What Do You Risk When You Omit or Use a Sub-Par Background Check?

A new story has broken showing the weight of what can happen when a pre-hire background check is not quite up to snuff.

Today’s news actually involves an entire school district regarding a case filed on April 5th. This federal civil rights lawsuit alleges that the Prince George’s County school system did not conduct a proper background check on a teaching assistant who had a previous history of sex abuse allegations, and was later convicted for molesting an elementary school student.

This suit follows a similar case from four months earlier regarding a child-pornography investigation on a volunteer teacher’s aide.

For full details on the case, we have provided a link to the Washington Posts’s article here.

So what have we learned is at stake for an organization when their pre-hire process is lacking?

1) Money
The obvious point to make is that it just costs money. Whether it’s the $10 Million that Uber is paying out or just the court costs, actual dollars and cents are lost due to negligent hiring practices.

2) Time
These proceedings can take many months and involve practically every person in an organization from top to bottom. This results in lost productivity and focus toward growing and maintaining the business.

3) Morale
Imagine how the employees feel when their coworker is found to be a sex offender or commits a violent crime. Maintaining the morale of the team is imperative to a well-oiled machine.

4) Reputation
This can be reputation to clients, prospective hires, business partners, etc. It’s crystal clear that these types of occurrences end up almost immediately in the media spotlight (and even in blogs!) so the best thing to do is to mitigate the risk on the front end to make sure the organization’s name stays out of the News!