The Need For Employee Checks
Conducting thorough employee background checks is evolving into an important pre-hiring practice in today's world, and an employer can only ignore the need to conduct such employee checks at their own peril.
That need for employee background checks might not seem to be very great, until one reads of organizations whose ultimate ruin came from the simple act (or omission, as it were) of not conducting thorough employee checks on people they took on board.
These are, for instance, organizations that employed people without conducting thorough checks, only for their 'employees' to turn around and organize major robberies (many banks have fallen to into trip) and other forms of sabotage against them after gaining insight on their inner operations.
These too, are the organizations that employed people without conducting thorough checks on them, only for their 'employees' to turn out to be moles on their competitors' payroll, who went ahead to steal their business secrets and pass them onto competitors - typically with even worse effects on the business than if they had directly organized robberies against their employers! Therefore contrary to what many employers tend to believe, the employee checks that need to be conducted (as part of every organization's HR policy) should not just be centered around the employee's criminal record, because just the fact a given person does not have a criminal record does not mean that they are absolutely good people.
Past employment records as well educational records (especially with regard to conduct at school and college) should also be brought into focus when conducting an employee background check; and it is only when at least these three elements - criminal record, past employment record and educational record - have been thoroughly checked that a good employee background check can be said to have been conducted.
Again contrary to what many employers believe, the need to conduct employee background checks should not be limited to high profile employees or those engaged in 'sensitive' operations only, but actually to every person who joins the organization in whatever capacity.
The need to for employee checks even for employees in junior positions and who are not to be involved in sensitive tasks arises out of the fact that while it is indeed true that such employees may not pose a huge direct risk to the organizations by virtue of what they do in the organization, they nonetheless get intimate knowledge of the organization and its operations, knowledge that can later on be used in ways that are very detrimental to the organization.
In fact, organizations that have come to fully appreciate the need for employee checks have tended to fully integrate such employee checks in their hiring procedures.
This way, the employee checks become very much a part of their hiring mechanism; with many organizations coming to view the employee checks in the same light as the employment interview, so that just as they wouldn't employ a person without taking them through an interview, so they wouldn't allow anyone into their payrolls without subjecting the person to a thorough background check.
That need for employee background checks might not seem to be very great, until one reads of organizations whose ultimate ruin came from the simple act (or omission, as it were) of not conducting thorough employee checks on people they took on board.
These are, for instance, organizations that employed people without conducting thorough checks, only for their 'employees' to turn around and organize major robberies (many banks have fallen to into trip) and other forms of sabotage against them after gaining insight on their inner operations.
These too, are the organizations that employed people without conducting thorough checks on them, only for their 'employees' to turn out to be moles on their competitors' payroll, who went ahead to steal their business secrets and pass them onto competitors - typically with even worse effects on the business than if they had directly organized robberies against their employers! Therefore contrary to what many employers tend to believe, the employee checks that need to be conducted (as part of every organization's HR policy) should not just be centered around the employee's criminal record, because just the fact a given person does not have a criminal record does not mean that they are absolutely good people.
Past employment records as well educational records (especially with regard to conduct at school and college) should also be brought into focus when conducting an employee background check; and it is only when at least these three elements - criminal record, past employment record and educational record - have been thoroughly checked that a good employee background check can be said to have been conducted.
Again contrary to what many employers believe, the need to conduct employee background checks should not be limited to high profile employees or those engaged in 'sensitive' operations only, but actually to every person who joins the organization in whatever capacity.
The need to for employee checks even for employees in junior positions and who are not to be involved in sensitive tasks arises out of the fact that while it is indeed true that such employees may not pose a huge direct risk to the organizations by virtue of what they do in the organization, they nonetheless get intimate knowledge of the organization and its operations, knowledge that can later on be used in ways that are very detrimental to the organization.
In fact, organizations that have come to fully appreciate the need for employee checks have tended to fully integrate such employee checks in their hiring procedures.
This way, the employee checks become very much a part of their hiring mechanism; with many organizations coming to view the employee checks in the same light as the employment interview, so that just as they wouldn't employ a person without taking them through an interview, so they wouldn't allow anyone into their payrolls without subjecting the person to a thorough background check.
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