Know who someone is before you hire them to represent your company
Whether you’re a small or medium size business owner or you are at the helm of a large franchise organization, protecting your brand is critical and should be considered a top priority when screening applicants for employment or as a franchisee. Beyond the resume and interview, running background checks on all those who will be associated with your company can help you ensure that you’re hiring and partnering with those that will not damage your organization’s brand or reputation.
1. Identifying a fraud
It’s a harsh term, but the reality is that there are many people out there who are not who they claim to be. Whether they don’t disclose something negative in their past that relates to their association with you—or they give false information, running a background check will, in most cases, reveal the truth. Consider the person who was let go from a previous position because of unethical business practices. Often people with shady pasts or undesirable experiences will not disclose this information in an effort to get employment. If you take these people at face value, you’re taking a major risk.
2. Revealing criminal or detrimental behavior
Implementing background checks in your hiring process can be instrumental in protecting your company and your brand by identifying criminal activity or behaviors that the applicant may not willingly provide. For example, if you’re looking to hire a teacher for your preschool, a background check will show if this person has ever been arrested or convicted of abuse or of being a sexual predator. Another example, if you’re hiring drivers for your senior transportation service and are looking for those with clean driving records. Without a background check you’d never know, and hiring either of these candidates could be catastrophic for your clients and your brand.
3. Ensuring applicants and/or partners meet your quality standards
A key element to protecting the integrity of your brand is hiring people who will exemplify your company’s image and carry out the responsibilities of their position in a manner that meets your expectations. This includes not only how they handle their tasks, but also how they interact and engage with your customers. It goes without saying that building positive client relationships is key to the success of your organization and hiring those who are not qualified or have had unsavory business practices in the past could damage those relationships. A background check is the best way to screen applicants and discover if they meet your qualifications (experience and education included) and make sure they haven’t had any negative reports against them from previous employers.
4. Preventing an “inside job”
In today’s advanced technological world, it’s all too easy for people to get critical information and use it in illegal or fraudulent ways. Too often a company suffers at the hands of one of their own—an employee who steals financial information, leaks critical data to outside sources or uses confidential company information for their own personal gain. In this case, you could not only suffer financial losses but be faced with a lawsuit by customers whose information was breached. The ideal way to safeguard your company against this type of situation is to use background checks on everyone who has access to any company or client data.
While we’d all like to accept people at their word, doing so can be a costly mistake, especially when it comes to protecting your company’s brand. Implementing background checks as a part of your hiring process allows you to ensure that you’ve done everything possible to identify those applicants who are not suitable and could cause damage to your organization.
Make sure your brand stays intact. Contact us today for a complimentary review of your screening and selection process.