Background Checks on Employees Protect Your Business

Background Checks on Employees Protect Your Business

by | Apr 7, 2021 | Background Checks

Without comprehensive background checks on employees, employers don’t know what they don’t know.

What could you be missing as an employer with a business to protect? While it’s true that many employers opt for background checks on employees in their hiring process, not every employer exercises the proper amount of due-diligence in clearing a prospective employee to work. While different job descriptions will demand different levels of due-diligence, and each field will require a different focus within a person’s background, the bottom line is that some employers fail to go the extra mile when searching for the right person for the job.

Background checks for employees are a common-sense investment in the long-term health of your business. Background checks, when conducted thoroughly and properly, can provide invaluable insight into the candidate being considered for employment. Comprehensive background checks for employees reduce turnover, prevent losses, and protects the social ecosystem of the workplace from things like hostile work environments, decreases in productivity, and erosion of profits. When your business model places employees in close contact with customers in a transient capacity—as in employees regularly service different customers every day in close proximity, typically offsite away from official company property—those employers must go the extra mile in securing comprehensive background checks for employees

For a prime example of why companies must invest in comprehensive background checks for employees, look no further than the ride-share company, Uber. By the very nature of its design, ride-sharing is a system that can place both the drivers and their passengers at risk of physical harm. From the beginning of 2018 to the end of 2019, Uber had received more than 6,000 sexual assault complaints against their drivers. That number sheds a powerful light on a disturbing problem within the company’s hiring processes. “At the scale that Uber operates, we’re going to see both the good and the bad that happens in society because we’re operating so many trips every single day,” said Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer. Because the nature of ride-sharing places customers in such close, private quarters with their drivers, the threshold for what the company considers fit to drive must be higher. Though Uber claims to thoroughly vet or otherwise screen each employee before they are hired, thee has been testimony from former Uber drivers who said that they began driving the same day they applied—not nearly enough time for a thorough background check into the driver’s history. This can leave Uber open to various forms of litigation on behalf of the victims, including fines and settlements that will erode profits.

Now imagine the company in question isn’t Uber, a multi-million-dollar corporation. The financial impact of even one lawsuit on behalf of a victim who was assaulted by an employee can be devastating to a small business. When your business model places employees in close personal quarters with customers, it’s imperative that you keep the safety of your customers and your business protected. Lauth investigators are there for our clients when they need comprehensive intelligence on a candidate’s background. We can identify candidates whose background should disqualify them from hire and prevent your business losses in the process. Through our licensure by the state, Lauth has access to nation-wide verified databases. These databases paired with our brand of due-diligence and integrity ensure that our clients are getting the intelligence they need to protect their business. If you need our background check services for your business, call 317-951-1100 for a free quote or visit us online at our website.

National Law Relations Board reverses controversial position on internal investigations

National Law Relations Board reverses controversial position on internal investigations

by | Feb 7, 2020 | Corporate Culture, Corporate Investigations, News and Media

The National Law Relations Board reverses controversial position on internal investigations.

Employers across the country have operated in a sea of gray area when it comes to confidentiality among employees regarding internal investigations. The question remained whether or not employers were able to require employees to keep internal investigations internal while they were in full swing. Prior to the new year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finally answered that question.

Previously, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) had taken a position that employers could not require employees to keep ongoing internal investigations confidential because it generally violated labor law. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act guarantees employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.” Universal requirement of confidentiality could potentially interfere with that law. Confidentiality in internal investigations was instead dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with no precedent for blanket confidentiality. This topic has been in review by the NLRB since May of 2019, but it was only recently that the board announced that they had reversed their position.

By their very nature, internal investigations are already a big headache for many employers. Further compounding these frustrations is the ideation that no internal investigation can generate meaningful results unless the integrity of the internal investigation is maintained by all employees of the corporation or organization. This new standard of approval by the National Labor Relations Board is a categorical win for employers.  The win comes down to one word—duration. In articulating their decision, the majority wrote,

“There are obvious mutual interests to be served by encouraging and allowing employees to report wrongdoing without fear of reprisal from the subject of the investigation. Among other considerations, such reporting promotes the goals of the antidiscrimination statutes by helping employers eradicate workplace discrimination and deal with it promptly and effectively when it occurs.”

This articulation is indirectly evocative of the cycle of corporate culture, a process by which cause and effect on the parts of both leadership and employees in pursuit of improved operations leads to a healthy corporate culture for the entire workforce.

While there are concerns that the future of this reversal may affect an employee’s ability to organize, the projection of this reversal is very good news for internal investigations. In any investigation, the control of information is critical to finding solutions to the corporate crisis, allowing investigators to use tried-and-true methodology to get to the root of the problem. With the NLRB finally taking a position that allows employers to require confidentiality, the integrity of those internal investigations can now be maintained from the onset, leading to clearer solutions for the pervasive issues that malign corporations and organizations.