Background Checks on Existing Employees
jhtnc
16 Posts
We currently do background checks on applicants. However, we have not gone back and conducted background checks on our existing employees. We want to do this, but need to know what to do if an employee refuses to sign allowing us to perform the check. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Comments
1. Why do you want to do background checks on current employees (particularly if they have been with the company a long time and never done anything wrong)?
2. What does the company plan to do if they found out something about a loyal ee who has been with the company a long time?
E Wart
If your customer is requiring that your employees have "successfully passed" a background check before being permitted onto their company premises, then I would think all you would need to provide to this customer is a list of those employees with a "pass" for status of background check. I would not believe that a new check would need to be conducted.
This is what we are requiring for vendors/contractors and their employees who access our facility. If a check has not been done, then obviously a check must be completed. However, if the check has previously been conducted, then all we require is notification that the person has successfully passed the check.
P.S. The check must be in accordance with our company standards which are of high standard.
Second, you, the ER, have a right to run background checks on all your EEs who were not checked at hire, particularly if your business does "sensitive" work, like health care or handling money, where failing to do so might put your customers/clients at some risk.
While you would be within your rights as far as I can see (unless laws of your state prohibit it) to fire an EE for refusing to authorize a bacground check-- you should be careful to either require background checks of ALL EEs, or be careful to establish clear criteria as to which EEs must undergo background checks because of the sensitivity of their job, and apply those criteria consistently across all of your work force.
Third, in terms of predicting future behavior, it seems to me that several years of honest and faithful service is probably a better predictor of an EE's future behavior than a background check. So I would be reluctant to terminate an EE of several years because a background check turned up a conviction some years ago.
Good luck!
We handle business in our corporate offices for many companies and this one company has made this request of those individuals who handle their business.
We have had some incidents come up in the last few years - employee forgot to mention conviction for third degree felony manslaughter on her employment application until annonymous letter writter saw her on the front page of the local paper - and in those cases it was a matter of falsifying an application and termination.