Common Employment Screening Mistakes –
- 1. Not demanding that vendors and other service providers sending their employees onto your premises and interacting with your clients are adequately screening criminal background of their employees and
- 2. Not properly auditing the nature of their investigations if your vendor alleges that investigations are being performed.
Recently, Lusher Charter School has changed all the locks at its high school campus this week and is consulting with police after learning that one of the school’s janitorial workers has been charged in a shooting in Central City that killed one woman and wounded three other people, officials said.
The janitor worked for a local office of a janitorial service that Lusher contracts with, and he was assigned to the school’s Fortier campus. After learning that the individual was on the run from authorities, the school changed all its locks to ensure he would not have access to campus and have been consulting with investigators about the case, she said.
The janitor had a lengthy record of violent crime, including charges of first-degree murder during a crime, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, domestic violence, extortion, an attack on a police officer, and other gun, drug and theft charges, police have said.
A best practice is to require that your providers perform criminal conviction investigations on any of their employees who are interacting with your clients and/or your employees. Don’t assume their investigation is up to your standard. Give them exact requirements of what you would require in the criminal conviction investigation of their employees. And, insist that you have the right to review the reports so that you can verify they are performing the criminal conviction investigation adequately. Just because your provider tells you a criminal convction investigation is being performed doesn’t mean the provider isn’t going to the web to pay for a $9.95 database search.
