But we’ve got you covered!
We’ve put together a quick explanation of some of the pre-employment checks you should do to make sure that you’re getting the right people into your business.
Fundamentals:
There are a number of pre-employment screening checks that are undeniably essential for all roles in your organisation, from right to work – ensuring that you’re only hiring people who can legally work in the UK – to matching up address history with employment history.
It’s an absolute must to book in checks on address, education, qualifications, ID verification, references, employment history and right to work as a standard for all of your new recruits. These basic checks are vital if you want to be certain that the person you’re hiring is actually who they say they are and that they really do have the skills and experience that they claim on their CV.
Occupational health is also up there as an important one – you need to make sure that you’re keeping your staff team safe, so understanding the health needs of your employees allows you to create a safe, risk-assessed working environment.
By getting these fundamental checks booked in, not only will you minimise the risk of hiring someone who hasn’t got the experience that they say they do – and who’s therefore not up to the job – but you’ll also avoid any hefty fines and potential prosecution by unwittingly putting someone on the payroll who’s not eligible to work, or by putting employees’ health and safety at risk.
Reputation Management:
As well as the basics, it’s important to think about how your employees might impact the reputation of your organisation – a bad reputation leads to a loss of custom so you need your employees to embody the good values that your business holds dear. But it can be challenging sometimes to judge how aligned to your values a candidate is before they’re in post.
We offer a number of checks to make sure that your next hire lives and breathes your values and won’t put the reputation of your organisation at risk. Our adverse media, social media and activism checks draw from a range of sources, including traditional, broadcast and online media, as well as social media, blogs, forums and chat rooms. We also search the dark and deep web so only about 5% of the information that we gather would be available through a standard search engine query.
Bringing to light any risky and potentially detrimental behaviours of your candidates will help you understand exactly how they would fit into your organisational culture, values and purpose. Understanding your candidates like this will help you hire the people who will represent your business in the best way possible and will ensure that you avoid any reputational hits, particularly relating to organised crime, trafficking, money laundering, sexism, racism, hate speech, extreme views, violence and drug use.
Financial:
Financial checks are essential for anyone working in the financial services industry, particularly those that are FCA and PRA regulated.
The FCA requires anyone carrying out regulated, controlled functions to be ‘fit and proper’, which means that your candidate needs a thorough background check. On top of that, anyone in a director-level position needs FCA and PRA approval too to make sure that only the most trustworthy and responsible people are leading and managing the financial firm.
The FCA needs organisations to screen their employees before they go through their own approval process, so pre-employment checks are crucial for any organisation working within this industry.
Luckily, at Reed Screening, we have extensive expertise in the FCA and PRA requirements, particularly under the Senior Managers & Certification Regime (SMCR), and we recognise how important it is that non-regulated roles get thoroughly vetted pre-employment too – after all, everyone in your firm holds responsibility for complying with FCA regulations so why put your organisation at risk by not checking everyone?
Role-Specific:
Some roles require very specific sets of skills. For example, in many roles, the ability to drive is essential so it’s important to check with the DVLA that your candidate has a license and that they’re a safe, responsible driver.
Other roles might involve working with children or vulnerable adults, or might come with a level of responsibility that makes having a criminal record risky, so a DBS is necessary to make sure that you’re only hiring those who can keep your people and your business safe.
You might also be recruiting someone at a director-level position, with responsibilities for taking risks and making financial or business decisions, which means you need to be sure you’re hiring someone trustworthy. Our directorship checks look into any potential conflicts your candidate might have that could put your business in a precarious spot, such as interests in other organisations and any disqualifications from holding such directorships.
It'd also be wrong not to give occupational health a second mention here too, particularly for those roles where heavy lifting might be necessary!
How can we help?
There’s a lot to think about and digest when getting checks lined up for your candidates and, while there are a good number of checks that every employee should go through to get that baseline security for your business, some roles require varying levels of much more specific checks.
At Reed Screening, we offer a range of checks to ease that burden and get your next hire through the door safely and efficiently. We can build bespoke packages to suit your organisation’s needs and give you peace of mind, knowing you’ve got the best person for the job.
Take a look at our pre-built pay-per-candidate screening packages here; and get in touch to build the right screening package for you.