According to a recent survey, “More than 1 in 4 Employers Do Not Conduct Background Checks of All New Employees.” With the average cost of a new hire on the rise and the additional cost of a bad hire, it’s astonishing that more employers aren’t conducting background checks. If you know anything about our business and what we do, one of our cornerstones is our proprietary referencing system i.e. “Bradshaw Referencing.” For more information about our process, visit here. We take checking references and background seriously and so should you. Still there are some businesses that opt-out and they all have their reasons. Below are some common excuses we’ve heard from employers over the years.
– Employer thinks a position is too low level.
– Employer believes the position has a high turn-over rate.
– Employer does standard reference checks, but only superficial ones.
– Employer thinks the process is too expensive and time-consuming.
In our experience, the reasons why vary, but in this day and age, companies have to have a process to check references and or backgrounds for all employees. The costs of hiring a bad employee is too expensive for employers not to take the right precautions to protect their business. According to the study, most companies stated they performed background checks to analyze the following:
– Criminal background
– Confirm employment
– Confirm identity
– Confirm education
– Check for illegal drug use
– Check licensing Credit check
The background checks today can include some or all of the above and still many employers wonder if it’s enough. Some of the biggest complaints hiring managers have about bad hires include, they are less productive, provide poor work quality, inspire low employee morale, require more management and so on.
Whatever you do, make sure you’re covering your basis before you hire. The lessons to learn are getting too costly to ignore. If you’re having some issues with your recent hires much like the many hiring managers mentioned in the survey, it could be your background/reference check process. Give us a call if you’re looking to improve your process. It may be the smartest decision you make in 2017.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Ingrid Moore
Ingrid Moore is the President and Owner of Corporate Resources of Illinois, an employment & staffing agency with over 20+years’ experience located in Schaumburg, IL. Ingrid and her team assist employers with finding the right hire for their business. For more info, follow us on our LinkedIn Company Page, or follow us Corporate Resources of Illinois‘s Google+ page.
