The employee hiring process in today’s business climate is a complicated matter. You are tasked, as a business, to provide a safe working environment for your employees as well as a safe place for your customers to conduct business.

You also want to make sure that the employees you hire don’t have histories of stealing personal information from customers or coworkers, stealing inventory, or participating in other illegal activities on the job. It is your right and responsibility as a business owner to protect your interests.

Job seekers have legal rights during the hiring process. There are laws that protect those rights and those laws are constantly changing as various states and federal laws change to clarify, extend, or advance the protections to job seekers rights. That is one of the many reasons it is worth your while to consider having a professional employment screening agency conduct the background checks for you. Professional employment screening agencies keep up with the latest laws and required changes.

These are two other reasons professional background screening can help to protect your business and simplify the hiring process..

1. Verification of references and employment history can be conducted by professional employment screening companies. One of the most tedious aspects of following up on job candidates is the verification of references and work history. As a result, many companies fail to perform due diligence in this aspect. By turning to employment screening professionals, you’re able to outsource the less attractive aspects of the hiring process of new employees.
2. You can choose the type(s) of background screenings that are conducted according to the position. There are several different types of background checks businesses can conduct, providing you obtain proper authorization to do so, including basic criminal searches, comprehensive criminal background searches (including searches of terrorist watch lists), employment verification, military service verification, driving records investigations, credit reports, and even verification of education.

Allowing a professional employment screening agency to do the heavy lifting, when it comes to vetting potential employees during the hiring process, can give you free time to learn more about what the candidate has to offer your company.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

So, your business is so busy that you need to hire additional help – congratulations! This is a major milestone for a sole proprietor. However, hiring employees is both a responsibility and a commitment. Here are six key points to consider, remember and put into practice when hiring your first employee:

1. Be Aware of Tax Implications

When you hire an employee, you won’t just be responsible for their wages; you’ll also have to pay their Social Security tax, unemployment tax and Medicare tax. You may also be responsible for withholding and filing taxes on their behalf. Visit the IRS website to verify your tax responsibility, and consider having a payroll solution in place to help make these calculations for you.

2. Benefits?

While offering benefits to your staff member is not a requirement, it can be a means of inspiring both loyalty and goodwill. Consider what benefits you might offer to your new employee such as health insurance coverage, vacation time, sick days and profit sharing.

3. Insurance

Remember to also obtain workers’ compensation insurance. The cost will vary by industry, so be sure to have a sense of this figure/amount before hiring your first employee.

4. Training and Equipment Costs

How much time and resources will training entail? Be sure to have a plan – and a budget – for getting your new staff member up to speed. You may also need to purchase an additional desk, computer and other office supplies.

5. Interview Tips

Make a list of your key interview questions before starting the interview process. Generally, you should ask why the candidate wants the job, have them describe their strengths and weaknesses, talk about how they deal with conflict and where they see themselves in five years. You should also craft some questions specifically tailored to your business and the job for which they are interviewing.

6. Employment Screening

While the interview will reveal a lot about each candidate, it won’t reveal everything. Be sure to make use of a quality, professional employment screening company and an employment verification service to verify that they are all they seem (or claim) to be.

Hiring your first employee is an exciting milestone; it means that your business is growing, succeeding and well on its way to thriving. While this is a positive step, it can also be somewhat daunting. Use these six tips to educate yourself and navigate the potential pitfalls of hiring your first employee.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

Today’s businesses are more aware than ever of the value of workplace screening for potential new hires. From employee character to workplace safety to compliance issues, the quality of each new hire is foundational to continued business success. Here are seven of the top benefits of using pre-employee screening:

1. See Applicants for Who They Really Are

Challenging job markets can, unfortunately, bring out the worst in people. In a weak or competitive job market, applicants are more likely to resort to desperate measures to land the job. Statistics have shown as many as 60 percent of applicants have lied on a resume or job application. Pre-employee screening of applicants can help with seeing applicants as they truly are.

2. Higher Quality Employees

Talent acquisition is a high priority for every business. This begins with qualified candidates with a proven history of success and good character. Comprehensive background screening can help businesses to get the very best applicants for each position.

3. Better Workplace Security and Safety

Safety and security in the workplace is another key concern for employers. Without a comprehensive criminal background search, it can be difficult for businesses to know if an applicant has a criminal or violent past. Pre-employee screening can help companies to have a safer workplace by filtering out those who may be a hazard within the workplace.

4. Less Risk of Negligent Hiring

Negligent hiring can make a business liable for the harmful or negative actions an employee takes. Companies that neglect to check records and backgrounds of applicants may have to pay untold thousands in legal fees and judgments, not to mention suffer damage to their company reputation. Pre-employee screening can help businesses to avoid these legal issues.

5. Lowered Turnover

Screening new applicants can also dramatically reduce worker turnover by increasing the odds of finding a good fit from the start.

6. Lowered Cost Per Hire

Quality background screening for new hires can lead to higher quality workers that tend to be more productive and a better fit for the organization. The result is a lower cost investment per hire and a good ROI on pre-employee screening.

7. Regulatory Compliance Assurance

Screening can also help employers to ensure that they adhere to the rules and regulations for their company or industry, avoiding fines and potential penalties.

Secure background screening has numerous benefits, from worker quality to safety to a better bottom line. Every organization should consider pre-employee screening for their new hires.

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-small-business-pre-employment-screening-tips-jessica

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, also known as OSHA, promotes the security and safety of all employees in the workplace through the United States Department of Labor. Since 1971, the regulations put in place by this agency let workplaces and employers learn how to prevent accidents, falls, and on-the-job injuries as well as what to do if those injuries occur.

The Director of the Directorate of Enforcement for OSHA, Thomas Galassi, presented an addition to OSHA’s policies on April 2nd, 2015. This new “Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service Workers” policy is meant to overwrite the National Emphasis on Nursing and Residential Care Facilities currently set in place to encompass even better care.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, also known as NIOSH, provided additional materials in conjunction with OSHA’s updated policies called the Hospital Respiratory Protection Toolkit. When working in certain facilities, especially those in the medical field, sometimes an employee can accidentally come into contact with potential disease-causing agents. This new toolkit gives employers step-by-step instructions on what to do if an employee comes across such infectious materials.

The OSHA policy has received this update due to the increase in both sickness and accidental injuries that those in the health care and medical field suffer from. Galassi stated that the medical field is more susceptible to these kinds of injuries compared to other workplaces. The worst risks, besides potential contact with diseases, include hazards like bloodborne pathogens, musculoskeletal problems from heavy lifting, and tuberculosis. Surprisingly, workplace violence is also prevalent.

OSHA Updated Regulations

With these updated regulations, OSHA plans on recommending that hospitals, doctor’s office, nursing homes, and similar facilities learn about these risks to create prevention methods. While OSHA is dedicated to decreasing the rates of violence in any workplace, including medical facilities, as of now, there are no specific regulations centering around this type of behavior. However, OSHA has adamantly announced that if it has to make more changes, it will amend its General Duty Clause to more thoroughly cover how to handle and erase matters of workplace violence.

Organizations that want to prevent hostile working environments by hiring the best employees should be using a professional background screening company.

Over the last 12 years, the evolution of social media has influenced how organizations execute their marketing, recruiting and job candidate screening efforts. Many employers have turned towards using social media screenings in favor of more conventional practices during their hiring initiatives. They know that social networking sites are a fertile source for unfiltered and insightful information on candidates that is open to public view. As a result, employers often believe that they are free to use a candidate’s publicly available information during the hiring process without facing any legal repercussions. But, this can prove to be a grave misjudgment that can result in a litany of litigation problems.

Despite the potential legal issues that surround social media screenings, employers are increasingly turning towards using social media platforms to vet their candidates. On May 14, CareerBuilder reported that “fifty-two percent of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates.” The job site’s annual Social Media Recruitment Survey found that this figure “rose up significantly from 43 percent [in 2014] and 39 percent in 2013.”

The survey also revealed that 21 percent of respondents admitted that “they’re looking for reasons not to hire the candidate” when mining social media sites for information on candidates.

CareerBuilder’s survey shows how the number of employers conducting social media screenings has dramatically risen over the past two years. This notion is further reinforced when comparing the results of CareerBuilder’s survey to that of the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) 2013 Social Networking Websites and Recruiting/Selection survey. At that time, SHRM found only twenty percent of surveyed organizations used “social networking websites for screening.”

Yet even with this growing shift towards doing social media screenings, many employers do not realize that there are numerous precautions that they should be taking in order to comply with the requirements of both federal and state laws. Government agencies and nonprofits are taking extra measures to identify employers who may be covertly discriminating against candidates by gathering intelligence on them through less traditional methods. Employers need to recognize that certain types of candidate information acquired online may be subject to the law.

Federal Anti-Discrimination Laws

Since the mid-20th century, the federal government has established several anti-discrimination laws. These laws have designated certain personal characteristics as “protected classes”, for which people could not be discriminated against. These include characteristics like sex, race, religion, color, national origin, age and a few others. The landmark law that addresses the majority of protected classes is the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, Title VII of the Act “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.”

Title VII protects these five personal characteristics as “protected classes.” Employers should assume all of the rules of Title VII apply when conducting social media screenings.

Any employer who obtains candidate information on the Web, and uses it during their hiring process, has to adhere to Title VII and the protected class statutes. If an employer decides not to pursue, or hire, a candidate after discovering some protected class information about the candidate on social media, the employer puts themselves at risk for a discrimination claim. In such cases, the employer is in direct violation of Title VII and/or the other federal anti-discrimination laws addressing protected classes.

Furthermore, employers who are considering going on social media to learn more about a candidate with a criminal history, should know that all the rules of Title VII and other federal anti-discrimination laws, cover such candidates. A candidate with a criminal record cannot be treated differently from another candidate with a similar criminal record based solely on a Title VII-protected characteristic.

Employers can learn more about how to handle such situations by consulting the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) 2012 Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions.

FCRA’s Impact on Social Media Screenings

Employers who conduct social media background checks also need to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The FCRA is a federal law that regulates background reports for employment. In many cases, the use of online data from social networking sites to screen candidates falls under the FCRA’s definition of background screening.

Any HR professional can now access personal information that a candidate has either knowingly or unknowingly left on their own social media pages. As a result, employers are now able to obtain more detailed and damaging information about a candidate earlier in the hiring process. With the advent of social media, any employer can now glean certain types of candidate information prior to the interview stage. In some cases, it is information that the candidate never intended to disclose during the interview.

Employers that use social media in this manner risk being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which enforces the FCRA. Any employer that conducts social media screenings as part of their in-house background checks, needs to realize that all the rules of the FCRA apply. When doing social media screenings, they need to follow the same FCRA compliance best practices that are recommended for traditional background checks.

If you are an employer mining social media for candidate information, there are certain steps that you need to take to safeguard your organization. You should implement the following measures to better ensure that you are complying with the requirements of the FCRA:

• You must get written permission from your candidate prior to conducting any social media screening on them.
• The written permission must be in the form of a separate and independent document.
• Your candidate needs to sign and date any permission document that they agree to.
• Any of your candidates who voluntarily provide their information on social media accounts still need to provide a signed and dated permission document.
• If you discover unpleasant information about your candidate during the social media screening that compels you to stop pursuing them, you are required to disclose that information to your candidate. It is best to provide them with documentation of the information and the platform where it resides.

The FCRA and protected class statutes within federal anti-discrimination laws are very significant variables that every employer must weigh when considering whether to incorporate social media searches into their background check processes. Social networking sites can offer an easily accessible wellspring of candidate information that is very tempting for employers to explore. But, employers need to have a strong understanding of the aforementioned federal laws before conducting social media screenings.

Moreover, there are key state laws and recent federal rulings about employers’ use of social media for screening candidates. Every employer needs to consult with legal counsel and to be informed about these developments before looking up candidate information on social media sites. In Part II of this post, we will go into further detail about those states laws and a recent landmark ruling that impacts employers’ use of social media. We will also provide recommendations for how employers should approach creating a policy document for handling social media screenings.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.