We hear the same story from clients all the time: they do very little vetting of new employees and discover a problem after hiring someone.
Firms typically say they don’t bother with background checks for several reasons:
- We are small, we don’t need it.
- We don’t have the money.
- All our employees are referred to us by people we know.
- We didn’t think about it.
The list goes on and on.
We recently had a situation with a client that didn’t do background checks. When they terminated an employee, the situation escalated. The incident highlighted the critical need for background checks.
Situation
A small not-for-profit organization had a problem. They terminated an employee for unsatisfactory work performance, which caused much more grief than they’d expected. What should have been a simple-although-uncomfortable event turned ugly when the employee became belligerent and threatened the company, saying things like, “You’ll regret this!” and “I’m not going to be the only one who is going to suffer.”
Management was very concerned and reached out to their outsourced Human Resources consultants. The consultants recommended Integras because they were concerned about what this individual might do.
The first question we had was what they knew about this individual. Had they conducted a background check? The client said they knew the individual from a previous employer, hadn’t had any concerns, and didn’t think a background check was necessary because they were such a small organization.
Solution
We conducted background research and found several potential red flags.
The individual previously lived for many years in a different state. A county-level search in that state identified several legal records associated with the subject: two arrests for passing fraudulent checks, three drunk driving arrests, and a dismissed felony assault charge.
The client was shocked. They could not believe that this person was capable of these offenses. They were equally disappointed with themselves for not performing any due diligence before hiring this or any other employees. The position that this individual held was one of great responsibility, including access to writing checks, paying vendors, etc.
We assisted this client by:
- Conducting a security assessment and providing guidance on personal safety
- Helping them to file a police report
- Conducting background checks for all current employees
- Developing an ongoing screening program
- Developing a program for vetting potential employees
Conclusion
So, what’s the moral to this story? Equip yourself with the information to make informed decisions. Making assumptions, minimizing potential risk, and assuming that you “know” someone can lead to bad consequences, as it did for this client.
Keep in mind that any organization of any size can encounter similar issues. In fact, laying the proper foundation when your organization is smaller will allow you to scale and grow with the proper measures in place.
Finally, rather than focusing on the costs of certain things, such as background checks, think about the potential costs of not doing them. This incident could have ended with tragic consequences, which a background check could have avoided.
