Should you do pre-employment credit checks?
A recent Associated Press piece discussed the use of credit checks by employers as part of pre-employment screening and background checks. The writer cited an interesting statistic.
“In its most recent report on reference and background checking, in 2004, the Society for Human Resource Management found that 19 percent of organizations conducted credit checks.”
This is one case where I think you should join the minority and use pre-employment credit checks. Here’s why.
If you’re hiring for a position where an employee has access to money, financial records or sensitive information, and credit check should be part of your screening. Financial problems can cause people to succumb to temptation to steal or use confidential information for profit.
I’d even go further than that. I think you should check the credit of anyone who’s promoted or transferred into a sensitive position with access to money or privileged information. I think you should run a credit check on all people in those positions on an annual basis.
But what about others? Remember that you run any background check to look for clues to things you want to investigate further.
Check the employers list on the credit report against the one on the application to make sure they match. Check basic personal information including any aliases or different social security numbers.
BE CAREFUL AND LEGAL: There are differing state laws on whether and when you can use a credit report as part of your hiring process. So check with your attorney to make sure you comply with the law.
You’re responsible for preventing workplace violence
In October, news media carried the story of an off-duty police officer who shot seven people in Crandon, Wisconsin, killing six of them. Normally that would not concern us here because we talk about issues related to the use of background checks by employers and landlords.
Earlier this month, though, organizational development consultant Daniel Schroeder wrote a piece in the Milwaukee Small Business Times answering a question sparked by the Crandon shootings: “What is a reasonable approach for a company that wants to make sure that it does what it can to minimize the chances of a violent act occurring?”
Schroeder points out that, if you’re an employer, you have a legal responsibility to prevent workplace violence. He says, “the Occupational Health and Safety Act (Act 181 of 1993) has a general duty clause that tasks employers with ensuring the health and safety of employees, as follows: ‘Every employer shall provide and maintain, as far as is reasonably practicable, a working environment that is safe and without risk to the health of his employees.'”
He’s got some good ideas about what you should do, but I’m not sure they go far enough. Here are mine.
Make sure you have a specific policy that not only prohibits workplace violence, but makes it a firing offense. You may want to offer mandatory counseling to first-time offenders through your EAP.
Make background checks a part of your hiring process. Pay special attention to violent acts in the past.
Make sure you do the background check on every person […]
Sometimes all you can do is chuckle
The headline for this one pretty much says it all: Background check KO’s police applicant.
Oliver Shea Wright decided he wanted to become a police officer. So he submitted his application to the Newport News, VA police department.
The police department conducted the background check that’s a routine part of their hiring process. It turned out that Wright was wanted for a crime he allegedly committed last summer. The police arrested Wright instead of hiring him.
I’m sharing this with you for its humor value. You would think that the last place someone who’s wanted for a crime would try to go to work would be the police department. But people can be stupid or brazen. Sometimes I can’t figure out which it is.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that you have to check on the people who come to you and apply for work or apply to rent an apartment. People with really awful pasts will try to do that. People with evil intent will try to do that. Since you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys just by looking, you better do those background checks.
Background checks in the ivy-covered halls
Colleges and universities used to be seen as a place apart from the rest of the world where the biggest danger was that you’d party too much and couldn’t make your eight o’clock class. No more.
Inside Higher Ed just published an article about the increasing interest in background checks among colleges and universities. The article was part of a report on the annual conference of human resource professionals who work in higher education. Here’s a substantive excerpt.
It probably shouldn’t be surprising in the year of the Virginia Tech murders and the scandal over the Massachusetts Institute of Technology admissions dean who didn’t have the degrees she claimed. More colleges are starting or considering policies to require background checks on potential employees. At the annual meeting last week of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, sessions on background checks were attracting strong interest — with one so packed that people were sitting on the floor and in the hallway. Several companies that specialize in background checks for the business world were at the meeting as exhibitors for the first time, saying that they were seeing significant increases in inquiries and contracts from colleges.
You can argue that those colleges “coulda, woulda, shoulda” gotten background check religion before the murders at Virginia Tech, but that’s not how human beings work. We buy the alarm system after the house has been burglarized.
Don’t wait for a human or financial disaster. If background checks are not part of your hiring or […]
Background checks on the rise, but do they work?
The Associated Press story, Background checks on the rise, takes a look at the dramatic increase in background checks starting with the federal government ones.
Already this year, 25 million Americans have had background checks by the federal government, a number that’s risen every year since the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Amid the rise, a notable shift has occurred: More civilians are now checked each year than criminals. And checks on the vast majority come back clean, even as states allot more money for their growing screening operations.
The article is a hodge-podge with an agenda. The article skips from talking about federal background checks to those done by school systems to background checking by churches.
The use of statistics is fast and loose. For example, the writer tells us that “a recent search of state-by-state records found 2,570 incidents of sexual misconduct in public schools between 2001 and 2005, despite background checks of teachers being required in many states.”
Sounds ominous. There are all those offenses happening despite background checks.
But the statistic used doesn’t support that. It’s meaningless because the relevant measure is not the number of incidents but the number of offenders. And it’s irresponsible because the only way to judge is to consider the number of offenders only from the states that mandate background checks.
The writer of the article isn’t explicit about it, but seems to push the agenda of the Ohio ACLU. Deep in the article there’s this quote from Christine Link, executive director of the ACLU of Ohio. […]
Security concerns don’t stop when you hire
CBS Channel 4 in Denver has broken a story about how people with criminal backgrounds including child abuse, assault, and theft wind up working on group homes around the state. Here’s a substantive excerpt from their story.
“A CBS4 investigation found many of the employees in the state’s group homes have criminal records that might disqualify them from many lines of work, yet they are caring for the Colorado’s most vulnerable population. The CBS4 probe turned up employees with arrests and convictions for domestic violence, assault, shoplifting and drug use.”
That’s interesting, but it’s not much different from a number of stories we see in the news about how convicted felons are employed in sensitive positions because some organization isn’t doing the background checks that prudence and common sense call for. The important lesson for you in this story is buried a bit further down.
“In some cases, the state is unaware of its employees’ criminal arrests and convictions since they occurred after the employees were hired. While criminal background checks are conducted prior to hiring, there are no regular, ongoing checks done after that. Criminal infractions that occur after hiring are generally unknown to the Colorado Department of Human Services, which oversees the group homes.”
Dr. Sharon Jacksi, who manages the group homes for the state, is reported as responding to the station’s investigation by saying: “I am surprised that some of the individuals after hire had issues and did not self-report.”
That’s simply naïve. We’re talking about people who aren’t exactly […]