Background checks: look back to get ahead

Transcription

1 Background checks: look back to get ahead FEBRUARY 2012 THE DREAM BEGINS WITH THE RIGHT JOB SNAGAJOB.COM SNAGAJOB.COM, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

2 Background checks: Look back to get ahead Even if you think you ve done everything within reason to ensure a successful hire you ve sourced from a quality talent pool, taken applicants through the appropriate behavioral assessment, conducted in-person interviews and even called to check references you aren t done. Conducting a thorough background check before you hire a new hourly employee must be the final step and some could argue the most important step in the process. Your hourly, primarily front-line, workforce has more customer interaction than any other employee group. Because they are responsible for the customer experience (and, therefore, largely your profitability), it s imperative that you verify your hourly workers employment records, qualifications and skill sets before unleashing them on your customers. And as uncomfortable as it might be to talk about, you want to be sure your workforce is trustworthy, reliable and won t put your customers or your business at risk. Conducting background checks is a protective measure and will give you added confidence in your workforce, but you can t just dive into it without understanding the nuances of the environment. Even if you ve been conducting background checks for years, the landscape is constantly changing. Likely, a refresher on the process and a gut check regarding what s fair game is warranted. And that s what you ll find here. We ll touch on the reasons that background checks are such a critical part of the hiring process, and then we ll cover some of the pieces of preemployment background screening that you may not have thought about before, or at least you haven t thought about in a while. EVEN IF YOU VE BEEN CONDUCTING BACKGROUND CHECKS FOR YEARS, THE LANDSCAPE IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING

3 Pitfalls of not screening Experts will tell you that fear can be a successful motivational tactic if used correctly. When there s not enough fear there s not as much urgency, but overdoing it can turn people off. We ll do our best to avoid the fear-factor approach as we encourage you to conduct background checks effectively, but there can be scary consequences of not doing so that need to be covered. MISREPRESENTED RESUMES 3 IN 10 PEOPLE THINK IT S OK TO MISREPRESENT SELF ON RESUME 1/3 OF PEOPLE THINK EMPLOYER CANNOT VERIFY RESUME INFO 45% OF YEAR- OLDS THINK IT S BENEFICIAL TO MISREPRESENT SELF ON RESUME According to Harris Interactive, three in 10 people think it would be okay to misrepresent themselves on their resumes. Misrepresentation could include an inflated list of skills, fabricated degree or hidden criminal background. Regardless of what is misrepresented, as an employer you can t afford a 30 percent chance that your frontline employees those who can make or break you depending on how they serve customers have misrepresented themselves. Misrepresentation can lead to low productivity, even workplace accidents, if employees don t have the skill set or experience they claimed to have. The ripple effect will negatively impact your bottom line. One of the largest drains on a business s bottom line is shrinkage the loss of product between the manufacturer and the point of sale. The National Retail Security Survey found that the No. 1 source of shrinkage for a retail business is internal theft. Internal theft can include employee theft, discount abuse or refund abuse. So it s important to guard against hiring an employee with a history of dishonest behavior. Beyond misrepresentation, there s real risk associated with non-disclosure. Not conducting background checks could put you, your employees or customers in harm s way. According to the National Employment Law Project, one in four Americans has a criminal record. Knowing if a potential employee has ever been convicted of a crime will provide crucial information as you consider whether to put them into your open position. Source: Harris Interactive 2

4 Drug testing is also an important part of pre-employment screening. Drug usage in the workplace can lead to an increased risk of accidents and injuries, not only involving employees but also customers. 3/4 OF ILLEGAL DRUG USERS 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER ALSO HOLD JOBS Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration DRUG USAGE CAN EASILY SLIP INTO THE WORKPLACE Neglecting to conduct background checks can even land you in court. Every employer is required to conduct due diligence to ensure the safety of others, which includes considering if a potential new employee could represent a risk in any way. If an employer hires someone who they either knew or by performing due diligence should have known was dangerous, unfit or unqualified for the position, and it was foreseeable that some sort of injury could happen, then the employer can be sued for negligent hiring. One of the best ways for employers to protect themselves and perform the necessary due diligence is to conduct background checks as a matter of course (not just if something makes them suspicious during the evaluation process). Whether you haven t yet incorporated background screening into your hiring process or you re already doing it, there are three key aspects to screening that you should keep top of mind: laws that govern it, social media that informs it and hiring technology that automates it. 3

5 Legally speaking Background checks are a critically important part of the hiring process in that they can help you make not only successful hires, but also safe ones. But the findings from background checks have been used as an excuse not to hire an applicant even though the findings may have had no bearing on that individual s ability to do the job. WHAT THE LAWS MEAN TO YOU Several laws have been introduced over the years to protect the rights of the applicant. It should be no surprise that the laws governing pre-employment background screening are complex complex laws for a complex process. Some of these laws change constantly and vary by state, making it difficult for an employer to stay current with what s legally acceptable. But if you don t keep up, you could find your business in hot water. NO RACIAL OR NATIONAL DISCRIMINATION NO MEDICAL OR DISABILITY DATA IN THE HIRING PROCESS REGULATED USE OF CONSUMER INFORMATION GATHERED BY CONSUMER REPORTING AGENCES There are hundreds of laws pertaining to pre-employment screening, but some of the notables include the Americans with Disability Act (ADA), Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Each outlines information that can and cannot be used in employment screening: ADA prohibits employers from using medical or disability data in the hiring process; Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the grounds of race, color or national origin; and FCRA regulates the collection, dissemination and use of consumer information gathered by consumer reporting agencies for various purposes, including employment. Other federal laws, such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), may not on the surface seem to have any impact on pre-employment background screening, but federal laws often overlap. You could miss key regulations if you don t do your research. (For example, FERPA controls the release of information from educational records.) 4

6 Beyond federal law, each state has laws that govern the pre-employment screening process. If you re a large employer hiring people from more than one state, it can be nearly impossible to keep up with the legal differences from state to state. For example, at the time of publication, at least seven states have banned the use of credit checks including California, Maryland and Washington and 20 more are considering similar legislation. States are in disagreement over the use of E-Verify, the system the government wants businesses to use to determine employee eligibility to work in the United States. Some states have lent heavy support to standardizing the onboarding process, and others are lobbying hard against it. Some states are even considering a Ban the Box approach that prohibits employers from asking about criminal backgrounds altogether. Keeping tabs on what laws states are passing or considering related to background checks is a tall order, one that not many employers have the resources to follow. But background screening solution providers have made a business of staying on top of the legal landscape. One could say they literally live and breathe employment screening law. Be sure to make a background screening solution provider one of your strategic partners, one you trust to share critical changes in employment screening laws with you. Because even though you aren t doing the screening in-house, knowing what information you can and cannot use in employment screening will help keep you compliant and give you confidence in your screening process. MANY EMPLOYERS DON T HAVE THE RESOURCES TO KEEP TABS ON WHAT LAWS STATES ARE PASSING REGARDING BACKGROUND CHECKS 14% OF STATES CURRENTLY BAN THE USE OF CREDIT CHECKS 40% OF STATES ARE CONSIDERING SIMILAR LEGISLATION 5

7 Going social Online social networking has taken the world by storm. It s a huge part of the average American s personal life and has become vital to the success of almost every business venture. It s here to stay. Googling someone has become commonplace. Connections are forged and strengthened on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other sites. This is all well and good for social interactions, but using social media for employment screening is a whole different story. Because social media is so accessible, it s tempting to go it alone and not outsource this piece of your employment screening process. However, how will your hiring managers protect against inadvertently discovering something that could impact their opinion but that s legally off-limits for them to know, thereby leaving your business vulnerable to accusations of discrimination? Remember the earlier break-out of some of the laws that govern what is allowed to be used in pre-employment screening? Social media screening adds an entirely new level of legal complexity. 79% HAVE GONE ONLINE TO DISCOVER THINGS ABOUT JOB APPLICANTS 69% HAVE REJECTED APPLICANTS BASED ON WHAT THEY VE FOUND ONLINE Source: Social Intelligence 6

8 SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOW SUBJECT TO THE FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT (FCRA) Effective June 2011 social media is subject to FCRA, which requires reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy. One of the most attractive features of social media is the ability to post anything you want no matter if it s true, a stretch or false. This is great for proponents of the right of self-expression, but it makes it tough to ensure that your social media screening is a reasonable procedure to assure maximum possible accuracy. Compliance with FCRA is quite difficult to achieve. Another concern with social media screening is how to avoid seeing information related to race, religion or disability status information privacies protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act when social media outlets don t filter out this information. Think about the amount of information that you could ascertain from a Facebook profile photo. A good deal of this information is off-limits when it comes to factoring it into employment decisions. All this is not to say you have to abandon social media as a way to inform your hiring decisions. Social media screening can give insight into an applicant s personality and character, something that can be hard to gauge from applications and interviews. You just have to know what is allowed to be used to make hiring decisions. Often it s best to leave the process and the associated risk to a third-party provider of social media screening solutions. Publicly available information that shows positive behaviors, such as contributing to a corporate blog or participating in volunteer groups, as well as negative behaviors, such as violent actions or corporate disparagement, are allowed to be a part of your employment screening. The problem is that in order to glean this information you might get exposed to protected class information, as well. FCRA A social media screening partner can conduct the search for you, either manually or through an automated solution, extract the information you cannot use and produce a report of pertinent information that will help you make a more informed hiring decision. When selecting a partner, make sure that partner can certify FCRA compliance. Because social media screening is in its infancy, having a partner that can certify compliance will give you an added layer of protection. 7

9 A good applicant experience and background checks can play nice together Businesses are catching on that online hiring processes can provide a wealth of efficiencies. More and more businesses are adopting integrated, online hiring solutions that can move a great new hire from the application to the floor faster than ever. MOST HOURLY JOB SEEKERS APPLY TO THREE JOBS AT ONCE AND REPORT THAT GETTING HIRED QUICKLY IS MOST IMPORTANT. The increasing use of hiring technology is producing two results: 1) the hiring process has become more efficient for hiring managers, and 2) tech-savvy applicants are coming to expect a streamlined and expedited process. The latter result has a bigger impact on your bottom line than you may realize. We ve all heard that when applicants have a good experience with the job application process, they ll tell a couple of people. But if applicants have a bad experience, they ll spread the word far and wide. The job application process may be the first time an applicant has interacted with your brand. More often, having experience with your brand draws job seekers to apply. If applying is arduous or takes too long, you may not only lose candidates mid-application but also you may be turning off future applicants who hear it s not worth the time. Automating your background check process can speed up your hiring process and eliminate applicant s remorse, including the high level of frustration they have when they don t get hired quickly. Source: Workforce Institute Manual background checks can take weeks. If you keep desirable candidates in a holding pattern while you conduct a lengthy background check, they may end up jumping ship and landing elsewhere and then you ve lost serious ground in filling the opening. Automated background screening could reduce your screening time to just days. Reduce time to screen. Check. To make the process easier and less frustrating for applicants, you ll need to fully integrate your background screening process into your hiring solution. By doing so, applicants are asked to provide pertinent information during one easy apply process. The payoff for you is that you will get all the information that will help you make informed hiring decisions using a single platform to do it. Make an applicant s (and your) life easier. Check. 8

10 The final word Hourly employees have more interaction with customers than any other employee group. A study by RightNow Technologies revealed that 73 percent of customers leave a business due to poor customer service. You can t afford to lose great brand ambassadors because of a cumbersome or time-consuming application process. Using hiring technology to conduct thorough pre-employment screenings will help ensure that your front-line employees are the most qualified people for the jobs, and it will give you confidence in your workforce. But the process you follow is just as important as the need for background checks. If you ignore the ever-changing laws that govern pre-employment screening, go rogue on social media screening or forget that there is a user experience involved in your application process, then you could end up losing top applicants or even get in legal trouble. The easiest way to keep your process compliant without risking turning away top talent is to work with a third-party screening partner that knows the lay of the land inside and out, can provide you with objective results and can fully integrate their system into your online hiring process. ABOUT SNAGAJOB With the largest online community of hourly workers and the leading suite of hourly-focused employer solutions, Snagajob is the world s only company totally devoted to fulfilling the dreams of hourly workers and those who employ them. Founded in 2000 and located in Richmond, Va., Snagajob was named the No. 1 Small Company to Work for in America by the Great Place to Work Institute and Entrepreneur magazine. If you re still not sold on the positive impact that integrated background checks can have on your business, consider this: the Aberdeen Group found that when a background screening solution was fully integrated into an online hiring process, the chance of making a quality hire increased by 10 percent. A 10 percent spike in the quality of your hires is worth investing in a background screening solution that reveals anything risky about an applicant s past before you move forward with an offer. SNAGAJOB SNAGAJOB.COM/EMPLOYER-SOLUTIONS BUSINESSSOLUTIONS@SNAGAJOB.COM 9