Want to up your game when it comes to creating an effective employee screening program? Follow these best practices of employer background checks.
1. Offer clear, compliant policies regarding pre-employment background checks and, if applicable, post-hire monitoring.
You need policies addressing both pre-employment checks and post-hire monitoring because they're two separate things. Regarding ongoing monitoring (e.g., MVR monitoring, drug testing, criminal monitoring, and social media monitoring), you need a way for employees to easily access the current policy (via a company intranet, for example), and you need a reliable way to alert employees whenever you make any changes or updates. (Bonus read: tips for creating an effective drug & alcohol policy.)
2. Base employee screening on job roles.
One of the keys to a fair background check policy is making sure you develop the policy based on job roles. In other words, the types of background checks you run will likely be different based on the job a person is applying to (same with ongoing monitoring—it will be based on the person's job role/title).
For example, you might run a credit check on candidates applying to jobs in your finance department, but not for jobs in the IT department. Or consider this: you might have random drug testing in place for employees working with heavy equipment in the manufacturing plant. But you might only conduct annual drug rescreens for folks in the marketing department.
This is fine, assuming all applicable laws are being followed. What wouldn't be OK is if you required only one person in the manufacturing plant to undergo random drug testing, but not anyone else.
3. Don't "set it and forget it."
While you want your background check process to be accurate, efficient, and dare we say "turnkey," you don't want to set it up and simply forget it. You need to audit the process regularly to make sure everything is working properly and to address any concerns.
4. Embrace fresh ideas.
Don't shy away from innovative ideas for improving your current process. Five years ago, candidate text messaging wasn't a thing. But now it's an incredibly important way to not only streamline your hiring workflow, but also keep younger generations engaged with the background check process from start to finish.
Good Egg customers who use our candidate text messaging see a decrease in time to hire and an increase in candidate satisfaction, both of which gives our customers a hiring "edge" over their competitors.
Some other innovations to consider: modern screening solutions, such as social media background checks and ongoing MVR monitoring.
5. Celebrate compliance.
Smart companies don't allow background check compliance to overwhelm them. Instead, they rely on smart partners (like Good Egg!) with compliance expertise to guide them on how to create a fair and compliant employee screening program. These companies recognize that employment laws exist to protect both employees and employers—and that compliance with the law is a good thing for everyone.
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