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5 of the Top Reasons to Use Continuous Criminal Monitoring

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The HR toolkit contains many means of keeping your organization staffed and running efficiently. Tools like applicant tracking systems and performance measuring software help bring in fresh faces and follow your team’s progress, but those are strictly for the pre-hire period and to track working hours. What may be lacking is a way to know that team members are avoiding conflict with the law. Thankfully, that’s where continuous monitoring comes in.

This process is, in form, similar to a preliminary employment background check for criminal history. However, instead of being a one-time affair, the subject is rescreened regularly to identify changes, if any, in the subject’s criminal history. Organizations might order this process due to any number of reasons, but today we’re going through the top five:

1. Compliance

Depending on your business’s trade, rescreening may be mandatory after a pre-determined time. Highly regulated industries like transportation, healthcare, and financial services — to name a few — often include requirements to have your background checked annually, biennially, or after several years with the employer.

2. Protecting Brand & Reputation

Companies, more so than individuals, live and die on how the public perceives them. If current staff make headlines for delinquent or criminal behavior, the community may ask, “Why are they still employed with you?” which can lead to a decline in business opportunities.

3. Safeguarding Sensitive Assets, Information, & Finances

Between trade secrets, billing data, intellectual property, and more, there are many resources and a great deal of customer information that employers don’t want to fall into the wrong hands. A slip-up in trust can be disastrous, threatening an entire business and contributing to the billions of dollars lost annually to intellectual property and trade secret theft, according to the Associated Press.

4. Maintaining a Safe Environment

Two groups comprise the core of all organizations: their staff and customers. Without the trust of both parties to move things forward, there are no deals to close or goals to achieve, making it paramount to protect them.

5. Streamlining & Automation

Keeping up with the goings-on of staff can be tedious and time-consuming. Many HR professionals choose to automate this process to free up valuable time they could spend recruiting and onboarding new staff, evaluating employees, or tending to other essential responsibilities.

No matter the reason, Continuous Criminal Monitoring can help your team remain safe and protect confidential resources. One Source can help by setting up a schedule to keep you informed. Reach out to learn how you can get started.

 

Improving Employee Retention Through Rescreening

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This article was originally posted on theolsongroup.com. It has been rewritten and published for One Source by the author.

When HR professionals think about improving and maintaining employee performance, the sharpening of skills like time management, setting clear goals and expectations, or communication practices might come to mind. However, they may turn a blind eye to what happens outside of the workplace—which can have a larger impact than initially perceived.

This begs the question, “How do you ensure that those same standards originally screened for remain upheld?”

Standard employment screenings include information up to the moment they’re run, but what about criminal offenses that occur after that? How might employers learn about revoked licenses, suspended work authorizations, or other suspect behavior of employees?

Fortunately, consistent rescreening or continuous criminal monitoring solutions can help employers achieve just that.

Benefits of Rescreening Employees

Increased Safety & Security

Periodic rescreening can help identify individuals in your workplace that could potentially cause harm. Categories covered include drug use, theft, fraud, violence, sexually-based crimes, abuse, and more. That, in turn, helps to protect your customers, employees, and organization as a whole.

Reduction of Turnover

It’s simple: the increase in safety and security can lead to a better working environment. Happier staff tend to show up, perform, and speak well about their workplace far more than their counterparts in stressful or unsafe environments.

An Unburdened HR Team

With a consistent rescreening program and a good policy, the process can essentially run itself, leaving more time for HR to focus on team members and their performance.

How It Works

Don’t worry; keeping current on your employees is easier than it sounds.

Your Choice

First, decide what data your organization would like to receive. Search parameters can include real-time county criminal records, nationwide databases, federal records, sex offender registries, professional licenses, industry-specific repositories like financial or healthcare sanctions, and more.

Next, determine which solution is a better fit for your team:

Rescreening

A process as simple as uploading a spreadsheet of applicants and checking a box, rescreening can be scheduled periodically such as monthly or annually.

Continuous Criminal Monitoring

An automated search of over 650 million records that continuously identifies new criminal activity at the beginning of each month. Results are verified by our team to ensure accuracy before the report is returned to you.

And finally…

Remember Compliance

No matter which option you choose, organizations must not forget that they have compliance obligations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and other laws.

Federal and state laws still require employers to complete the disclosure and authorization process on applicants and employees. If you plan to run background checks again during the duration of their employment, that decision must be clearly and conspicuously stated within this disclosure. If you haven’t done so upon hire, new consent is required prior to any rescreening. Additionally, should information be uncovered that results in termination, the adverse action process must be followed. Consider consulting with legal counsel to verify that your procedures comply with these requirements.

Last but not least, consider whether your employment policies address rescreening and continuous monitoring. Should questionable information about an employee be uncovered, this will guide you on your best course of action. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a great resource for sample background check policies and procedures.

While most organizations try to onboard trustworthy individuals, at the end of the day there’s no way to predict what the future holds for every member of your staff. Adding a monitoring service can offer helpful insight into new criminal offenses or changes in sex offender registration to better inform you about the individuals within your organization.

If these services are on your radar, One Source can help. Rescreening is easy in our portal through a simple spreadsheet upload, adverse action can be initiated with one click, and we provide templates for necessary compliance forms at no extra cost.

For more information on rescreening or continuous criminal monitoring, or to get started, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Why is Rescreening Important?

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These days most organizations typically have a standard process for screening staff prior to onboarding. According to a 2021 study by Aptitude Research, nearly 80% of organizations are screening staff members before onboarding.

What happens to these staff after you onboard them? Sure, many HR Departments have a policy in place that may require team members to self-report incidents, but how do you know that’s really happening?

In the past decade, rescreening staff has become a hot topic. More and more companies are minimizing the gaps in the safety of their staff by rescreening, and it’s only growing in popularity.

Why should you rescreen?

Rescreening and monitoring staff backgrounds can be considered for various reasons. These can include, but aren’t limited to:

  • Promotion or change in responsibilities: Employees gain access to company finances, credit cards, or building keys.
  • Maintaining company standards: You screened your staff or volunteers before onboarding them, and now you want to ensure they are being held to those same standards.
  • Industry or compliance requirements: Many industries like healthcare, education, or transportation have ongoing screening requirements.

We see organizations with a variety of industry requirements or internal policies in place. This could include annual rescreening of all team members; some conduct it every two to three years and others utilize ongoing monitoring solutions that are run monthly. Others only do it when there is a promotion or change in the company structure. No matter your process…

Don’t forget compliance!

Any rescreening or continuous monitoring must still comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Ensure your organization is following federal and state laws regarding disclosure and authorization. Additionally, if the results of a rescreen create a scenario where you will separate from that individual, be sure you are following the adverse action process.

If you want to include authorization to allow for ongoing screening throughout their time with the company, this must be stated clearly in the initial disclosure. As always, we recommend consulting your legal counsel to ensure your forms are compliant and up to date.

I want to rescreen; what are my options?

When it comes to rescreening, One Source has several options:

  1. Batch Upload: We work with you to establish a rescreening package to meet your standards. Whether this is the complete criminal background, healthcare exclusions, motor vehicle records, or something else, we can customize it to fit your needs. Applicants can then be uploaded directly into our system to be run. Frequency is then up to you.
  2. Continuous Criminal Monitoring: This is an automated search of over 650 million records, including a Global Report, Multi-Court Jurisdictional Database, and National Sex Offender Registry search. The individuals you enroll in monitoring will automatically search for new records at the beginning of each month. Results will be verified by our team to ensure accuracy and the report will be provided back to you.
  3. Other Monitoring Solutions: Outside of criminal monitoring, One Source can also monitor through other screening solutions, including healthcare monitoring and social media monitoring.

Ready to get started?

Incorporating rescreening or continuous monitoring into your screening process could be the difference in creating a safer environment for your organization. To keep the trust between you and your team members, make sure your continuous monitoring policy is clearly stated when they are onboarded, and then remind them on an annual basis. When you start your continuous monitoring, you want to have shared expectations between you and your team members. If you are interested in learning more or would like to add this service to your process, contact us.

For more information on background screening, check out more of our blog or get in touch today.