Put Away Risks Through Periodic Background Verification

By Author: Naman Vohra
Total Articles: 133
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While per-employment screening is an effective tool to help reduce workplace violence, employee theft, and negligent hiring liability, it is just a snapshot in time. How do you learn about criminal misconduct of employees that occurs during the course of their employment?
Existing employee may present an even greater risk than new hires. Existing employee have already worked on company's premises, have access to company property, and may interface with customers, vendors, and the general public as a representative of the organization. With all the information in their kitty, tenured employees can take undue advantage of sensitive information or other resources for monetary gain. Unless the crime occurs on company premises, employer may not learn that an employee has engaged in criminal misconduct.
For continuity in the risk mitigation purpose, an employee once verified should be subjected to background screening on a periodic basis. However, re-screening requirement may differ from companies to companies as per various roles and departments. Therefore, periodic background verification should be customised based ...
... on organisational requirements. For instance, many employers may wish to conduct periodic verification to validate educational qualifications of employees. There are instances when some employee's behaviour at work arises suspicions later in their tenure and in these cases employer may wish to conduct substance abuse test or criminal record check on the employee. Periodic background check on employees can reveal such post hire misconduct and reinforces employer's commitment to hiring and retaining high quality employees.

There are employers who consider screening their employees on promotion, departmental transfer or change in job responsibilities. It may have been a long time
since an employee's per-employment background screening has been conducted. Background screening requirements of the new position may include additional checks that can be specific to the position. Before giving additional responsibility to an existing employee, employer should make sure that they meet the screening criteria applicable to the new position.

Taking all these points into consideration, it can be concluded that organisations should make it a practice to conduct periodic background check on existing employees and they should take help of credible third party background check companies which have required expertise in this field. Background check companies will be able to provide tailored packages for periodic background screening of employees as per the requirement of the company. Re-screening of existing employees through a third party verification company will be beneficial in discovering employees who may not have been vetted properly in per-employment background check or who were hired under a different set of criteria. This will safeguard the organisation against malicious motives of tenured employees.