By: Norm Gagnon, Compliance Director-Edge Information Management, Inc.

Today many loss prevention and human resource vice presidents and managers consider the purchasing of background screening services as a commodity.  In fact, some within the background screening industry, in an effort to streamline and offer quick turnaround times and cheap pricing have positioned and displayed these background screening products as if they were breakfast cereals at the local grocery.   Price and turnaround times are the two areas where most clients place the most emphasis.  Treating background screening as a commodity is understandable especially for organizations that consistently hire a large amount of employees. 

In most organizations the return on investment (ROI) can easily determine and quantify that choosing to conduct background screening is the right financial choice to help weed out potentially dangerous and unpredictable candidates.  In addition, most will agree that background screening is the right choice when it comes to taking steps to avoid negligent hiring claims.

•  According to background screening industry experts, employers in California lose negligent hiring lawsuits about 60 percent of the time.
•  The settlement award averages $870,000.

It is no wonder that over 80 percent of employers now conduct some sort of background screening on potential and/or current employees.  Employers want a more efficient and quick decision process to hire individuals.  All time is valuable, and the less time that the organization can take to make good and responsible hiring decisions, the quicker vacant positions can be filled.  However, sometimes there is a “fine line” from the rationale of conducting a solid background screening assessment to “just having a piece of paper” in the employee’s file to meet company/statutory policy requirements.

Unless you are in an industry that regulates employee background screening, most organizations have leeway when it comes to how a search is conducted and might not realize this when shopping for background screening. 

Let’s clarify with an example:  A fax goes out advertising a Florida statewide criminal search at an improbably cheap rate of $7.00, with no mandated fee and less than 24 hour turnaround time.  This is an attractive offer; however, a couple of questions need to be asked to this background screening company:  

•  Are the results you are providing my organization for $7.00 being obtained directly from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) at the time of my order?  Different sources are sometimes labeled as a Florida statewide criminal search:
  •  Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) search – this search would not provide arrest records nor convictions where personal liberties are not restricted (incarceration, probation, etc.).
  •  Florida Administrative Office of Courts Criminal Data – Data was last updated in late 2003.  Some background screening providers continue to sell this data.
  •  Proprietary database search from a “data mining” company, (the so called “National Background Check”) – Many of these providers can parcel out searches just to report results from a single state, i.e., Florida.  Tip:  Not all Florida counties including FDLE sell or provide their criminal data to these data compilers.  
•  How is the $24.00 mandatory FDLE fee for each criminal search being absorbed?  FDLE is the official state repository for all Florida criminal records.  They charge a $24.00 fee to individuals and background screening companies per searched individual.  It is the most up-to-date repository for the entire State of Florida.  Note:  There are other official state repositories that may have fees associated with criminal record searches.

Do you know the root source of where your background screening records are being provided from?  Guaranteed this question will be asked if you are ever subject to litigation for negligent hiring.

Returning back to the cereal analogy – is one receiving the exact same ingredients from a box of corn flakes from one producer as they are receiving from another producer?  Does the buyer even care that the ingredients might differ?  If the ingredients do differ, is the cost the only determining factor regardless of taste or more healthy ingredients?   In other words, are background screening services exactly the same from one provider to the next?