This document discusses the challenges that EMEA businesses face regarding screening and hiring employees. It outlines the top seven business challenges, four HR challenges, and five most significant screening challenges. It also provides details on common social media and re-screening practices and temporary employee screening. The document concludes with four tips for businesses based on screening best practices.
16. Based on our report, our top four tips for employee
focussed businesses are:
17. Contact Us
E: emeasales@hireright.com
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Editor's Notes
[Introduce self and presentation]
It’s always important to know where you stand in your market, and how your procedures compare to those of your peers. Our benchmarking report looks into best practices in background screening, new trends, and future challenges so that you can see how your policy stacks up.
All the information in this presentation is based on the findings of our annual Benchmarking survey, with the full report and findings available to download on the HireRight website.
To start, we take a look at the wider business issues that are affecting HR teams.
The top 7 challenges were identified as:
Finding, retaining and/or developing talent
Regulatory changes
Risk Management
Managing Costs
Working globally
Growing Revenue
Finding and/or retaining competitive advantage
In first place, by quite some way at 40%, is the problem of people, and making sure you have the best in your organisation. We’ve all heard about the skills shortage, and this is further evidence that HR teams are worried about talent in their business. There are many ways of reducing this fear though, such as creating a positive company culture, having a great candidate experience when hiring, and of course, conducting background screening on potential employees to ensure they have the experience and skills they claim.
In second, regulatory changes. It’s vital to keep on top of regulatory changes, this year has seen some big ones in financial services in particular. Regulation changes will always pose a risk to businesses, so it is vital to ensure you are fully aware of changes as and when they happen. And speaking of risk, risk management comes in at joint second. It’s important to note, this covers all kinds of business risk, whether it be technological, economical or even closer to home with regards to the internal risks. Background screening influence this, with regards to the people risk to an organisation. Risk mitigation will always be an area of challenge to business with increasing globalisation and connectivity, there are more and more sources of risk to be wary of.
Now to move on to a more specific focus – the challenges being faced by HR professionals
Unsurprisingly, the top HR challenges mirror those of the overall business, with finding qualified job candidates coming out on top with 50% of respondents naming it a challenge. With the talent pool growing due to increased globalisation and worker movement, one may think finding good candidates has got easier. But with a larger pool to pick from, there is inevitably more unqualified candidates to filter out. Then comes the challenge of verifying their claims to ensure that they are as good as they seem.
Specifically focussing on our area of expertise, we asked HR professionals what screening challenges they were facing
meaningful insight and thoughtful planning means you can evolve your global screening program to meet your global screening goals.
maturity index helps us understand your global screening goals and objectives.
Do you want to reach a point where you operate your employment screening under a centralised global policy using a single provider with universal metrics and analytics or do you have a more decentralised vision for your company?
When it comes specifically to screening employees, perhaps unsurprising again, reducing time-to-hire tops the charts. In the modern era efficiency has become a paramount concern of HR departments, who are charged with the responsibility of ensuring the business has the best employees. Getting good employees in quickly has it’s obvious benefits, but how can you improve it? Having a written procedure that is adhered to consistently will help this.
In third place comes ensuring a positive candidate experience with 41%. Candidate experience has grown more important recently, as the candidate’s power in the job market grows. Treating a candidate well can pay dividends in the long run, and be the deciding factor in some instances. Conversely, a bad experience can have much wider implications than just the one candidate. With the power of the internet and social media, a bad review of your business can spread far and wide, reaching a mass audience much easier than ever before, which can impact customer perception of your brand
Now we take a look in detail at more specific areas of our findings, starting with social media and it’s use in the screening process.
Social media is an ever growing power in everyone’s lives, and many companies are now looking at using it in their screening process. I would offer a strong warning in pursuing this however, as the law is most definitely not in your favour when screening this way. Privacy laws are yet to be clearly refined, meaning some may see using social media as invasive, from a data protection standpoint, the Information Commissioners Office code of practice cautions against using intelligence gathering that goes beyond verufying information supplied by a candidate, and there could also be issues of equality as social media profiles could make recruiters aware of protected characteristics such as nationality, sexuality, marital status or disability for example. And these are just a few potential pitfalls.
However, this does not put off some firms, as we can see here. LinkedIn as expected is the site most checked in the screening process. The professional social network is the obvious choice when looking at a candidates application, but a word of caution, there is no way of verifying that this information is true. As with a CV, the candidate has input this information, so may not be entirely accurate.
Facebook, Google+ and Twitter follow up here. Whilst many would argue that it helps build a better idea of a particular candidate by giving an insight into their lifestyle, another word of caution, if a decision is made based on this information, you could be accused of discrimination and face lawsuits in the most extreme cases – not really worth it just to see a few holiday snaps from a candidate.
At HireRight we always advise against looking at social media profiles, as all the necessary, relevant information will be found through the traditional checks, such as education, employment history, criminal records etc.
Re-screening is our second focus area of the results
Here we see some surprising results. A staggering 71% of companies questioned don’t re-screen employees who are promoted or change roles. Whilst many may have been screened when they first joined a business there could have been new information available in the interim years, or perhaps additional checks that may be necessary for a higher position that were not conducted initially due to the level of the role.
We would always advise a re-screen in this instance, as there may be pertinent information relevant to a higher role, particularly if it is media facing.
Our third and final focus point is temporary workers and the screening habits of companies across the globe.
The EMEA region comes out on top with regards to screening temporary workers such as contractors, with 34% saying they run these checks. Perhaps surprisingly the US, where screening is much more prevalent than the rest of the world, sits bottom of the list for screening temporary workers.
It must be remembered that although only temporary, these workers will often have the same level of access as your permanent staff, which could include contact with customers, access to company and customer data, as well as other members of staff. So the real question is, why treat them any differently to permanent staff with regards to screening?
So, to wrap up today I’ll leave you with our top 4 tips based on our benchmarking report:
Firstly, it’s a good idea to examine your processes to ensure you are working as efficiently as possible and so you can highlight areas gains can be made. This is a continual process that should be conducted regularly to make sure you are always working as best as possible
Secondly, look long term. Having your recruitment needs planned ahead means you can be prepared for the busy hiring periods and not be caught off guard. It also helps you stay as efficient as possible
Third, the use of technology. I’m sure we’d all agree that technology has allowed for some fantastic advancements in our lives and allowed us to innovate like never before in our work. However, you should look beyond the pure innovative power of technology and look how you can use it to integrate your processes. If you can integrate your HR processes, it’s another time saver, and another step in the efficiency direction
Finally, review your policies to make sure they are clear and robust, not just at a national level, but also at an international level as your business grows globally. Similar to the first point, this should be a regular review to make sure you are always following best practice. It’s a good idea to get to get your legal counsel involved here too, to ensure compliance in policy.
If you have any more questions about screening after today, please do get in contact with us. We also have a range of resources available to download from our website, including the full benchmarking report we used today.