide the fact that they were “enrollment only” or never attended at all. So often we need to verify the graduation date.

Female graduates often go to school under their maiden names and then, years later, forget and provide only their married name. Time can be wasted searching for your candidate under her married name, when she attended school under her maiden name. When you as a recruiter or human resources executive are trying to get someone hired, this can cause delays. So it is always best to find out up front if her current name is the same name she used while attending the college or university.

With international students attending domestic colleges, there is a similar condition as with female college graduates. Often a foreign student went to school under a formal, native name. And then, over time, they”Americanize,” their names. Bao Wynn Nguyen is now Ben or Frank. His recent colleagues, the recruiter and most others now know him as Ben or Frank. But the school still has him records with his native name. When we are unable to verify, initially, it is necessary to go back to the candidate and ask if what name he or she used to register as a student. Again, this can cause delays in the hiring process.

Be aware of diploma mills. Diploma Mills have increased in prominence over the years. Those who run diploma mills, usually have several schools all running out of the same physical location. Often they are located for tax and legal purposes offshore. When conducting our research we find them in places like Gibraltar or the Seychelles.

Diploma Mills are the easy and spurious way to a higher education. This is where the employment candidate has spend all of a couple hundred bucks and twenty minutes, sometimes, in qualifying as a graduate from some mythical Internet School under the guise of “life experience.” Diploma mills often have them high falutin’ names that can sound like real schools. Often the name of the school is selected so you will associate the “graduate” with a prestigious university. They are not. They are not legitimate remote or distance learning institutions. They are bogus, unaccredited by anyone other than themselves, and the degree is worthless.

Examples of the diploma mill versus the actual college or university are, The University of Cambridge, a highly prestigious university in the U.K. and Cambridge State University that operated out of Louisiana and Mississippi until the Louisiana Attorney General had it closed down back in the nineties. Another is the University of Canterbury, an acclaimed and accredited New Zealand University, and our old buddy, and the fully unaccredited Canterbury University, which shows up from time to time on a candidate’s resume. Canterbury University claims to operate out of the United Kingdom, but its offices have been traced back to you guess it, The Seychelles.

Sometimes, when all else fails, it is incumbent upon the employment candidate to supply a copy or his or her degree or transcripts. We request this when the registrar is unable to locate the student in its database. Sometimes it’s a technical glitch, sometimes it’s an oversight on the part of the registrar.

If the candidate produces his college degree, you cannot accept it a face value. A common joke around our office is bogus diplomas is but one more reason G-d invented Photoshop. Or in the case fo diploma mills versus versus an actual university, the college crest just ain’t the same. There are variations, notable differences in both the crest and the proverbial paper it is written on. Another key is to examine carefully the officiating personnel who are listed or who have signed off on the graduation diploma.

We had a recent case where the university could not find the candidate’s graduation records for love nor money. We requested from our client a copy of the candidate’s diploma. Sure enough, here it came. At first glance it looked authentic enough. But upon further review, something was askew.

The diploma was real enough, only the candidate graduated eleven years before that college president had taken office. The candidate had apparently taken someone’s legitimate diploma, swapped out on Photoshop that name for his own and then presented the diploma. An oversight on the part of the candidate and a serious mistake. When we reported our discovery to our client, she immediately invalidated the candidate for any further consideration.

We also get a lot of shuck and jive when we request a copy of the diploma or transcriptional. I can’t find it. It’s not here but with my parents. My dog ate it. Whatever. Sometimes what the candidate claims is true, and most of the the time…well, it’s tough to be caught in a lie. When it comes to explanations and excuses, we have heard quite a few. Some are even pretty creative. One chestnut was the lament, “The school just can’t get it’s s**t together.”

Too rare. So be careful when recruiting. With degrees that have been verified by the school registrar or through the third party databases, you can move forward with your candidate. But when the glitches show up, either resolve them by reviewing the candidate’s name while attending school, major, year of graduation, and, if necessary, a copy of degree. If this method fails to find resolution, then you may have a problem on your hands. Red flags are what they are and while everyone wants to get their person hired, there are few things more embarrassing than your client discovering your candidate had lied.

Source: Recruiting Blogs

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18Jun

3 Top Reasons to Perform Pre Employment Screening

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by Muhammad Saad Khan

Employers and organizations, from the small businesses to the corporate giants, knows the benefits of hiring the best people and providing a safe, secure and healthy workplace, both physically and financially, for their employees, customers, shareholders, and the community in which they operate.

It’s important to know about the people before hiring. A new prospective employee is an important responsibility for any organization. An employer who has comprehensively performed a thorough pre employment screening on candidates is able to bring into the organization a highly capable person who will prove to be a tremendous asset in the future.

 

Regrettably, some organizations don’t take pre employment screening as a mandatory chunk of hiring process, and in result they runs with the risk of exposing their organization to someone who could ultimately become the organization’s greatest danger.

There are three basic reasons which elaborate that “why the pre employment screening process is extremely essential for an employer”.

1. To make the best hiring decision

2. Providing the safe working environment

3. Elimination of legal risks and liabilities

To Make the Best Hiring Decision, Employment Pre Screening is a Must!

It has been said that some applicants will only tell you what you want to hear. Most of the transgressions found in the forged resumes are basically in three categories: Education, Job titles, and dates of employment. By thoroughly verifying information given by an applicant, a company can improve the chances of hiring an individual who has portrayed his or her background, experience, and skills honestly and accurately. Using pre employment pre screening to verify an applicant’s history helps employers make decisions based upon facts.

Providing the Safe Working Environment Is a Primary Goal of an Employer

Acquiring and maintaining the safe working place for the employees is the dream of any employer or any organization. It’s obligatory for the employer to maintain work premises which is free of violence, fraud, theft, sexual and other types of harassment. The financial cost from these problems can be enormous. Additionally, there are other costs that are hard to measure, such as the harm to employee morale or the reputation of the organization. So it’s essential to run a pre employment background check to deter the criminals entering your heaven organization.

Legal Risks and Liabilities Are Extremely Harmful

Legal risks and liabilities is the threatening factor which is directly interconnected with the above two reasons of pre employment screening. The employers are responsible for the safety of employees, customers and anyone who enters the workplace. So its usual that there a risks and liabilities in hiring a wrong employee which can not only results into a trouble for the company but also for the business of the company. So to avoid such losses and risks, every employer must perform an effective pre employment background screening assessment to define the integrity and repute of a company.

Conclusion

The pre-employment background screening process can assist an employer in the hiring of qualified applicants, while simultaneously reducing turnover, deterring fraud, and avoiding litigation. As the job applicants vary widely in their knowledge, skills, abilities, interests, work styles, and other personal characteristics so these differences systematically affect the way people perform or behave on the job. Comprehensive pre employment screening process is able to collect accurate information on job-relevant characteristics that are not often recognized by simply observing the applicant. And most importantly these pre employment background checks can help in minimizing the chances of potential legal vulnerabilities. Thus the information helps assess the fit or match between people and jobs and has proven to have a significant return on investment for employers.

 

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17Jun

Millennials Could Dictate the Future of Employment Screening

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Millennials Could Dictate the Future of Employment Screening

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As the reins change hands from Generation X to Millennials over the next 20 years, the work force will be replaced by tech savvy security managers looking for fast, convenient, and portable solutions to employee background checks. The future of preemployment screening is mobile availability, according to Marc Malloy, vice president of HireRight, Inc., the world’s largest background screening software company.

In the future, “the way background checks are ordered, how they’re studied, and how these reports are made, all of these things are going to be on an entirely different platform,” Maloy said in a presentation on the future of preemployment screening earlier today (June 9, 2011) during the monthly ASIS International Information Asset Protection Council and the Privacy and Personnel Information Management Council meeting.

Background information on potential employees is still received by fax or mail, Malloy said, but the demand for digital will only increase over time as managers of the future seek to lessen the time between hiring employees and having them start work.

He also addressed the topic of screening social media profiles of potential employees. Recent statistics show that with the help of Millennials, social media have replaced e-mail as the leading form of communication online; surprisingly, however, Malloy said the demand for social media searches on potential employees is low.

“We don’t believe social network screening is ready, from a maturity standpoint, for businesses to consider that in background screening, but we know they do it anyway,” he said. “[Employers] that do it are looking for drug, violence, or sexual references, “ he said.

There are legal considerations specific to social media, however.

Social media profiles can provide another look at a potential employee, but rejecting potential applicants or new employees because of content on a social media profile is still a gray area and opens a company up for discrimination lawsuits or other types of laws, such as claims of violations of privacy rights. (For more on this, see “How to Avoid Hiring Mishaps” by Lester S. Rosen, Security Management, May 2009.)

Maloy said he only knows of one company that searches social media sites as part of a preemployment background check.

That company is Social Intelligence. On its Web site, it refers to social media searches as a catch-22 situation. “If employers ‘Google’ job candidates, then employers are vulnerable to discrimination charges and job candidates are vulnerable to discrimination. If employers don’t Google job candidates, then employers are vulnerable to litigation due to negligent hire and job candidates are unrecognized for assets, achievements, and contributions,” they present on their homepage.

Social Intelligence said they protect both the employer and the employee by only searching for employer-defined objectionable material. They also provide a service that tracks the public online activity of existing employees. (Security Management has noted that experts warn against looking at social information placed behind a wall for authorized viewers only.)

Other companies are taking it slow. “We’re not super comfortable with it,” Maloy told those listening in to the conference call. “Once there’s one or two cases that set a precedent, then we’ll build a product.”


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17Jun

4 tips for using Facebook legally to conduct background checks

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As more people create Facebook profiles (500 million and growing), and sign on to the many social media sites available today, hiring managers are finding they have new opportunities to get background information on job candidates.

Tapping into a potential hire’s Facebook profile, or Twitter account, for information means you can learn more about a candidate’s personality than you might get with just a job interview. A Facebook profile, or collection of tweets, can offer additional insight into whether or not a person might be a good fit with a corporation’s culture. On the flip side, a thorough check of one’s social media footprint might also uncover some serious missteps, or questionable judgments, a potential hire has made in their past. Having the benefit of finding this BEFORE a hire has been made may make some organizations feel thankful they’ve dodged the bullet of a potential disastrous addition to the work ranks.

[See also: Checking job candidates’ FB pages can come back to haunt you]

But in between the good and the bad information is plenty of data that is illegal to view if you are making a hiring decision. And even if a hiring manager honestly does not use off-limits material, once they have seen it on Facebook, it can become grounds for a lawsuit.

“It not about the medium,” according to Victoria Mavis, president & senior consultant at Core People Resources, a human-resource-services firm in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.”It’s about what you do with the information you get. Whether I get it off the background information check or off of Facebook, is it information I should have access to in the first place?”

For a little guidance on navigating the new landscape of information out there on potential hires, we spoke with human resource and labor law experts on ways to be smart when using Facebook and other social media to check up on job candidates.

Tip #1: If you’re going to use Facebook to vet job applicants, make it clear, up front, in the hiring process

If you plan to take advantage of social media venues, like Facebook, to conduct background investigations, the most important first step is to have a policy, and make sure candidates are aware of it, said Mavis.

“Let candidates know you are going to do background checks so you can do it properly and get authorization,” she said.

That means disclosing all of the places you may go searching for information about a potential hire, and all of the things you may go looking for.

“Identify ahead of time the five or ten things that, if you saw them on a candidate’s profile, would concern you about them. That might be a reference to use of illegal drugs, or graphics promoting hate,” said Mavis. “Also figure out what might be some positives you would seek, such as a candidate who is active in their community, or involved in a cause, such as cancer research.”

Tip #2: But remember, once you’ve viewed it, it can put you in a legal conundrum

Using Mavis’ previous point about finding out a potential hire is involved in cancer research, brings us to a concern that goes along with discovery this kind of information. As Jon Hyman, a partner in the Labor & Employment Group at Ohio legal firm Kohrman Jackson & Krantz, notes, finding out someone is involved with a cancer-related cause also means you might discover health information you shouldn’t access as a hiring organization.

“There are a lot of EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) issues to consider,” said Hyman. “Say you are doing a Facebook search on a potential employee, and find they have “liked” the Komen Foundation. You read through the page and find this person is a breast cancer survivor. Now the bell has rung that this person has had cancer, and you now have disability-discrimination issues, whether it’s based on the actual disability, or perceived disability. You now also have genetic-information-discrimination possibilities. And that bell can’t be un-rung. And as an employer who has to make a hiring decision, you get put in the unenviable position of having to prove a negative; of having to prove that you didnt use that information as part of the decision.”

Other obvious EEO areas you don’t want to view while looking at Facebook and other social media would include religious affiliations, race status or age.

“You would never ask on a job application what year someone graduated from college, because that could disclose how old someone is,” noted Hyman.”That is not something you want to know when making hiring decision. But if you go on Facebook, you can see what year a person graduated, and you can easily put two and two together and figure out something that is information you would never ask for otherwise.”

Tip #3: Consider a third party to do the research for you

Having an independent researcher, someone not linked to the hiring and recruiting process, look for information and report back to you may be the best way to avoid any impropriety on the part of the hiring organization, said Mavis.

“If I can access your Facebook profile, I can see your sex, your age, your race. All that is privy to me and I can’t realistically say I didn’t have access to it,” she said. “But as a researcher, I could have access to it. I just dont report it on to the hiring managers.”

An independent researcher does not always have to be someone outside the company, said Mavis. Smaller organizations that may not be able to afford to hire a third-party can recruit an employee within the company who has no influence on the hiring decision.

Whoever conducts the background check should work from a list of information the employer has predetermined that they want to find, which can be both positive and negative attributes. The researcher can then print or copy the materials they have found and bring them back to the hiring organization; omitting any information that is illegal to use in a hiring decision. This ensures hiring personnel do not have access to protected information, said Mavis.

Tip #4: Understand what you find may not be reliable or accurate

“Just because someone puts it on a blog or Twitter, doesn’t mean it’s true,” said Hyman.

While information uncovered during a background investigation using Facebook, Twitter, blogs or other online sites, may make a candidate seem like a poor fit, it’s important to follow up and let them know what you have found.

“If you decide not to hire a candidate based on something a researcher has found, present them with that information, explain why it’s a concern,” said Mavis. “There is always a chance it’s incorrect on social media. It could even be the wrong person. But the candidate deserves a chance to explain.”

 

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10Jun

Lack of a Background Check Leads to Embarrassment for College

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by Syed Faiez Hussain

A former college instructor was recently arrested in Maryland following a fraud investigation of his falsified degrees, military experience and other personal details, according to TBD.com. Bill Hillar had been teaching, leading workshops, giving speeches and conducting training for at least a decade based on his fabricated biography.

Hillar instructed at Middlebury College on drug trafficking, human trafficking and other college summer classes to hundreds of students. An investigation was launched when student veterans who were taking Hillar’s class challenged his credentials as a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel and holder of a doctorate, saying he did not exhibit the mannerisms of a high-ranking army officer.

When Middlebury tried to verify his credentials, they found he did not have the Ph.D. he claimed and his military experience was substantially exaggerated. In reality, he’d served for eight years as an enlisted sailor in the Coast Guard, but did not serve in any of the locations or hold the ranks or conduct any of the duties he claimed.

A college official told the FBI she’d hired Hillar based on his resume and website biography and that a background check hadn’t been conducted since Hillar was not a formal employee.

Middlebury’s mistake is a very common one made not only by higher education institutions, but by a wide range of organizations as well – not conducting a background check on contingent workers.

Even organizations that have an extensive background checking program in place often can miss this major security gap and neglect to screen consultants, contractors, partner and vendor employees, and temporary workers. This workforce, however, can represent considerable risks for organizations – as they can serve in highly responsible positions, and have access to personnel, facilities and sensitive data.

It’s a best practice to ensure that the background screening policies cover contingent workers, to avoid both security and business liabilities. By performing a background check including education and employment verification on Hillar, this incident likely would have been prevented.
Organizations should implement the same background screening procedures and requirements for the entire workforce, including contractors, consultants and vendor employees. Background screening requirements should be explicitly laid out in contracts, conducted and enforced through regular audits.

Source: Hire Right


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10Jun

Screening Employees To Avoid Workplace Violence

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by Syed Faiez Hussain

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average of 564 work-related homicides occurred each year in the United States from 2004 to 2008. While maintaining a safe workplace is the primary goal of any workplace safety program, many companies – both small and large – fail to engage in a comprehensive background-screening program for employees and contractors. Why is background screening so important in screening out potential work-related violence? And why should current employees and contractors be screened annually?

Workplace violence prevention can include many strategies and tactics. Developing and implementing a workplace violence prevention plan is essential. Ongoing reviews, training and drills are needed to ensure that the plan lives, and is effective. Procedures and hotlines can be established for employees who need assistance, or for those who recognize the warning signs of workplace violence from a co-worker.

Many organizations also institute highly effective awareness campaigns that include workplace speakers and seminars. Workplace violence also is taken into consideration when developing security policies and access control methods.

The Eye of the Storm

While all of these steps are highly recommended, another critical strategy is to review what is at the center of every workplace violence situation: employees. Whether the assailant or the victim, an employee is involved in every instance of workplace violence. Companies that care about the environment in which people are working must strive to ensure that everyone who interacts with the work force has a violence-free history. The best prognosticator of future violence is a review of the past.

People who have histories of domestic abuse, assault and battery, or drug and alcohol abuse, often demonstrate anger management and personal control problems, which may be red flags for employers.

Background checks can identify applicants and employees who have demonstrated unacceptable workplace behavior. The background check can include county criminal record and national criminal file searches, drug testing, prior employment and education verification, license verifications and other investigations that can reveal potential warning signs.

When people know that a company stands behind comprehensive background screening, they know that the company cares about their welfare. Applicants who have dubious backgrounds that include reckless acts may self-select out of the interviewing process. Applicants and existing employees with clean backgrounds typically are not bothered by the screening process as they appreciate the organization’s commitment to a safe workplace.

Know Whom is on Your Premises

To fully secure a facility, employers must know exactly who is on the premises. Whether you are a property manager, HR representative or business leader, it is important to understand that a secure workplace means screening not just employees, but also contractors, vendors and temporary staff. These individuals can run the gamut from regular faces your employees know well, to the contractor who visits only once.

Regardless of your level of familiarity with these vendors or temporary employees, the need for thorough background screening is the same. To promote a greater level of safety and security for employees and customers, it is vital to conduct regular screening of the extended work force that may include service and repair professionals, construction workers, food service workers – virtually any non-employee that is interacting with your personnel and customers.

I worked in the staffing business for over a decade, and found that companies always are looking for speed in the hiring and on-boarding process. Comprehensive background screening can take up to a week to complete, which can exasperate some hiring managers. However, a company that fails to rigorously screen applicants or repeat screening for current employees and contractors may face much larger issues than a few days delay in on-boarding a new hire. Workplace violence, employee theft, fraud and a host of other issues can arise when hiring an employee who has not been properly screened. This may make an organization vulnerable to employee injury or death, unsafe working conditions, brand and reputation damage and lawsuits for negligent hiring.

Additionally, it is critical to re-screen employees – and contractors – each year. Employees who keep their personal lives private may be involved in activities that negatively could impact your workplace. For example, an employee who joined the company with a clean record 5 years ago may have been involved in domestic disputes over the past few years. This new information is crucial for an employer as domestic disputes sometimes travel into the workplace. The same applies for contractors.

Violence-Free Culture

Requiring employees and contractors to complete initial and annual background screening is a common practice. When communicated properly, and presented as part of your comprehensive effort to maintain a violence-free workplace, everyone involved will better understand the need. Employees will appreciate your dedication to creating a corporate culture and daily working environment that is focused on safety and security.

Background screening also can become the marker for when employees and contractors should be reminded of other elements of your workplace violence prevention efforts. Information to promote awareness and reminders to participate in company-sponsored training can be distributed when background checks are initiated.

There are many stressors in the workplace today. Employees and contractors are juggling large workloads, demanding deadlines and a rocky economy. People want to know that the colleagues they pass in the hall, the contractor who fixes their copier and the cleaning crew who tidies up the workspace have been vetted by their employer as best as is legally possible. Background screening may not weed out every potential workplace violence situation, but it is the gold standard of what companies can and must do.

Source: EHS Today

 

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