Your Need for Safety Doesn’t Stop
Effective corporate security departments ensure that every new employee is screened to detect any criminal history or problematic issues that could endanger other employees, customers, or the company’s brand. This pre-hire background screening is essential to onboarding new workers, but it only screens the new hire’s history to that date. The one-time pre-hire background screening provides a valuable report. But how do you stay updated about changes in a worker’s arrest record or license lapses?
With the phenomenal expansion in the number of people working remotely as either employees or independent contractors over the past five years, company security and HR departments discovered that pre-hire screenings alone don’t supply the current data needed to manage risks successfully.
PostHire’s continuous background screenings enable company security and personnel managers to stay informed of new arrests and other significant developments in the lives of their workforce that may jeopardize the company’s interests or the public’s safety.
Ridesharing Companies Turned to Continuous Screening
Every ridesharing company conducts pre-hire background screenings to identify any criminal history that would present a risk to passengers, increase liability, or harm the brand’s value. Uber and Lyft would not hire any contract driver who had felony convictions or a record of serious driving offenses.
Still, between 2019 and 2020, Uber drivers were reported to have committed 55% of the 4,000 sexual assaults involving Uber ridesharing services. Realizing that periodic rescreening was still insufficient to protect the company and its riders, Uber adopted continuous background screening of all contract drivers. As a result, 80,000 drivers were dismissed based on newly discovered criminal and driving offenses that violated Uber’s safety criteria.
Continuous Background Screening Improves Risk Management
Modern employment patterns present new difficulties for food delivery, transportation, home repair, and security businesses. Without continuous screening, company drivers whose record of recent traffic offenses should have put the company on notice of their increasing recklessness can result in otherwise avoidable personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits.
If your business requires contract workers or employees to visit customers’ homes to provide elder care or home repairs, those workers’ background screenings must be current to ensure the safety of your clients. When home visits are essential to your company’s operations, theft arrests and drug-related criminal charges need to be flagged immediately.
PostHire uses proprietary technology to monitor police and traffic records across the country 24 hours a day and notifies you of events that pose internal threats or create safety concerns for your business. The alerts your management team receives are customized to fit your selected profile. Each company’s personnel policies and employment agreements determine whether adverse employment actions should be taken in response to the reports.
Compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act means that every business that continually screens employees must notify them and obtain permission to use the information as one of the terms of their employment agreement. State laws also vary regarding what adverse actions may follow news of an arrest. A company must consider the nature and gravity of the offense, the nature of the employee’s job, and how much time has passed since the offense before taking any action.
However, management can only investigate and respond reasonably to new risks it knows about.
Prevent Negligent Retention Lawsuits
Gig workers perform their duties in locations throughout the community, away from immediate supervision. In most cases, unless a gig worker self-reports, a company is unlikely to learn of events in the worker’s life that threaten the public or the company’s stakeholders.
Only continuous screening can deliver timely reports about new civil and criminal offenses occurring out of the employer’s view.
If a CNA’s license is revoked for criminal conduct during an elder care assignment, the agency may entrust another agency client to their care without knowing of the license revocation. The next client who suffers an injury can sue the agency for failing to monitor the employee’s licensing status and criminal history.
Home repairs being performed by a company technician can lead to repeat customers and new referrals, steadily increasing revenue. But if an existing employee’s recent criminal conviction escapes your organization’s notice and the worker harms or steals from your customer, the negative impact on the brand in the marketplace can be devastating.
The home repair and service industry relies on building trust in the community. Employing workers your customers will welcome into their homes requires your company to exercise due diligence. Continuous background screening by PostHire prevents your company from putting clients at risk.
Follow-Up Pre-Hire Screening with PostHire Continuous Screening
Traditional one-point-in-time background screenings report past conduct, which is a good indicator of future behavior. But being unaware that an employee committed a crime after being hired jeopardizes the security of your company’s brand. After you hire an employee, what you don’t know can hurt you and your company’s brand.
Protecting Your Employees and Community Members Matters
More than 10 million arrests are made each year in the United States. Most offenders work for companies that never knew the employee was charged with a new crime. Unless it is reported in a local newspaper, it’s possible your organization would remain unaware of the event. Protecting your company’s brand requires continued vigilance to ensure that no one puts your organization’s name on the front page for the wrong reason.
Contact PostHire today to learn how your security and HR departments will stay informed with continuous employee background screening reports, 24 hours a day, throughout the U.S.
