When HR professionals think about improving and maintaining employee performance, most think of time management, setting clear goals and expectations, communication skills, development, culture, the list goes on.
Oftentimes, what happens outside of the workplace and how that can affect employee performance is an afterthought, sometimes when it’s too late.
Running background checks during the onboarding process has become routine for most organizations, large and small. However, many managers aren’t ensuring that those same standards initially screened for are still being upheld. The routine background check represents information up until that single moment in time. What about criminal offenses following the initial background check? Employers may never find out about revoked licenses, suspended work authorizations, employee legal consequences, etc.
According to a 2018 report from SHRM, only 11% of organizations rescreen current employees.
Fortunately, an easy way to do this is through consistent rescreening or continuous criminal monitoring of your employees. Many background screening vendors, like One Source, offer these types of solutions.
Benefits of Rescreening Employees
Increases Safety and Security:
Periodic rescreening can help identify individuals in your workplace that could potentially cause harm. This can include drug use, theft, fraud, violence, sexually-based crimes, and abuse. It also helps protect your organization, employees, and customers.
Overall Turnover Reduction:
It’s simple. Increasing safety and security can help create a happier work environment for employees. Happier employees show up and perform.
Free Up Time for HR:
With a consistent rescreening program and a good policy, the process can essentially run itself (we take care of that part), leaving more time for HR to focus on other ways to improve and maintain performance.
How It Works
Don’t worry; rescreening or continually monitoring your employees isn’t as daunting as it may sound.
Rescreening:
An annual, monthly, or scheduled periodic rescreen should be as simple as uploading a spreadsheet to your provider and checking a box in your screening vendor’s system.
Continuous Criminal Monitoring:
An automated search that continuously searches to identify records or criminal activity within your workforce.
You Choose
You choose the parameters of what you want searched. These can include real-time county criminal records, nationwide databases, federal records, sex offender registries, professional licenses, or industry-specific repositories like financial or healthcare sanctions.
While most organizations try and onboard trustworthy individuals, at the end of the day, there is no way to predict what the future holds when it comes to criminal activity. The concept of adding a monitoring service is to stay on alert to new criminal offenses or changes in sex offender registration to better inform you of the individuals within your organization.
Don’t Forget About Compliance
Whether you choose to rescreen or set up continuous monitoring, organizations must still stay compliant with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
Federal and state laws still require applicants and employees to have completed a disclosure and authorization (Read more). If you plan to run background checks again during the duration of their employment, you’ll need to be sure to clearly and conspicuously state this within this disclosure. If you haven’t done this upon hire, you’ll need a new consent prior to any rescreening. At One Source, we provide templates for these forms to all clients.
Should you uncover information in a rescreen that results in termination, you’ll still need to follow the adverse action process (Read more). Your screening vendor will be able to help you navigate through the process.
Last but not least, you’ll need to ensure that your employment policy is set up to address your rescreen practices. This will help be your guide should any unfortunate information come back on an employee. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a great resource for sample background check policies and procedures.
As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to One Source or your screening provider regarding any questions on employment screening.
Author: Neal Josten
Neal Josten has been with One Source for over ten years. Neal specializes in working with organizations of all shapes and sizes to provide them the full background screening solution. Whether it’s a small organization just starting an employment policy, or a large multi-state firm, he helps companies analyze their process and procedures.
Neal is an active member of the Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA) and holds his Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) Advanced Certification.
Questions?
You can reach Neal at 402.933.9999 x5600 or njosten@onesourcebackground.com
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