You likely performed a thorough background screening on your entire team during the pre-employment phase of their onboarding experience. And whether they’ve remained with you for one year or five years, it’s important that you work to keep yourself aware of any new information that may affect their ability to do their job, negatively impact the image of your company, or put other employees or customers in danger. Barring any legal guidelines that apply in your state or industry that prevent ongoing screening, here’s why you should consider incorporating background checks into your annual review of employees.
People change.
In the beginning of your employees’ tenure, you probably hired a star with absolutely no issues on their record. But, life happens, and there’s no way to guarantee that your people will always remain as upstanding as they were on day one. Depression and other negative events can prompt a whole host of problems, including substance abuse, gambling and other unseemly activities. So to protect your organization and everyone in it, make sure you stay on top of your employees’ life outside of work.
Some people know how to beat the system.
No matter how thorough your initial investigation into an employee’s background, there are always people out there who know how to finagle certain areas of their lives to conceal blemishes on their record. But if you implemented ongoing employee screening, you’d be able to weed out the dishonesty and address any personal issues before they balloon into organizational issues that hurt your business.
You’re promoting people.
When employees are promoted, that typically means that you’re entrusting them with more responsibility than they had in their previous role. And more responsibility sometimes means more access to sensitive company processes and data. It’s critical that you make sure that the people you’re elevating to higher positions within your organization can actually be trusted to take on those higher-level roles.
Your industry demands it.
Depending on what sector your company exists in, it may be imperative for you to continuously screen employees to ensure they’re a good fit to continue providing services. Security, finance, healthcare and other industries that deal with vulnerable populations are already required to periodically check in on the backgrounds of their employees. But other industries such as education and youth sports may want to consider performing more regular checks to ensure that everyone is kept safe — now and well into the future.
Contact JDP for help developing an ongoing background check program!