Doing background checks on your employees before you hire them and while they work for you can be essential to ensuring that your business thrives. In fact, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, about 69 percent of organizations now conduct criminal background checks on all job candidates.
There are several reasons that screening employees is crucial. First, it can ensure that you don’t engage in negligent hiring. Next, it can also increase the chances that your workplace is a safe and productive one. Screening employees can also ensure that job candidates are properly trained and educated for the job while maintaining fair hiring practices.
Despite the importance of screening employees, it can also be a challenging process. There are many federal and state laws to follow when choosing whether or not to hire somebody based on a background check, and you want to be sure you comply with all of those. For that reason, it can be helpful to hire an adjudicator if you plan to run background checks on potential and current employees — that way, you can ensure you comply with all laws and regulations and hire the people that will be best for your company.
What is an Adjudicator?
An adjudicator is someone who is trained to compare the results of an employee background check to the standards that a company uses to decide whether they can be hired or not. During a background check adjudication this individual/provider is an objective party that can make a judgment based on facts. Adjudicators don’t just evaluate candidates based on the results of their criminal background checks, but also their employment verification results and education verification results.
Benefits of Background Check Adjudication
Hiring an adjudicator helps to ensure the utmost in background check efficiency as you confirm your candidate is the right person for the job. An adjudicator can also ensure that your company complies with all laws and regulations, and they can be instrumental to a successful hiring process. Here’s why:
It Keeps You Compliant
As mentioned above, there are many laws associated with hiring job candidates based on the results of their background checks — including those laid out in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). An experienced adjudicator is well-versed in those laws and regulations. He or she can make sure that all of the decisions align with those rules and that you continue to comply with them when you decide whether or not to make a hire. Check out one of our other blogs on the Fair Credit Reporting Act for additional information.
It Saves You Time
The hiring process can be stressful enough, with applications to sort through, interviews to conduct and rejection calls and emails to make. Getting an adjudicator to help you make a hiring decision will save you time and energy, so you can get back to focusing on the important stuff: your business.
Background Check Results Are Hard to Understand
Background check results are dense, and they are often hard to understand. For example, if someone has criminal charges against them, they may be written in legal jargon that is not easily understood by a lay person. For that reason, an adjudicator can be useful because they are used to going through background check results, and they’ll understand what they see on the page.
If you are an employer about to go through the hiring process, consider using Origin. Our elite software and experienced adjudicators know how to properly analyze background check results. We will keep your company compliant with the FCRA and ensure that you are consistently making quality hires.
