Understanding why both are essential to maintaining a safe and compliant workplace.
You’ve onboarded a new employee. Your carefully considered hiring process included a comprehensive background check performed by a reliable, professional background screening vendor. During this check, a number of things were verified, including the individual’s identity, education, work experience, and professional credentials. The candidate was also potentially screened for sanctions, criminal behavior, motor vehicle violations, and drug use, depending on the nature and requirements of the job at hand. Based on the results of these checks, you made your decision with reasonable confidence and complied with all industry regulations regarding safe hiring.
But that’s all about the past.
Once the employee becomes part of your team, your focus needs to shift away from examining past behavior towards the future and maintaining the safe work environment that’s so important to the success of your business. Are your employees doing or saying things in their off-hours that pose a risk to your organization? Rescreening and continuous monitoring from Accurate provides the answer to that question.
Rescreening and Continuous Monitoring: What’s the Difference and Do You Need Both?
Yes, you need both, and explaining the differences between the two processes will illustrate why.
Rescreening
Rescreening means rerunning one of the initial checks done as part of the hiring process. You typically won’t rerun education verifications or recheck employment references because those things are firmly in the past and have not changed. But a person’s driving record, criminal record, social media use, or drug and alcohol habits are constantly active and potentially in flux. In other words, there’s no guarantee that, even if your employee’s drug screen came back negative before they were hired, it would still be negative now. The same holds true for criminal activity, driving violations, and questionable social media practices. Employees that were “clean” prior to their hire might not remain as “clean” once they secure the position.
Many employers choose to require periodic rescreenings in order to maintain the safety and integrity of their workforce and protect themselves from negligent retention claims. Rescreening employees is legal and may actually be required depending on your industry. Rescreening programs stipulate checks will be run in a variety of circumstances, including the following:
- At specifically defined intervals, for example, once a year
- In the event of a promotion
- Following a workplace safety incident
- At random. Drug tests are a good example of random rescreens.
As with pre-hire background checks, rescreening policies must be clearly stated and employees need to provide their written consent. In addition, all adverse actions need to comply with FCRA policies and procedures.
Benefits of Rescreening:
With the exception of drug tests that provide current info, rescreening provides a look back. A rescreen will tell you if your employee has done something in the interim period between screens that may have an impact on your workplace. Rescreening helps employers to do the following:
- Maintain current records
- Create a deterrent to questionable behavior
- Remain compliant with industry regulations and requirements
- Protect themselves from negligent retention claims
- Catch problems that may have been missed during initial checks
- Preserve and protect their safe workplace
In sum, rescreening lowers risk, protects your organization, and helps you maintain the same standards for employment you set during the hiring process.
Continuous Monitoring
In contrast, continuous or ongoing monitoring provides real-time information. It’s not a look back, it’s all about right now. A few examples will highlight why this difference is significant and ways continuous monitoring can make an impact on your organization:
- You hire Sally to be a driver on your team. During the pre-hire background check, her driving record was found to be clean. But a week ago, Sally was pulled over for reckless driving and charged with a DUI. That’s information you need to know before you send her out onto the road to represent your business and continuous monitoring will make sure you aren’t left in the dark.
- An executive in your company recently posted harassing comments on her social media page. You’re going to want to know about that before the media and your investors hear about it. Ongoing social media monitoring prevents these unpleasant surprises and gives you the opportunity to take proactive action when warranted so you never have to play catch up.
- One of the doctors in your practice has let his professional license expire. Real-time lapsed license alerts prevent providers from giving care when they’re out of compliance.
- Your accounts payable supervisor was recently charged with identity theft. Accurate’s criminal and arrest monitoring service provides a timely alert of this incident so you can take steps[TV2] to protect yourself and your assets.
Benefits of Continuous Monitoring:
Continuous monitoring isn’t about snooping in people’s privacy or being a nosey boss; it’s about identifying threats and being aware of behaviors and choices that might jeopardize your business and your brand. While the vast majority of things your employees do away from the office don’t matter, the truth is, some things do matter and those things matter a lot. Ongoing monitoring lets you identify and stay on top of the critical stuff so you can be proactive. It provides all the benefits of rescreening plus the added benefit of getting essential information in real-time so you can act instead of react.
Protect Your Organization
The need for screening doesn’t end when hiring is complete. Regular rescreening when warranted and continuous monitoring of the essentials work together to ensure that your organization is protected from the actions of employees and staff that may pose a risk to your employees, customers, vendors, investors, and your reputation.
Ongoing arrest and criminal record monitoring from Accurate provide the following:
- Near real-time alerts. We leverage live connections to court and arrest sources so we can offer expanded coverage and reduced times between reporting and the event.
- Configurable criteria. We give our clients the ability to set specific criteria for geographic location, offense severity, and category by position.
- Efficiency. With customizable reports from Accurate, you’ll only get the relevant info you need, nothing more and nothing less.
- Actionable data. Our results are reliable and verifiable, giving you what you need to take action.
Are you ready to protect your business? Contact us today. Tell us what you need and we’ll make it happen.
