Under the headline “Aviation workers soon to get more criminal checks,” USA Today writes about changes that are coming for workers at America’s airlines.
“More than a million aviation workers — including pilots, mechanics and flight attendants — will begin undergoing more thorough background checks in January as the U.S. focuses on preventing insider terrorist attacks.”
The government is trying to head off terrorist attacks, but there are side benefits to the background checks that are the same as what you get when you incorporate criminal background checks in your hiring process. You get a safer workplace and a lowered likelihood of insider theft.
The additional background checks will be done by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Up until now, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been the agency handling this kind of security.
The TSA will be doing things the FAA didn’t do. Most important, they’ll be checking backgrounds every time the Terrorist Screening Center’s database is updated. That happens at least daily. There’s a lesson there for you.
Nobody’s suggesting that you run a check on your people every day. But the reason that the TSA does it is that files get updated and things change. If the changes are important, you need to make sure they don’t slip by you.
Here’s what I suggest. Check the background of anyone who works for you in a sensitive position every year and whenever there’s a significant change in job function. And make it a matter of policy that people who work for you let you know if they run into trouble with the police or the courts.
You don’t have access to the kind of federal databases that the TSA does. But you’ve got security concerns, too, and reasonable and regular background checks can help you deal with them.