When you’re in a hurry to hire someone new to solve staffing shortages in your business, keeping the hiring process short and sweet can be tempting. You might perform one interview, decide they’re suitable for your business, and tell them they’re hired. While this approach works fine for many businesses, it won’t for all. You should take the time to perform a background check for these important reasons:
Confirm Resume Information
A background check can be an effective method for confirming information a job applicant has included in their resume. Anyone can say they’re qualified or skilled in a particular task or attended a specific educational institute. That doesn’t mean it’s true.
Using a background check provider to find information about employment history, criminal history, and educational background can help verify an applicant’s authenticity. What’s more, since over half of people admit to lying on their resume, they may be less likely to if they know you’ll perform a background check.
Protect Your Business’s Reputation
Plugging productivity gaps may be your primary concern during the hiring process. The faster you hire someone, the more your business can achieve. However, you should also be thinking about your business’s reputation. Hire the wrong person, and your company image may suffer. Suddenly, productivity becomes less important.
Background checks can often go a long way toward protecting your business’s reputation. You may avoid hiring someone who has acted unethically in the past or falsified resume information when you can learn more about them in a background check.
Keep Your Employees Safe
Most employers would never intentionally put their employees in harm’s way. Yet, it can be the outcome if you hire someone with a history of violence or unsafe behavior.
Background checks provide insight into an applicant’s criminal history. If they have been charged with violence-related crimes, they may be a danger to other employees and customers during disagreements or conflicts.
You may enjoy a far safer working environment if you consider criminal records before you hire someone. While everyone deserves a second chance, a history of violence can sometimes be a deciding factor.
However, it’s not just a criminal record that may impact your ability to keep your employees safe. Background checks can also help you confirm that applicants have the qualifications and skills they say they do. Failure to confirm these details may see you hiring someone who doesn’t have the skills required to perform their job to a high standard. This can sometimes be a safety issue.
Reduce Turnover
Millions of people quit their jobs every year for a range of reasons. They’re sometimes chasing better opportunities or retiring from the workforce altogether. However, many also leave because they don’t get on well with a coworker or boss.
You may be able to reduce turnover for this reason by ordering a background check. The more you know about an applicant, the easier it might be to tell whether they’ll be a good fit for your business.
You can also take other actions like writing down the qualities you’re looking for to guide you during the hiring process, asking open-ended questions, and comparing applicants to existing workers. Even personality tests may go a long way toward ensuring you have a cohesive team.
Protect Business Assets
Many business owners have to hire employees to handle sensitive business information. If you’re hiring someone who will have access to financial documentation, employee files, and business funds, you must ensure they are not a risk to your company.
You can never guarantee that an employee won’t commit fraud, embezzle funds, or other financial crimes. Still, if you perform a background check and uncover a history of such crimes, you can avoid hiring them and protect your business assets.
Stay On the Right Side of the Law
Businesses must follow many rules and requirements to avoid penalties and fines. Background checks are legally required in some sectors. If your business is in transport, healthcare, finance, government, or education, you may be legally required to undertake background checks on all new employees.
Employers are often looking for different things, depending on the industry. For example, you might check to see if an applicant has committed fraud against healthcare programs if you work in healthcare. If you work in finance, you might wish to confirm applicants’ professional licenses. A few small checks may prevent a great deal of stress later on.
While you might have never performed background checks before hiring new employees in the past, now might be a good time to start. A simple online background check might help you keep your business, employees, and customers much safer.
