Benefits and Components of a Background Screening Policy

from HR.BLR.com

According to the 2005 Employers Practices in Background Screening Survey conducted by PreemploymentDirectory.com, 62% of businesses responding to the survey said that they have a background screening policy in place. This suggests that well over a third of businesses do not have a background screening policy. When juxtaposed against the estimated 80% to 96% of firms that state they are conducting some form of background or reference check, this means that there are many businesses actively involved in conducting screenings without a policy in place.

One of the basic tenets of a background screening policy is to reduce the risk to the organization’s human, financial, informational, technological and physical resources. In addition, a background screening policy establishes efficient and effective ways of doing things to minimize the impact on cost of operations and incorporate “checks and balances” or audit processes to ensure that legal liabilities are not incurred.

A background screening policy is intended to provide clear guidance for how background checks should be performed, set the parameters under which they should be performed, and identify clear boundaries to be followed.

Benefits of Implementing a Background Screening Policy

Proactive Management of Risk: Risk management is fundamentally about choosing to accept a risk, mitigating the risk, or reducing the risk, and a background screening policy is a clear step to reduce the organization’s risk.

Due Diligence and Legal Compliance: A well-crafted background screening policy will position an organization to exercise due diligence, which ultimately will help it avoid the negative consequences of being out of compliance or breaking the law. This helps the organization avoid unnecessary cost and the distraction of resources to address legal issues.

Improve Hiring Processes: Background screening provides for the collection of relevant information and verification of the accuracy of the information, which helps an organization to be equipped to make better hiring decisions.

Protection of Information: One of the side benefits of implementing an effective background screening policy is that it forces an organization to pay close attention to how it protects individuals’ personal information, which ultimately reduces the likelihood of the organization having a breach in its data and all of the commensurate problems associated with it.

Reduce Cost and Improve Profitability: An organization that proactively manages its risk, avoids costly employee problems and lawsuits, has an efficient hiring process, and protects individual personal data will reduce its cost of operations, thus improving the flow of dollars to the bottom line.

Components of a Background Screening Policy

Purpose of the Policy: The purpose statement should make the policy all encompassing with regard to people who will be on your premises, e.g., employees, customers, contractors, and visitors, as well as to define the resources that the policy is focused on protecting.

Scope of the Policy: Define the scope and boundaries of the policy with regard to locations that are covered. The language needs to be exact and precise to define the locations that are covered and to exclude those that are not.

Responsible Organization: Clearly state which department is responsible for implementing and managing the policy’s provisions and define their responsibility for working with the security department.

Sensitive Positions: The intent is to identify sensitive jobs based on a chosen set of criteria that have high-risk potential for causing injury to individuals, putting organization resources or other resources at risk. In addition, the goal is to define the information-gathering steps associated with background screening that the organization deems appropriate to take to reduce the potential risk. It also provides clear documentation of the process of identifying sensitive jobs, the criteria on which it is based, and justification for taking specific steps to gather additional information.

This may include jobs:

-That deal directly with the public

-That require employees to go into people homes

-Where employees have contact with children, elderly, or indigent populations

-Where employees handle cash, valuable merchandise, or financial matters

-That are in a position that yields considerable influence on the affairs of the organization

-That have a significant responsibility for internal/external safety and/or security, such as security personnel, nurses, physicians, etc.

Process for Conducting Background Checks: Decide amongst the numerous types of background checks that can be performed and how they will be applied to open positions at your organization. Most firms tie the decision regarding “how extensively to search” to the level of responsibility, nature and scope of work, and risk level of the open position. We recommend checking records in the counties in which the applicant has previously lived and worked. For sensitive jobs, we also recommend a nationwide database search, which may identify other information that may not show up in county searches.

Hiring Manager’s Responsibility: The intent is to clearly communicate to managers in the hiring process that it is their responsibility to actively consider the background screening information provided to them as part of their hiring decision. In order for this provision to be effective, you must have the “buy-in” of senior management who ultimately will need to be the ones that drive and reinforce this behavior within their respective departments. Please note that careful consideration should be given to including this provision because if it is not actually adhered to–meaning a monitored process actually exists to ensure that managers are using the background screening information–the policy statement can come back and haunt you in a lawsuit. It is better to not have it than to have it and not follow it.

Retention of Records: Many companies keep them indefinitely up to the time period when an employee leaves the organization. Upon termination, many companies destroy the person’s records.

Legal Compliance: Affirmatively state that the organization is in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and all other applicable federal and state statutes. The FCRA requires employers that use a third party firm to conduct background checks and/or references to obtain a written release from the person applying for a position, authorizing the firm to conduct a background and reference check. While employers that conduct their own background checks and references may not be required to obtain an authorization, it is strongly recommended that you do so to minimize liability and exposure due to privacy rights.

Also, note that separate and distinct authorization releases must be given for permission to conduct a pre-employment background check and a reference check.

A background screening policy cannot guarantee a perfect hiring process; however, it does lessen risks to an organization’s human, financial, informational, technological and physical resources. In addition, a thought-out, comprehensive background screening policy serves as a preventative measure, helping a company avoid costly hiring mistakes and their consequences. The time and money invested in creating a background screening policy and training the appropriate staff on it is most certainly better than the time and money spent fixing a potentially avoidable mistake.

About the Book
BACKGROUND SCREENING AND INVESTIGATIONS: Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspectives. Published by published by Butterworth-Heinemann, a division of Elsevier; Publication Date: 2008; ISBN: 978-0-7506-8256-5

About the Authors
Kim M. Kerr is vice president and general manager of LexisNexis® Risk & Information Analytics Group, Screening Solutions. In his current role, Kerr leads the Screening Solutions group in assisting and collaborating with various corporations and businesses to create screening policies and practices. Previously, Kim spent 28 years with AT&T serving as an area manager in corporate security. Under AT&T’s sponsorship, Kim played a vital role in the successful security operations of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia and went on to support the security efforts of both the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sidney, Australia, and the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.

W. Barry Nixon, SPHR is the Executive Director of the National Institute for Prevention of Workplace Violence, Inc., a company focused on assisting organizations to effectively implement programs to prevent workplace violence. He has over 20 years of human resources and organization development experience in Fortune 500 companies, and is well grounded in the real issues companies face.