Employment Reference

HRSPD

I am in the state of arizona, would anyone know what our laws are as an employee as well as an employer regarding employment references?

I have a situation where an ex employee is claiming one of my managers gave them a bad reference therefore they were not selected at the place they applied to-for as much as I know about the story this employee continues to call the place where he submitted an application demanding to know who gave him a bad reference. Is there a law or reference that states that he has the right to this information to be released to him? Also, if it comes back that in fact my manager was the one what are we looking at liability wise?

I am fairly new at the company and the call did not come through me, any help would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Don D

I don't know anything about Arizona law. But I would venture a guess that nobody, anywhere has a right to the information obtained in a background check, except as required by subpoena. You should develop or reinforce a policy requiring that all requests for employment verification be referred to Human Resources and develop a policy on what will be released by your department. I recommend dates of employment and job title only.

Brad Forrister

Well, yes and no. There's no law saying you have to give the ex-employee such information. But ex-employees sometimes file defamation suits, and in such a suit he could subpoena anything he can think of to subpoena.

Some states have enacted shield laws to protect employers from such actions based on negative references. I don't think Arizona is among them.

Brad Forrister
Director of Publishing
M. Lee Smith Publishers

mstechphr

I agree with Don D on this. You need to keep reminding your managers to forward all reference inquiries to HR and be very specific about the types of information that will be released.

We will only verify dates of employment, salary, position held. In other words, the caller has to tell us the info and then we will verify it. If it is incorrect, we will not give out the correct info. and believe me, they will try to weasel it out of you! We keep a written record of the caller's name, title, date of call, and the organization he/she is with and put it in that former employee's file. We will not answer the question "Would you rehire" nor will we qualify any other questions about the former employee's performance. If you are consistent with this, you will keep your company out of hot water.