Fingerprint background checks are an essential tool for creating safer workplaces. However, these searches aren’t always thorough enough to uncover all records associated with a specific set of prints.
Employee theft costs businesses money in lost inventory, cash, and time spent investigating suspicions. It also leads to negative perceptions of the company, its rules, and its ethics.
Detect Fraud and Theft in the Workplace
One of the best ways to detect fraud and theft is using fingerprint background checks. However, some common misconceptions about these types of searches can lead to employers making poor hiring decisions or taking adverse action based on inaccurate information.
Fingerprint background checks can help identify many kinds of crime, including embezzlement, forgery, data leakage, and stolen cash or property. These crimes can be costly to businesses of all sizes and seriously impact a company’s reputation. Companies can use various strategies to prevent these issues, including limiting access to financial accounts, instituting checks and balances in cash handling, and deploying surveillance systems. However, if you want to ensure that your employees are trustworthy and can be trusted with sensitive financial information and company property, a thorough background check is essential.
Ensure the Safety of Your Employees and Customers
As a business owner, the safety of your employees and customers is an important concern. Employees with criminal records may pose a threat by committing crimes themselves or allowing others to commit them. Performing thorough background checks on new hires can help you prevent these risks. One method of doing this is through fingerprinting, wherein an applicant takes their prints at a live scan kiosk or similar location to have them electronically scanned and compared against a criminal database. Then, a criminal record is retrieved from this information and sent to the employer.
This is often a requirement for workers in certain industries, such as security, and when they are required by state or federal law to be screened (like childcare providers). Fingerprints can provide a more comprehensive check of an individual than just a name search alone. A downside of fingerprinting is that it can take longer than other methods. Additionally, fingerprints do not always appear in arrest records. They cannot tell whether a case was dismissed or prosecuted, so employers should use this with other screening strategies. As the most unique identifier, fingerprints can verify an individual’s identity and history. By partnering with a CRA committed to running FCRA-compliant reports, you can ensure the accuracy of your results and protect your business from costly litigation and bad press.
Reduce the Risk of Negligent Hiring
Whether it’s employee theft or workplace violence, the cost of a bad hire can be enormous. Not only does a criminal background check reduce the chances of hiring someone with a history of violent or dishonest behavior, but it also reduces the risk of negligent hiring lawsuits. Negligent hiring refers to an employer’s failure to exercise reasonable care when selecting and monitoring staff members.
Recruiting new employees should be a high priority for small businesses that cannot afford to lose money or inventory because of one bad employee. In addition to running a fingerprint background check, conducting thorough reference checks and performing a drug screening test before hiring an employee is important. You can also use education verification and professional license and credentials checks to verify that applicants have the qualifications for their job. While preventing fraud and theft in your company does not require being overly invasive, strategies such as setting clear systems within your hiring process, conducting unscheduled cash registers and inventory inspections, and incorporating integrity testing tools into the employment application will help reduce fraudulent activity. Additionally, requiring fingerprint background checks can show that you are serious about employee theft prevention and will not tolerate deception in your company. This can discourage employees from committing fraud and theft for fear of getting caught.
Ensure the Safety of Your Company
As a small business owner, you are responsible for ensuring the safety of your customers, employees, and inventory. Performing background checks and checking references can help you find the right candidates for your company and prevent fraud or theft in the future. In addition, fingerprint background checks are a great way to verify an applicant’s identity and can help you discover information that may not be available through other methods. In addition to helping you avoid employee dishonesty and theft, a fingerprint background check can also help you identify criminal activities that could put your employees in danger. For example, if an employee has been charged with violent crimes, their presence in your workplace can put other employees and customers at risk of harm. A fingerprint background check can help you weed out these risks so you can hire candidates who are safe to work with. Despite their benefits, many employers don’t conduct fingerprint background checks because they believe they take too long and add to the hiring process. However, it’s worth the time to properly vet candidates to protect your company from internal theft, fraud, and negligent hiring lawsuits. With a quick and easy fingerprint background check from Sterling Identity, you can quickly get the results you need to make informed hiring decisions.