The article in the url below sheds an interesting light on the issue of employee background checks. What is interesting is that, although most firms conduct background checks prior to employment, they do not conduct any checks subsequently:
"While 98% of the 278 executives surveyed by insider threat-monitoring firm Endera said their organization checks people before offering them a job, fewer than 25% said they make such checks after someone joins the group."
This lack of attention, post-hiring, is even more surprising when it turns out there are good reasons to conduct these checks:
"The lack of post-employment monitoring remains prevalent despite the fact one in every 1,000 employees is arrested every month—and despite the fact 79% of security executives and 81% of operations executives who were asked in the survey said they would screen or consider screening their entire workforce every day if they could. While companies manage cybersecurity risks, they focus on insider threats such as data and device behavior, preventing data loss and managing access—and this leaves unknown all the things an employee does when not working, said Endera Chief Executive Raj Ananthanpillai."
While there is a balance that needs to be struck between employee trust and workplace security, it seems that the disproportionate focus on pre-hiring checks is misplaced. This issue is even more important, given the way that trends towards greater contracting are shaping the relationships individuals have with the firms that hire them:
"The challenge is even more acute for companies that contract employees, as they often may not conduct any checks themselves and sometimes don't know if the staffing agency they used to get the workers did background checks, the survey found. This comes despite the fact contract employees generated twice as many criminal alerts versus workers at Fortune 500 firms—11.1 criminal alerts per 1,000 contractors versus 6.3 for employees, said Endera."
Take care
David
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Lack of Post-employment Checks Expose Companies
By Ben DiPietro
April 27, 2017
The Wall Street Journal
