Beyond Onboarding: Why Rescreening Is the Next Compliance Imperative

In 2025, the way we think about workplace risk is evolving due to rising regulatory pressure, increased employee mobility and growing expectations around safety and trust, and so should the way we manage it.

For many organisations in Australia, hiring processes still rely heavily on background checks completed at the time of onboarding. But what happens after an employee has been with your company for three, five or even 10 years? That’s where rescreening comes in.

At Certn, we’ve been helping businesses build safer teams since 2016. From police checks to ongoing rescreening, Certn combines deep industry know-how with easy-to-use technology to make background screening easier and more future-ready. With thousands of clients across Australia and globally (especially in regulated industries) we know what it takes to stay compliant without slowing things down.

If you’re rethinking your approach to risk and trust at work, we’ve got the playbook.

The Risk of Relying on Point-in-Time Checks

Standard background screening at the time of hire provides a valuable snapshot. It confirms credentials, uncovers any potential red flags and helps ensure new hires meet your organisation’s standards. But as time passes, that snapshot becomes outdated. 

Life circumstances change. Legal or financial issues may arise. Licences may expire. And yet, many companies continue operating under the assumption that initial background checks are enough to mitigate ongoing risk.

This approach is no longer viable in today’s regulatory and reputational landscape.

Rescreening: A Smarter, Ongoing Approach

Rescreening refers to conducting periodic or event-triggered background screening on current employees and contractors. Rather than rechecking everyone all at once, leading organisations take a risk-tiered approach, prioritising high-risk roles and key moments, such as promotions or contract renewals.

In Australia, more industries are moving toward rescreening as part of their compliance and workforce risk strategy. Sectors such as financial services, education and healthcare and aged care already have regulatory expectations around ongoing checks.

• In financial services, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) both require organisations to demonstrate employee due diligence as part of their fit and proper policies. Many institutions already require annual declarations or criminal history rechecks for senior leaders and finance staff.
  
• In education, Working With Children Checks (WWCC) must be renewed every 2 to 5 years, depending on the state. Employers are legally responsible for tracking validity.

• In aged care, employers must ensure that all workers have up-to-date police checks, typically refreshed every three years. By 2026, a new Aged Care Worker Screening Check is set to roll out bringing even tighter oversight.

These aren’t one-off obligations, they’re ongoing responsibilities. Rescreening gives employers the tools to meet them.

Why Rescreening Matters More Than Ever

Several converging trends are driving the shift to more proactive background checks:

1. Rising Risk Awareness

Workplace risk doesn’t stop once someone is hired. Employees may encounter legal issues, lose certifications or go through personal hardships that impact their suitability for a role. Regular rescreening helps organisations detect these changes early, before they escalate into compliance breaches or reputational crises.

2. Evolving Regulatory Expectations

As mentioned above, regulators like the AUSTRAC and APRA emphasise the importance of employee due diligence. While not all industries are legally required to conduct background screening after hire, many are expected to maintain workforce integrity as part of their duty of care.

Upcoming privacy reforms and tighter governance standards are only raising the bar further.

3. Culture of Safety and Trust

In a high-trust workplace, consistency matters. When rescreening is implemented fairly and transparently, it sends a clear message: every employee is held to the same high standard, no exceptions. It also reassures staff that their workplace is safe, respectful and compliant.

The business case is clear: Rescreening reduces the risk of negligent retention claims, protects your brand and keeps regulators and clients confident in your governance. For many companies, it’s a small investment that avoids major reputational and financial costs down the line.

Why Rescreening Protects More Than Just Compliance

Rescreening isn’t just a checkbox for regulators, it’s a way to strengthen your company’s reputation, reduce costly mistakes, and protect what matters most: your people and your brand.

• Avoid legal exposure: Negligent retention claims are rising. If a serious incident occurs and an employer fails to recheck relevant credentials, the liability can be significant.
  
• Safeguard client trust: In regulated industries, your clients expect high standards. A documented, risk-tiered rescreening program reinforces that you take governance seriously.
  
• Support culture and morale: When employees know that high standards apply to everyone consistently, it builds trust from the inside out.
  

Rescreening gives you visibility into potential risks before they become headlines.

What a Risk-Tiered Rescreening Framework Looks Like

A smart rescreening program doesn’t treat all roles equally. Instead, it groups positions based on the level of risk they carry and tailors the frequency and depth of background checks accordingly.

Key Triggers to Build Into Rescreening

Even with scheduled checks, certain events should automatically prompt rescreening:

• Promotions or role changes
• Contract renewals
• Regulatory updates
• Employee self-disclosure (e.g., loss of certification)
  

Embedding these into your HR workflows ensures you stay ahead of potential risk.

Addressing Privacy and Consent

In Australia, privacy and fairness are crucial when implementing background screening. 

Under the Privacy Act 1988, many employee records may be exempt from some privacy protections, but the expectation is still clear: treat personal data with care, transparency and purpose.

Best practices include:

• Getting informed consent before conducting any background checks
• Clearly stating in policies when and why rescreening may occur
• Ensuring data is handled securely and shared only with authorised personnel
  

With privacy reforms on the horizon, companies should be proactive, not reactive, about their data governance.

Transparency Builds Buy-In

Employees are more likely to support rescreening when it’s framed as a normal, fair part of a high-trust culture, not a signal of distrust. Clear policies, consistent communication and visible support from leadership make all the difference.

➡️ Tip: Some companies include a brief rescreening reminder and consent checkbox as part of their annual compliance or ethics declaration. It becomes routine, not disruptive.

What Europe Gets Right

European regulators, under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), view background screening through a strict privacy lens. While real-time monitoring is rare, scheduled re-vetting is common and expected, especially in regulated sectors. The emphasis is on transparency, proportionality and fairness.

Australian employers can borrow this framing: rescreening isn’t about distrust, it’s about due diligence. When employees understand the “why,” they’re more likely to accept the “how.”

Clarifying Continuous Versus Periodic Checks

While real-time monitoring tools such as automated alerts for criminal history changes aren’t yet widely used in Australia (and aren’t expected to be), they’re gaining traction in the media. Where lawful, continuous monitoring could in theory supplement your policy for Tier 1 roles (e.g., executives, finance and frontline care providers).

Most organisations, however, will focus on:

• Scheduled periodic checks (e.g., every 1–5 years, based on role risk)
• Event-based triggers, like promotions or contract renewals

The goal is ongoing assurance, not constant surveillance.

Getting Started with Rescreening: Your Next Steps

Background screening isn’t just a hiring function anymore, it’s a frontline defence against today’s most pressing people risks. As cyber threats escalate, insider risk grows, and AI-fueled fraud evolves, your policies Rescreening is one of the most pragmatic investments HR can champion. It’s relatively low-lift, highly visible and directly tied to business continuity, regulatory compliance and reputational protection. Done right, it transforms your background check program from a static checkbox into a dynamic risk management system.

Here’s how to begin implementing a sustainable rescreening program:

1. Define your role-based risk tiers
2. Map out frequency and triggering events
3. Update your background screening policy to reflect changes
4. Ensure consent and privacy protocols are in place
5. Communicate with employees openly and consistently

Whether you manage 200 people or 20,000, rescreening doesn’t have to be a heavy lift. With the right framework, it becomes a routine part of maintaining a safe, compliant, and trustworthy workplace.

Tools That Make It Easier

Worried about tracking it all? Many HRIS platforms allow you to tag employees by risk tier or build custom workflows to trigger reminders when checks are due.

You can also integrate with third-party background screening partners (like Certn 👋) to automate police checks and credential verifications. That way, your HR team isn’t buried in spreadsheets, and your compliance doesn’t rely on memory.

At Certn, we’ve helped thousands of businesses, from scrappy startups to global brands, build smarter, safer hiring practices without slowing down growth. Our platform is built for speed, scale, and peace of mind, so you can protect your business and your people without adding complexity. Because trust isn’t a one-time thing, it’s something you build (and protect) every day.

Need a practical starting point or policy blueprint? Book a Demo and we’ll get you there faster.