Last week we talked about the importance of social media checks as part of a background check. How important they are for employers to get a better idea of who they are hiring. Whereas, this week we will be discussing the intricacies of a background check. What exactly employers are looking at when they perform a background check, and why it’s important to be thorough.
Essentially, a background check is there for an employer to examine someone’s past in depth. So as to minimize risk when taking someone new onboard. At times this is even performed on an already existing employee too.
Hiring someone is already expensive, and firing them even more so. Therefore, hiring the wrong person can be detrimental to a company; damaging to both their employees and customers. Not to mention to the company itself.
Performing a background check is the best and most common way to ensure you are taking the right person onboard. But are there other reasons an employer might make a background check?
Primary concern: Safety
Safety is probably the single most important and basic aspect of a business that an employer must take care of. In other words, it’s absolutely crucial to running a successful business, the backbone you could say. That would include the safety of both employees and customers.
If an employer fails to provide a safe working environment it can have serious consequences. Ones for which they would be held liable. Aside from avoiding liability claims, a safe working environment provides an atmosphere that is conducive for employees to focus on their work. Additionally, this environment should provide customers with a positive experience.
What building a safe working environment brings is trust, a crucial component for any business to function. Therefore, without it employees cannot build trust with consumers or their employers. Safety must be a concern of the highest priority.
This is where background checks come in. They are an essential part of the process to prevent threats to a safe workspace.
Company fit, liability and legal compliance
- Company fit: Pre-employment background checks allow employers to get a solid idea of who they are employing. As we spoke of in last week’s post, social media checks can be a part of this. However, that is far from where background checks end. Background checks can show employers if the candidate’s values are aligned with theirs. A good facet of someone’s history to check, for example, would be their job history. This can give insight on whether a new employee will get along with the rest of the staff, or whether their management style matches up with the company.
- Liability issues: These are related to safety, in that how a lack of it can have consequences for the company or employer. Liability asserts an employers responsibilities when it comes to safety and other matters. A background check is a way for an employer to hire someone without going in blind, helping them make sure they aren’t making a mistake that they would be liable for. Say, if for example, the new employee were in some way to make the workspace unsafe. In that case, the company would be liable to hiring them. There are other measures besides background checks to deal with liability, for when someone is already hired. Prevention, however, is the best solution if available; avoiding a problem is better than having to solve it.
- Legal compliance: This is relatively self-explanatory. Employers don’t only do these checks for themselves, they are legally obliged to perform them regularly. This is especially true for government related jobs, or jobs that require someone to work with children or minors. Meaning that employers cannot opt out of background checks such as these.
As we have aligned above, there are a wide variety of reasons an employer would perform a background check. All of these are crucial to the smooth running of a successful and safe business. If you find yourself in need of a licensed private investigator and their particular set of skills, please feel free to contact us. This link will get you in contact with one of our team members.
