Acquiring and managing talent in an organization requires investing time and resources. It makes sense to be diligent when making a new hire. It is important to ensure that you are hiring the right person worth your investment. This requires verifying that everything included in the resume such as work experience, education, certifications, awards, and the criminal record doesn’t have any red flags. Any falsehood has the potential to affect safety, trust, and company bottom line.
Ignoring to verify such aspects leads to making poor hiring decisions that are costly to your company in the future. A bad hire results in lost time and increases recruitment and training costs to make a new hire. This negatively impacts employee morale while decreasing team and company productivity. Avoiding this requires undertaking background verification to allow making well-informed decisions focusing on business growth and handling potential problems.
Problems of ignoring background checks
False credentials
You have to trust your employees to do their jobs, respect customers and partners while representing your brand appropriately. In a bid to stand out, some applicants include false information in their resume including:
- Seniority levels
- Inaccurate job titles
- Employment dates
- Falsified education details
The submission of false credentials directly affects current staff since the person is less likely to have the expertise to fit on the job. This significantly affects the performance of the whole team since joint effort is required to achieve overall success. An inefficient employee is likely to take up about 17 percent of the supervisor’s time. Spending too much time on a bad hire allows spending less time on other activities that encourage business growth.
Opting for verification service ensures hiring the right candidate for the position. This gives peace of mind and eliminates wasting time and effort. The background check will handle issues including verifying education certificates, employer history, and professional certifications earned. This allows confirming that what the applicant included in the resume is correct to allow making an informed decision in the next hiring step.
Exposing customers and employees to unsafe conditions
Employers are legally obliged to guarantee a safe office for employees and customers. This requires ensuring no cases of workplace violence. Such situations lead to emotional and physical harm to staff and clients. It also creates a negative impression of your brand. In severe cases, you are likely to suffer a financial cost to settle court cases for accidents in your workplace.
Undertaking a background check before making any hire is an important step to void exposing your employees and customers to unsafe conditions. The background verification allows unearthing applicants with a history of violent crimes. Additionally, drug screening significantly lessens the chances of injuries happening in your office. Enforcing mandatory background screening significantly reduces the cost of compensation claims to workers.
Occupational fraud
Business owners have to worry about hacking, cybercrime, and fraud. These lead to a loss of cash and inventory. Cybercrime is a potential theft case in the workplace that requires proactive measures. Additionally, disgruntled employees sometimes resort to hacking former employers to get back at them. The most significant cause of occupational fraud is insider misconduct and security breaches where employees steal sensitive date from your office. Other employees sell company important information to competitors.
Conducting a verification exercise before making a new hire avoids such potential problems. This includes checking work history to discover the reason to leave the last job. It allows determining the risk of ending up with the applicant on your team. Perhaps the applicant was fired for gross misconduct or theft at the last job. Doing a background check on applicants allows making an informed decision to ensure that you select the right person.
Negligent hiring
This is employer liability to an accident caused by an employee resulting from not determining the potential of risk to hire that individual. Running a background check puts you in a better position to challenge a lawsuit legally. Neglecting to do a check makes you liable to hire a person with previous license suspensions. This makes you liable for injuries caused by the employee.
A background check allows discovering the person’s previous driving record to allow making an informed decision. A negligent lawsuit costs a significant amount to settle and requires putting in quite some time. This comes with the bad publicity that obviously dents your reputation in the market. Vetting candidates hiring with a thorough background check will save you time and money.
Conclusion
Implementing mandatory background checks during your hiring process is a good idea. This saves you valuable time, money, and effort on inefficient hires. Fortunately, you don’t have to do this on your own. You can enlist the services of a professional agency to check the applicant’s academic documents, work history, criminal record, and work experience. This allows making the right hire to give you peace of mind that your business and customers are in good hands.
