Top Five Reasons to Take Your Pre-Employment Screening Program Paperless

If you’re like most recruiting and hiring professionals, you’ve kept a watchful eye on two things. First, how to add value through efficiencies that keep expenses in line for your company. Second, ongoing legislative changes in the HR domain that increase risk. In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, you’re definitely tapped into how to do more with less and how to protect from possible lawsuits.

You already have an instrument in your toolbox, but are you using it to its maximum potential? Here are the top five quick fixes you can apply to your pre-employment screening program in 2014.

Quick Fix 1: Document Storage

Lost and misplaced files plague every HR department at one time or another. A recent study estimated that an enterprise with 1,000 workers wastes between $2.5 and $3.5 million a year searching for, and failing to find, important documents. Whether your organization is bigger or smaller than 1,000 is not important. What is important is that no company can afford this loss and risk.

Hiring decisions aren’t always conducted between the hours of 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. How often have you wished you had access to files? This need arises frequently and often times it's after hours and there is no one at the office to help. Imagine files such a Word, Excel, in one repository, securely accessible via PC or laptop, as well as iPad and other mobile devices. Convenience can be priceless. Your business should be able to hum along despite a disaster such as a fire, flood, or snowstorm.

Quick Fix 2: For Your Eyes Only

HR documentation is full of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) including names, addresses, dates of birth, and social security numbers. Identity theft, hacking, and data leaks are nightmare scenarios, potentially causing legal action. Companies are responsible to ensure that their sensitive documents (resumes, applications, releases and consents) are safeguarded against external threats, as well as those that can come from within their organizations from the likes of snooping or disgruntled employees.

The right technology will contain safeguards to control access, based on the permissions granted for access. It will even track access so that you can see who has searched for and viewed certain files. Can your physical file cabinet do this?

Quick Fix 3: Reporting

For years, HR professionals have been able to confidently rely on the simple principle that consistency, in applying company policy in hiring practices, will reduce lawsuits. Recent trends amongst government agencies are making HR professionals’ heads spin. Most notably, since the first of the year, there have been almost two dozen lawsuits filed by the EEOC claiming disparate treatment of employees in one way or another.

In 2012, the EEOC issued guidance tied to data suggesting that minority applicants are disproportionately arrested and convicted of crimes. The EEOC’s position does not bar an employer from considering an applicant’s history, but requires a narrowly tailored evaluation (individual assessment) of the applicant’s past conduct and how that conduct is relevant to specific requirements and duties of the job being sought. Perhaps most significant, the employer must be prepared to demonstrate that any exclusion based upon an arrest or criminal conviction is job related and consistent with business necessity.

There is an inherent expectation that employers not only adopt practices requiring more individualized evaluation, but also demonstrate via reports that they have considered the relevant underlying facts and applied appropriate policy parameters. The only way to do this with certainty is to use technology that provides evidence of continuous and ongoing practices, and offers reporting mechanisms that pull data from archives certifying compliant processes are in place.

Quick Fix 4: Training

Perhaps one of the most important reflections of a successful background screening program is the ability to understand the contents of reported results. It is hard to keep up with the complexities and challenges facing HR professionals in today’s current environment. Yet it’s a fact that well trained recruiting teams expedite better hires and faster time to hire. You can use technology to promote proper report interpretation and reinforce risk mitigation.

Interactive tools and resources such as glossaries, FAQs, standard and customized forms, and downloadable tutorials embedded in your platform enhance training initiatives. New hire training and refresher courses on constantly updated best practices, laws and compliance, data privacy and applicant deceptions drive better hiring decisions.

Quick Fix 5: Compliance and Adverse Action Management

Under the FCRA, the primary employer responsibilities include obtaining a signed consent, providing a written disclosure that a background check may be requested, procuring an applicant’s signature authorizing the investigation, and if the screen includes derogatory information that causes you not to hire, retain, or promote an applicant or employee, triggering the adverse action process.

No matter how small or large, an organization that uses a consumer report, in part or in full to make a hiring decision, must follow FCRA guidelines. If you fail to follow any one of the procedures, you expose your company to severe consequences. The training, maintenance, tracking, and reporting on FCRA requirements are costly and time consuming.

Technology can offer a variety of shortcuts including customized disclosure and authorization forms, electronically triggered pre- and post- adverse action letters, summary and final reports for dispute reinvestigations attached to applicant orders, reporting at the dispute level if the FCRA makes an inquiry, and specific adverse action new hire and refresher training for employees. In addition, when statutes change, the background screening platform should have a way to alert you of the legal ramifications and help you define an easy action plan to address new developments.

Take your pre-employment screening program paperless in 2014. It will change the way you do business and the benefits are compelling. We can work with you to maximize your use of the tools currently in place.