The Many Benefits of a Pre-Employment Screening Process

You wouldn't dream of packing your family in the car and racing down the freeway without making sure their seat belts were buckled. And why is that? Because even though it may have been a few years since you last took a driver's education course, you know just how deadly and dangerous a car crash can be without the protection of seat belts. The same is true for a pre-employment screening process.

Any owner that has both employees and customers (I hope this includes you!) and does not have a thorough pre-employment screening process is betting their entire financial future that not one of the following will happen in their lifetime:

An employee will harass or harm another employee.
An employee who is either under the influence, not certified or not qualified completes a job improperly on a client's vehicle, causing either damage or death.
An employee will steal from you, the customer or both.
You might be thinking none of those things have happened to you or anyone you know in the five, 10 or 20 years you've been in business. But consider the following:

A third of all application forms contain outright lies about experience, education and ability to perform essential functions on the job.
In May 1999, an estimated 16,400 threats were made, 723 workers were attacked and 43,800 were harassed every workday.
A third of all applicants admit to being tempted to steal from an employer.
Pre-employment screening helps reduce the possibility of the above tragedies happening by making sure the information presented by the applicant is accurate and by attempting to uncover information an applicant has failed to provide. Some of the new screening tests that are commonly used are testing for illegal drug use, running a credit report, physicals, psychological tests, FBI fingerprint reports, education confirmations and hands-on testing. This is a far cry from the old forms that - unfortunately - many still use from the local stationers, that only ask for an applicant's name, address and last three employers.

Money

Whenever I talk to business owners about how important it is to create a pre-employment screening process, they tend to agree with the points I make - then they start to rattle off excuses as to why they shouldn't change. (Because as we all know change can only be for the worse!) These excuses usually revolve around three main topics: money, experience and privacy.

Money objections are the easiest to answer and the hardest to overcome. The reason being, the amount spent on pre-employment screenings can be provided as a solid number. For example: $50 for every drug test, $60 for every physical, etc. This money is being spent almost like an insurance premium to avoid a potentially larger penalty later. (The average award in a workplace violence lawsuit exceeds $1 million per case.)

To help eliminate this hurdle, I first meet with the owner and decide what they are looking for and how detailed they want the screening process to be. Often we will create two different screening processes, one for all applicants and one for only the best applicants. This helps reduce the total cost while still reaping the benefits. Sometimes, however, an owner will come back and say, "I don't have $50 to spend on the process."

My answer is always, "That's exactly why you should do it! If you don't have $50 now, how do you expect to pay a verdict of even $10,000 if something did happen?"

Experience

I'll be the first to tell you I don't know the first thing about fixing computers. Why should I? I get paid to help my clients improve the profitability and performance of their businesses. My time is much better served listening to owners than learning new software codes. The same is true for pre-employment screening. Don't be tempted to learn how to give a physical or how to access the FBI database. Have the experts do it. They are much faster and more efficient then you would be. You will also find they are able to do it cheaper than it would be for you to take your energy away from your business to learn a new skill.

Privacy

Service companies are not like manufacturing firms. You cannot create an excellent experience for the client, store it on the shelf and pull it off when you need it. Instead, every experience is unique; that is why all employees must perform to their peak levels at all times. This happens only when employees feel safe at work knowing they can trust each other and it is a non-hostile work environment.

Owners often worry that if they start adopting a pre-employment screening process, applicants and employees will feel too much like they are suspected of not being forthright. What I have found is often quite the opposite. Employees enjoy knowing that the person operating machinery next to them is not on drugs or that if some harassment is starting to happen the owner has a policy that could stop it immediately.

Pre-employment screening is not only a way to limit your liability, but also a way to tell applicants and employees alike that you screen so thoroughly because you hire only the best of the best.