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Improving Employee Retention Through Rescreening

When HR professionals think about improving and maintaining employee performance, the sharpening of skills like time management, setting clear goals and expectations, or communication practices might come to mind. However, they may turn a blind eye to what happens outside of the workplace—which can have a larger impact than initially perceived.

This begs the question, “How do you ensure that those same standards originally screened for remain upheld?”

Standard employment screenings include information up to the moment they’re run, but what about criminal offenses that occur after that? How might employers learn about revoked licenses, suspended work authorizations, or other suspect behavior of employees?

Fortunately, consistent rescreening or continuous criminal monitoring solutions can help employers achieve just that.

Benefits of Rescreening Employees

Increased Safety & Security

Periodic rescreening can help identify individuals in your workplace that could potentially cause harm. Categories covered include drug use, theft, fraud, violence, sexually-based crimes, abuse, and more. That, in turn, helps to protect your customers, employees, and organization as a whole.

Reduction of Turnover

It’s simple: With the increase in safety and security comes a better working environment. Happier staff tend to show up, perform, and speak well about their workplace far more than their counterparts in stressful or unsafe environments.

An Unburdened HR Team

With a consistent rescreening program and a good policy, the process can essentially run itself, leaving more time for HR to focus on team members and their performance.

How It Works

Don’t worry; keeping current on your employees is easier than it sounds.

Your Choice

First, decide what data your organization would like to receive. Search parameters can include real-time county criminal records, nationwide databases, federal records, sex offender registries, professional licenses, industry-specific repositories like financial or healthcare sanctions, and more.

Next, determine which solution is a better fit for your team:

Rescreening

A process as simple as uploading a spreadsheet of applicants and checking a box, rescreening can be scheduled periodically such as monthly or annually.

Continuous Criminal Monitoring

An automated search of over 650 million records that continuously identifies new criminal activity at the beginning of each month. Results are verified by our team to ensure accuracy before the report is returned to you.

And finally…

Remember Compliance

No matter which is chosen, organizations must keep compliant with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

Federal and state laws still require applicants and employees to complete a disclosure and authorization form. If you plan to run background checks again during the duration of their employment, that decision must be clearly and conspicuously stated within this disclosure. If you haven’t done so upon hire, new consent is required prior to any rescreening. Additionally, should information be uncovered that results in termination, the adverse action process must be followed.

Last but not least, you’ll need to ensure that your employment policy addresses your practices as they relate to continued monitoring. Should questionable information about an employee be uncovered, this will guide you on your best course of action. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a great resource for sample background check policies and procedures.

While most organizations try and onboard trustworthy individuals, at the end of the day, there’s no way to predict what the future holds for every member of your staff. The concept of adding a monitoring service is to stay alert to new criminal offenses or changes in sex offender registration to better inform you of the individuals within your organization.

If these services are on your radar, One Source can help. Rescreening is easy in our portal through a simple spreadsheet upload, adverse action can be initiated with one click, and we provide templates for necessary compliance forms at no extra cost.

For more information on rescreening or continuous criminal monitoring, or to get started, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Why is Rescreening Important?

These days most organizations typically have a standard process for screening staff prior to onboarding. According to a 2021 study by Aptitude Research, nearly 80% of organizations are screening staff members before onboarding.

What happens to these staff after you onboard them? Sure, many HR Departments have a policy in place that may require team members to self-report incidents, but how do you know that’s really happening?

In the past decade, rescreening staff has become a hot topic. More and more companies are minimizing the gaps in the safety of their staff by rescreening, and it’s only growing in popularity.

Why should you rescreen?

Rescreening and monitoring staff backgrounds can be considered for various reasons. These can include, but aren’t limited to:

  • Promotion or change in responsibilities: Employees gain access to company finances, credit cards, or building keys.
  • Maintaining company standards: You screened your staff or volunteers before onboarding them, and now you want to ensure they are being held to those same standards.
  • Industry or compliance requirements: Many industries like healthcare, education, or transportation have ongoing screening requirements.

We see organizations with a variety of industry requirements or internal policies in place. This could include annual rescreening of all team members; some conduct it every two to three years and others utilize ongoing monitoring solutions that are run monthly. Others only do it when there is a promotion or change in the company structure. No matter your process…

Don’t forget compliance!

Any rescreening or continuous monitoring must still comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Ensure your organization is following federal and state laws regarding disclosure and authorization. Additionally, if the results of a rescreen create a scenario where you will separate from that individual, be sure you are following the adverse action process.

If you want to include authorization to allow for ongoing screening throughout their time with the company, this must be stated clearly in the initial disclosure. As always, we recommend consulting your legal counsel to ensure your forms are compliant and up to date.

I want to rescreen; what are my options?

When it comes to rescreening, One Source has several options:

  1. Batch Upload: We work with you to establish a rescreening package to meet your standards. Whether this is the complete criminal background, healthcare exclusions, motor vehicle records, or something else, we can customize it to fit your needs. Applicants can then be uploaded directly into our system to be run. Frequency is then up to you.
  2. Continuous Criminal Monitoring: This is an automated search of over 650 million records, including a Global Report, Multi-Court Jurisdictional Database, and National Sex Offender Registry search. The individuals you enroll in monitoring will automatically search for new records at the beginning of each month. Results will be verified by our team to ensure accuracy and the report will be provided back to you.
  3. Other Monitoring Solutions: Outside of criminal monitoring, One Source can also monitor through other screening solutions, including healthcare monitoring and social media monitoring.

Ready to get started?

Incorporating rescreening or continuous monitoring into your screening process could be the difference in creating a safer environment for your organization. To keep the trust between you and your team members, make sure your continuous monitoring policy is clearly stated when they are onboarded, and then remind them on an annual basis. When you start your continuous monitoring, you want to have shared expectations between you and your team members. If you are interested in learning more or would like to add this service to your process, contact us.

For more information on background screening, check out more of our blog or get in touch today.