Involve Key Stakeholders To Improve Your Background Screening And Hiring Process

Ensure your screening and hiring process meets your needs for efficiency, compliance, and accuracy

HR isn’t the only stakeholder necessary for a successful background screening and hiring process.

The success of your hiring process relies on effective partnerships—HR and recruiters must work well with hiring managers and interviewers to develop a shared consensus on the candidate qualities you seek. Together, everyone must comprise a team focused on making a great hire.
 

The same is true in background screening, which is a critical component of your hiring process. HR and talent acquisition teams must collaborate with individuals from other departments to build a screening program to address organizational needs, such as risk management, legal compliance, technology requirements, and more. In fact, when you have the benefit of insights from the right combination of internal stakeholders, you can operate a highly effective background screening program to help you make quality hires. 

The Value of Internal Stakeholders to Your Background Screening Process

To have an effective background screening program, your knowledge of the risks, opportunities, and benefits of a quality background check should extend beyond HR. Although it’s true HR is often the appropriate owner and champion of candidate and employee background screening, the responsibility for its success shouldn’t rest solely on the shoulders of HR and recruitment professionals.

Background screening is a complex and nuanced part of the hiring process, featuring a range of legal and compliance implications for your organization. Moreover, if your organization is in a highly regulated industry, such as healthcare, you also have to be careful to follow screening requirements for credentialing and healthcare employment sanction checks. 

Involving key stakeholders in your processes—ranging from evaluating prospective providers to deciding which background check services and technology you need—is essential. It allows other groups to have a voice in making sure your screening and hiring process meets your needs for efficiency, compliance, and accuracy. 

In short, a background check is more than a formality of the hiring process managed by HR. It is a business process you can improve with the support of multiple stakeholders within your organization.

When you involve relevant stakeholders in the background screening process, you stand to gain several benefits, including:
 

• More transparent communication between HR and other departments in the organization
• Consideration of a broader range of factors when creating and amending background screening policies and practices
• Legal and compliance insights to support hiring and adverse action decisions
• Support for background screening technology integrations with other internal systems
• Buy-in at all levels of the organization, including the C-suite, which ensures that the background screening process supports company strategy, objectives and goals

Increase the ROI of Your Screening and Hiring Process with the “Rule of 7”

Research by Deloitte found that more successful organizations tend to have decision-making models where accountability is shared across multiple functions or groups. To improve decision-making for your background screening policies and processes, you can follow the “Rule of 7” framework. The seven stakeholder groups vary by industry and the makeup of your organization, but here are a few groups to consider as part of your review process. 

1. Legal
Gaining buy-in and support from your organization’s legal department during the early stages of screening program development helps build consistency in how you screen and hire across locations and company divisions. It is also critical to work with your legal team whenever you receive background check results that prompt you to begin a review for possible adverse action. 

2. Risk Management
Inherent in just about every business process are operational risks you’ll need to uncover and address. In partnership with your internal risk management department, you can monitor background screening and hiring risks in real time, and then enlist the help of your background check provider to incorporate processes and best practices to address those risks.

3. Labor Relations
If any part of your workforce is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, you will need to manage the screening and hiring processes applicable to unionized employees in collaboration with your labor relations department. An ongoing partnership with this group can also help you achieve a timely resolution to any background check issues that crop up for individuals hired into union roles.

4. Compliance
Since your background check program must always remain in compliance with a range of laws—including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), “ban the box” legislation, salary history bans, and marijuana legislation—you can benefit from the insights and support of your compliance department. Working together with the compliance team and your background screening company, you can continually review your screening program for regulatory compliance as laws evolve.

5. Information Technology
Your background screening technology not only helps automate processes for requesting background checks and reviewing results, but it also makes the process more efficient for candidates and end users. By bringing your IT department into the decision-making process early on, you can share information about integration possibilities and make sure you have the internal capabilities for a smooth rollout of your screening technology.

6. Procurement
If your organization relies on the procurement department for managing an RFP process and selecting a background screening provider, an early partnership will make sure you are asking the right questions when evaluating providers. When it comes time to make a selection, you can work together with other stakeholders to pick a provider suited to address a broad range of needs and concerns.

7. Contingent Workforce Managers 
Candidates for full-time employment may not be the only individuals undergoing a background check in your hiring process. In fact, a 2020 employer survey conducted by HR.com on behalf of the Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA) revealed more than half of employers (59 percent) screen all contingent and contract staff before hire. 

When working with contingent staff, you may need to partner with temp agencies and other contractors to maintain a consistent screening process across all employment categories. For example, per diem staff, volunteers, students, and others who need background checks should follow a screening process meeting the same standards for accuracy and quality as background screening for full-time hires.

Background Screening: Not Just an HR Responsibility

Background screening is incredibly valuable to any hiring process, but when you gather helpful insights from key internal stakeholders, you can derive even more value from your background check processes. Partnering with the above stakeholders breaks down communication silos and allows others to share accountability for developing an effective background screening and hiring program. 

A 30-year veteran of the investigative industry, Greg Dubecky is President of Corporate Screening. Visit Greg Dubecky