Another background check question

I work as an HR manager for a small insurance company. Late last year we began conducting criminal background checks on new hires. Now I have found out that our corporate lawyer (who's specialty is insurance law, not employment law) wants to perform criminal background checks on all employees that now work for us.

What is the liability on this issue? I am just concerned with what he will want to do with the information. We have some employees who have worked for our company for as long as 15 years and at least 30 percent of our employees have been here five years or longer. What would we do if we found out that a long term employee was convicted of a felony six years ago, but has been a model employee for us for the last five years? I know that in order to not discriminate all of the employees would have to be treated equally. Also, the old HR manager was not very good about maintaining employee files. What if an employee was hired with just their resume and had not filled out an employment application (which is not uncommon with higher level employees). In that instance we could not terminate them for falsifying their application.

Does anyone else have any experience in this or any advice?

Thank you,
Robin

Comments

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  • It looks like background checks and documentation issues are hot around here! Don't distress, we have some great Special Reports for you that address these important topics. Hiring Smart: How to Conduct Background Checks gives a lot of great information about how to go about performing legal background checks, and what to do with the information once you obtain it.

    For those of you interested in documentation issues, such as what kinds of documentation should you require, and how long do you need to store it, I am currently researching and writing our next Special Report which will cover that topis. It will be available in early October. If anyone has special issues related to that topic that they would like to see covered, you can respond to this message here, or you can email me directly at: [email]awilliam@mleesmith.com[/email].

    Have a great day! xB-)

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