Employee Background Checks: 5
Pre-Employment Screening: 4
Background Checks; Are They Important To Your Business?
I have been a member of the law enforcement community for over 15 years. My career started as a police officer for the USAF. I served 8 years as a police officer, or Security Police as they call it, and held a myriad of duties throughout my enlistment. One of those jobs was in personnel security, which involved the management of security clearances, the military’s version of employee background checks. In the military we utilize security clearances as a means to evaluate a person’s background, in order to determine if they can be in a position of trust. This may involve access to classified or sensitive information, or may just involve the need to evaluate their character and trustworthiness, based on the position in which they are assigned. My job was to manage this process by ensuring all personnel were receiving 5 or 10 year periodic reviews as required. It also involved the review of the background questionnaires to ensure accuracy and completeness prior to being submitted. This required that I sit down with each individual and go over their information and required documentation. On one occasion during the review process I came across the section that documented marriages and/or divorces and began reviewing the information. There was an entry showing a marriage, in which the spouses name was documented as: FUK MUK Smith. It showed the marriage only lasted about 3 weeks and occurred in Las Vegas, NV. I found this unusual and asked the applicant if that was their former spouse’s full name, at which time she indicated that it meant “First Name Unknown, Middle Name Unknown.” I have to admit this was a first for me and took a lot of will power not to laugh at the situation. It reminds me of the Carrie Underwood song, “Last Name”, where she describes a drunken Las Vegas wedding, in which she wakes up not knowing her last name. Although this wasn’t a normal occurrence it did help break up the monotony of completing hundreds of background investigations each year.
As a current Manager of Loss Prevention, in the civilian sector, I am tasked with managing our employee background checks and pre-employment screening for our company as well. I take this job very seriously, as I feel that it is very important to screen our employees and mitigate our liability, by rejecting unfavorable candidates. By completing pre-employment screening we are able to identify information that may warrant an unfavorable employment action in advance so we can avoid future problems. Not completing employee background checks opens the company up to future employment issues that can’t be rectified quickly or without large amounts of HR involvement. This can result in possible delays in productivity and negatively impact work performance for an entire division, shift or company as a whole. Tracking and documenting behavior is time consuming, and typically results in additional behavioral issues, that can go on for an extended period of time. Pre-Employment screening also helps to identify individuals who may have violent tendencies. Workplace violence is a serious issue that affects all types of businesses; big or small. Our employees are our biggest asset and require the highest level of protection when it comes to assessing our risk. That is why employee background checks are so important. They allow us to properly evaluate our new hires, and reduce our risk for workplace violence, and other HR related issues.
If you aren’t currently conducting pre-employment screening, I seriously recommend you start. Regardless of whether we are dealing with classified information, or simply doing data entry or working as a cashier at the local supermarket, knowledge is power. Avoid the future personnel issues by pre-screening your employees and ensuring you hire those that best represent your company, and the values you want portrayed to your customers.
Employee Background Checks are important and we can help you with it. Call 1.770.214.0547 and let’s talk.
I have been a member of the law enforcement community for over 15 years. My career started as a police officer for the USAF. I served 8 years as a police officer, or Security Police as they call it, and held a myriad of duties throughout my enlistment. One of those jobs was in personnel security, which involved the management of security clearances, the military’s version of employee background checks. In the military we utilize security clearances as a means to evaluate a person’s background, in order to determine if they can be in a position of trust. This may involve access to classified or sensitive information, or may just involve the need to evaluate their character and trustworthiness, based on the position in which they are assigned. My job was to manage this process by ensuring all personnel were receiving 5 or 10 year periodic reviews as required. It also involved the review of the background questionnaires to ensure accuracy and completeness prior to being submitted. This required that I sit down with each individual and go over their information and required documentation. On one occasion during the review process I came across the section that documented marriages and/or divorces and began reviewing the information. There was an entry showing a marriage, in which the spouses name was documented as: FUK MUK Smith. It showed the marriage only lasted about 3 weeks and occurred in Las Vegas, NV. I found this unusual and asked the applicant if that was their former spouse’s full name, at which time she indicated that it meant “First Name Unknown, Middle Name Unknown.” I have to admit this was a first for me and took a lot of will power not to laugh at the situation. It reminds me of the Carrie Underwood song, “Last Name”, where she describes a drunken Las Vegas wedding, in which she wakes up not knowing her last name. Although this wasn’t a normal occurrence it did help break up the monotony of completing hundreds of background investigations each year.
As a current Manager of Loss Prevention, in the civilian sector, I am tasked with managing our employee background checks and pre-employment screening for our company as well. I take this job very seriously, as I feel that it is very important to screen our employees and mitigate our liability, by rejecting unfavorable candidates. By completing pre-employment screening we are able to identify information that may warrant an unfavorable employment action in advance so we can avoid future problems. Not completing employee background checks opens the company up to future employment issues that can’t be rectified quickly or without large amounts of HR involvement. This can result in possible delays in productivity and negatively impact work performance for an entire division, shift or company as a whole. Tracking and documenting behavior is time consuming, and typically results in additional behavioral issues, that can go on for an extended period of time. Pre-Employment screening also helps to identify individuals who may have violent tendencies. Workplace violence is a serious issue that affects all types of businesses; big or small. Our employees are our biggest asset and require the highest level of protection when it comes to assessing our risk. That is why employee background checks are so important. They allow us to properly evaluate our new hires, and reduce our risk for workplace violence, and other HR related issues.
If you aren’t currently conducting pre-employment screening, I seriously recommend you start. Regardless of whether we are dealing with classified information, or simply doing data entry or working as a cashier at the local supermarket, knowledge is power. Avoid the future personnel issues by pre-screening your employees and ensuring you hire those that best represent your company, and the values you want portrayed to your customers.
Employee Background Checks are important and we can help you with it. Call 1.770.214.0547 and let’s talk.
