Organizations owe it to themselves and to everyone with whom they come into contact to know everything they can about their employees and volunteers, and the most effective method to accomplish this is by conducting thorough background checks. Making background checking a part of an organization’s culture can not only enhance its effectiveness through greater productivity and retention, but also its reputation.
Background checking can supplant an organization’s loss prevention efforts by helping provide a safer environment for employees, volunteers, and others. The most common reason among employers for not conducting background checks is cost. However, the cost of background checks represents a fraction of the cost of: terminating an individual; re-recruiting, re-hiring, and re-training his or her replacement; and defending a lawsuit brought by a victim of a dishonest or violent individual’s actions which can range in the millions of dollars.
Impact of a Bad Hire.
It has been found that the impact of a bad hire affects the company not only financially but has adverse effects overall.It can lower employee morale and decrease in productivity can be the biggest negative consequences. Other negative consequences include: lost customers and market share, and higher training, recruitment, and severance costs. It is said that the average cost of a bad hire is 2.5 times the employee’s salary. 42% of survey respondents said the cost of a bad hire is at least 3 times the employee’s salary.
Benefits of Pre-employment Check
Background checks go a long way in providing for a safe, productive work environment and avoiding litigation as a result of negligent hiring. The best practice for an accurate, cost-effective criminal background check is to research where your applicants have lived, worked, and gone to school during the last 7 years. Properly documenting pre-employment background checks does not guarantee you won’t be sued, but will drastically reduce the chance of being found guilty of negligence or discrimination.The net annual return on investment for background screening is over 900%. There are scarce few business expenses that can generate the type of ROI that background screening can.
According to the US Small Business Administration, for every dollar an employer invests in employment screening, the return on investment ranges from $5-16, resulting from improved productivity, reduced absenteeism, lower turnover – and decreased employer liability. The United States Department of Commerce reports that 30% of all business failures result from theft or embezzlement and internal employee related thefts occur 15 times greater than external theft. Overall embezzlement losses exceed $4 billion every year and hence will justify for proper background screening policy in an organization.
Conclusion
The benefits of a comprehensive employment background screening include increased applicant quality, reduced workplace violence, reduced negligent hiring liability, reduced losses from employee dishonesty, making the right hire the first time, and avoiding negative publicity. The bottom line is that pre-employment background checks help an organization be more successful. That means greater profits to for-profit organizations and greater impact for non profits.
EMPTrust can help you with your background screening process. EMPTrust’s background verification solution EMPCheck include National & State Criminal Background checks, Export Control Watchlist checks amond many others. The application allows companies to perform employee background checks, maintain audit records for new hires, employees and contractors and is an end to end solution for background verification.
