The most commonly stated reasons for conducting employment screening involve protection. Employers want to protect their customers, employees, products, inventories, intangible assets, reputations, and overall profitability from various forms of risk.

Pre-employment screening is a tool that can be used to manage risk. Be aware though that a poor screening strategy can actually increase your risk of employment litigation or a negligent hiring lawsuit.

How do you know if you're managing this risk or just throwing money at it? Imagine a worst-case scenario: one of your employees assaults a customer or co-worker and you are sued for damages.

The prosecution will look long and hard into the defendant's background to search for any previous criminal history that could have been considered a predictor of the incident in question. If a history is found, the focus turns to your organization's screening processes.

Legal precedent holds that "if you could have known, you should have known." Failure to perform a background check or utilizing a substandard check that didn't uncover an existing history means that your organization is likely to be found negligent. Typically this means you will be responsible for negligent punitive damages in addition to actual damages.

A cheap, instant "nationwide" criminal background check leaves a significant risk of missing prior criminal activity. While this is the least expensive and fastest method, essentially all you are doing is throwing money at the risk to be able to say you did a background check. This accomplishes little in terms of managing risk as it is not likely to stand up to legal scrutiny as a reasonable background check.

The industry standard for reasonable criminal history research is researching county criminal courts using a seven year address history obtained through a SSN Trace. The reliability of information gained in this manner cannot be surpassed, and it demonstrates a logical and reasonable attempt to ascertain whether an individual has committed previous crimes.

Utilizing industry standard procedures will provide the best protection against employment litigation. After all, your screening investment does little to manage your risk if your background check won't help your cause when you need it most!

Tags: reputations, defendant, co worker, criminal background check, punitive damages, worst case scenario, pre employment screening, inventories, intangible assets, criminal history, managing risk, address history