It’s common knowledge in the recruitment industry that not doing thorough background screening checks can incur significant costs for a business, both financially and in terms of reputation. If you are a job seeker looking for your next move to a new employer, or a small business owner who is thinking about hiring someone to hep your business grow and expand, then you should be prepared to carry out detailed screening, which goes beyond the basics of identity checking and making sure that someone has the right to work legally in the UK. If your prospective employer is not carrying out detailed checks, or if you as a recruiter are taking people on trust, what risks could this pose for the company?

Reducing Risks of Hiring

Screening checks play a crucial role in the hiring process by mitigating employment risks. Detailed background checks can reduce the risk of getting the wrong person, but cannot ever give a cast iron guarantee that the person you have recruited is squeaky clean. Despite this, many companies are still overlooking background checks, or just doing the bare minimum and relying on what the candidate tells them for the rest. Some of the most important risks associated with not doing background checking are:

• Financial Penalties: UK businesses are legally required to at the very least run right to work checks on their employees. Failure to do the checks or failure to keep records properly can lead to substantial fines and even imprisonment for up to five years if an illegal worker is employed.
• Reputation Management: While interviews are a good way of working out an applicant’s personality, without thorough verification checks, people who have lied about their experience or qualifications can still slip through the net. This can result in employees struggling in their roles and underperforming which has a knock-on effect on how customers perceive your organisation.
• Protecting Company Security: Sloppy background checks can compromise company and employee security. Employees with criminal records could pose risks such as theft, fraud, or embezzlement, exposing the business to significant financial liabilities. They could also pose a danger to their colleagues, or even customers.

Dealing With Risks

The first step in reducing risks associated with hiring the wrong people is to think about what damage someone could do in your organisation, given your individual circumstances. Clearly, someone in a very junior position with little access to bank accounts or other information is less of a risk than someone employed in a position with more responsibility. Once an employer has thought about the potential consequences, the steps to take in order to reduce these risks should be more obvious.

From an employee’s point of view, it’s important to realise that this higher level of background screening doesn’t mean you are suspected of anything, or being singled out. Employers are just being more cautious than they may have been in the past, and as long as you have been honest on your application form and CV, you have nothing to hide.