6 Reasons EMEA Businesses Use Background Screening
This post looks at six common reasons that companies in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) conduct background screening on their candidates and employees.
Why Background Screening?
In many countries, background screening is part and parcel of the recruitment process, but in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), this is often not the case. Screening is still relatively new to many countries in EMEA, and except for regulated industries such as financial services, it is far from being universally utilised.
However, background screening can offer a great number of benefits for its early adopters, including improved security, a better quality of hires, and improved employee retention, as we see each year in our Annual Benchmark Reports.
Why Screen?
So why should you screen new hires, and rescreen staff when they are changing roles? There are a number of motivations for companies to screen their employees. Here are six of the main reasons that companies use background screening services.
S – Security – Employers work hard to keep their companies free from potential internal threats. The cost of a bad hire is too high to ignore so for many companies, background screening is great way to improve their internal security and mitigate the risk of new hires.
C – Compliance – Employers in certain regulated industries, such as financial services in the UK, are required by law to conduct pre-employment background checks on their employees. Additionally, some regulated roles require periodic post-hire screening for employees.
R – Reputation – The cost of a bad hire, both financial and reputational, can be very expensive. Mistakes from under-qualified employees who misrepresented themselves on their CVs could cost a business dearly, whatever role they have within a company. Background screening will not prevent new hires from making mistakes, but it will highlight discrepancies between their CVs and the skills and experience that they have, making it easier for you to spot people who are misrepresenting themselves on their CVs.
E – Ethics – Companies often feel that they have a moral responsibility to look after their staff and keep them safe from any internal threats. Our annual global Benchmark Reports find that year after year, many employers are discovering candidate discrepancies as a result of background screening.
E – Equality – It is important to ensure that all of your candidates are treated equally in the recruitment process so that your business can’t be accused of discrimination. One way to do this is to ensure that all new hires are screened proportionally to the roles which they are applying for, which can be difficult to regulate if you screen potential employees in-house. Using a background screening provider with global capabilities such as HireRight allows you to provide a consistent and fair approach to screening.
N – Negative Experiences – Some businesses don’t get on board with background screening until they have experienced the repercussions of not screening candidates. Background screening pre-hire is a lot like having a property surveyed before you buy it – you’re not hoping to find something wrong but are making sure that you have all the facts before you make your decision. Help to prevent future problems by screening your applicants before hiring, rather than waiting for something bad to prompt a change in procedure.
Find out more about background screening or get in touch with our sales teamt-us to find out how background screening can help your organisation mitigate employment risk.
Release Date: July 16, 2018
HireRight
HireRight is a leading provider of on-demand employment background checks, drug and health screening, and electronic Form I-9 and E-Verify solutions that help employers automate, manage and control background screening and related programs.