Pub. 59 2018-2019 Issue 1

22 E mployer “background checks,” or preemployment screenings, are essential to your company’s hiring process and bottom line. They are not just for publicly traded companies withmassive human resource departments and endless budgets. From a turnover standpoint, repeated studies indicate the cost of replacing a $10/hour employee can amount to over $3,500 for a company. A comprehensive and compliant screening company will allow organizations to improve their retention, minimize capital expenditures, and reduce litigation risks from noncompliant background checks (a growing trend). Further, proper screening practices promote safety for your employees and customers. It will also mitigate risk and keep insurance premiums down all while demonstrating a commitment by your organization to bringing on the best type of people for your dealership. The Basics of Employment Background Checks A background check for employment is a legal and highly regulated process (the applicant must provide consent and authorization) of looking into a candidate’s past. This process typically includes items such as identity matching, employment verif ications, global watch list searches, terrorismwatch list searches, sex offender searches, nationally scoped criminal conviction searches and most importantly county specific searches for public records of criminal conviction history. It can also include assessing motor vehicle records (MVRs) maintained by state Department of Motor Vehicles for insurance underwriting and safety purposes, preemployment/random/postaccident/reasonable suspicion drug testing, credit checks for financially sensitive positions, and even education verification. Criminal records fall into two categories: Nationally scoped database searches and County record searches. Some employers rely solely on the national criminal records searches which are much less costly for the organization. They are also noncompliant with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), incomplete, and inaccurate. National databases are aggregated by data brokers and consist of both County and State records but much of the data is stale and not up to date, hence, noncompliant. Unfortunately, there is no legislation requiring Counties to report their records up to the National database level which means your search is cursory and again not up to date. This can get your business into legal hot water. The Truth About Dealership “Background Checks” By Donald Cole and Charley Katz