Criminal background checks are crucial to the success of your business. They can help you avoid hiring people who may embezzle funds, harm your customers, or threaten your staff members.
Generally, a background check includes state and county records, pending cases, and convictions. It can also have federal records, depending on the type of background check you conduct.
Save Money
When a company makes a bad hire, it can cost the business in various ways. Depending on the position and industry, it can cost the company recruiting fees, training costs, lost productivity, and more.
Additionally, companies can lose money through occupational fraud and theft. Criminal record checks, credit checks, and reference interviews help reduce these losses by identifying candidates with a history of sticky fingers or financial irresponsibility.
While background checks are an upfront expense, they can save your business a lot of money in the long run. The savings include avoiding lawsuits for negligent hiring and reducing the risk of workplace violence. In addition, by making sure you hire the best candidate for a specific role, your business can avoid costly turnover and training expenses.
Protect Your Company’s Reputation
A business’s reputation can be damaged by employees who have criminal records. When a company hires someone who has committed crimes or engaged in other unsavory behavior, it can lose customers, incur costs for damages, and even face lawsuits for negligent hiring. Having quality employees who don’t have unwanted criminal records can protect a business’s reputation and brand identity and help it succeed.
Criminal background checks can uncover many information relevant to the hiring process, including criminal convictions and other important details like age or citizenship. By conducting comprehensive searches that include county and state records, a criminal background check service can provide valuable insights that help you make informed hiring decisions.
For positions that involve privileged client information, such as billing details or health information, it’s vital to ensure that the person you hire hasn’t been accused of or convicted of crimes related to these sensitive subjects. A background check can also reveal if an employee has been charged with fraud or other financial misdeeds that could put your clients at risk.
Prevent Negligent Hiring
Negligent hiring is a hazardous risk whether you have full-time employees, part-time workers, seasonal employees, interns, or volunteer workers. The best way to prevent negligent hiring is to ensure that you have a comprehensive criminal background check service that includes checks for professional licensing, references, criminal records, and drug testing.
For example, if you hire a truck driver with a history of reckless driving and felony reckless aggravated assault and that employee causes a collision that hurts or kills someone, the victim’s family can sue your company for negligence. If the company had run a background check that revealed this information, it could have prevented the accident.
Similarly, if an IT professional with a history of theft and criminal activity uses their access privileges to breach security protocols and steal corporate data, your organization could be sued for negligence.
Having a well-established background-checking process that includes identity verifications, checks for professional licensing and credentials, criminal records searches, and credit checks can help you avoid negligent hiring claims. Developing a thorough recruitment process will also minimize your risk of negligent hiring claims.
Prevent Workplace Violence
Workplace violence costs businesses in America millions of dollars each year. From assaults and robberies to domestic incidents that spill over into the workplace, the problem can take many forms.
Preventing workplace violence starts with the hiring process. A thorough background check conducted by a professional CRA can reveal criminal history and other concerning information. If you discover that a job candidate has a history of violence, you can decline to offer them the position.
It is also essential to create firm policies that prevent workplace violence. It would be best to clarify to employees that any misconduct will not be tolerated and that the company will punish all violators equally.
This will help ensure that all employees feel safe in the office and are not afraid of being victimized by a coworker. You should also provide employees access to conflict resolution resources to express their concerns openly and without fear of retaliation. This will reduce tensions and prevent them from escalating into violence.
Protect Your Employees
Whether you run a small business or a large enterprise, background checks can help mitigate risk and protect your assets. While past behavior is not necessarily a predictor of future acts, it may indicate a candidate’s level of honesty and trustworthiness or their potential to engage in workplace violence or other crimes that could impact your company and your customers. A criminal background check can also uncover mismanagement of funds or blatant theft that could damage your business.
Additionally, a background check can reveal an applicant’s identity, which is especially important for residential plumbing contractors with employees who enter customer residences. A background check that includes a national criminal and sex offender registry search, county criminal searches, and fingerprinting can provide valuable insight into your candidates that you cannot obtain from a simple background report alone.
