Background checks are the kind of thing that often stay in the background. They might not be the first thing that comes to mind when your company is looking for ways to reduce expenses, improve the candidate experience, and edge out the competition—and that’s okay.
Not everyone can be as passionate about background checks as we are. It’s why here at Certn we’ve compiled this handy list of expected and unexpected benefits. All those business goals on your corporate scorecard? Background screening ladders up to quite a few of them. How so? Keep reading to find out!
Given that background checks are typically used during the hiring process, you might think that they’re really only useful to HR professionals. The truth is that their ripple effect can benefit many aspects of your business.
Gain SOC Compliance and Catch Fraud Using Background Checks
Security is a top priority within any organization. We know your IT department agrees. You know by now that background checks help keep your business secure by helping you ensure the professionals you’ve hired have the education, qualifications, and work experience needed. But beyond that, they can also help IT with two crucial things: getting SOC 2 compliant and avoiding fraud attempts.
Gain SOC Compliance
SOC 2 compliance is a voluntary auditing procedure developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) that’s designed to protect customer data. It’s important to all companies to keep customer data secure, but it’s essential to Saas companies, cloud providers, and most big players in the tech space.
Here’s why: if a company sells its services and isn’t SOC 2 compliant, then it means that the company that uses it can’t be SOC 2 compliant either. This makes it a pretty powerful designation to have. You run the risk of losing clients without it.
Background checks factor into all of this because they’re one of the things your company needs in order to pass a SOC 2 audit. Being able to get your checks completed more quickly can help you gain SOC 2 compliance a little faster. Sounds good, right?
Catch Fraud Attempts
With the rise of remote work has come a new type of risk that’s worth watching out for: candidate fraud.
The fraud attempt works like this: A hiring manager interviews an employee, finds them suitable for the position, and adds them to the team. Only the employee isn’t who they claimed to be and used stolen information and deepfake technology to pose as someone else throughout their interview. Yikes!
According to SHRM, this type of fraud is usually done in order for a malicious party to “gain access to data and systems, release ransomware, or obtain the credit card information or Social Security numbers of customers or employees.” Although, sometimes the perpetrator is really only after a paycheck (which may not always be recoverable after the fraud attempt has been uncovered).
To this end, ID verification can be a useful part of your screening toolkit. A good ID verification solution can help uncover fraud attempts and doctored IDs, as well as make sure that the person matches the ID they claim to be their own.
Prevent PR Disasters with Social Media Screening
Sometimes it can be hard to know the effect that something has when it’s designed to prevent a disaster. You know, “better safe than sorry.” After all, when it’s working well, you won’t notice it. This is true of pandemic prevention, and it’s also true of a certain type of PR disaster. It’s an important consideration to keep in mind when understanding the value of background checks.
Prevent PR Disasters with Social Media Checks
Imagine you bring on a brand new CFO, head of your People and Culture team, or other senior leader. Now, not long after releasing your press release announcing the big news, you discover that their public social media profiles are filled with hate speech. Now your PR team has to scramble to explain how the mishap happened while also reassuring the public and your concerned employees that the messages don’t reflect your values.
It’s a nightmare scenario, but so are many of the PR crises that a social media check of public accounts can help prevent. Negligent hiring cases are another type of rare disaster that can cause untold brand damage and lead to a full-blown PR crisis. By doing your due diligence with a quick screen (depending what’s permitted in your jurisdiction), you can help your PR team avoid these reputational risks.
Background Screening and Your Finance Department’s Bottom Line
When we think about how background checks affect a company’s bottom line, we often do so in terms of the costs associated with hiring and firing people. The costs that come with bringing on a new hire are substantial, with many placing the figure at almost a third of the employee’s salary. So, steps that help you get it right the first time add up quickly. That said, there’s a little more to it than that. You might be surprised, but background checks can help you save money in other ways as well.
As rumblings of a new recession grow louder and louder, your company is likely not the first to start looking for ways to reduce its expenses. Switching your background check provider might be another place to look for savings.
Save Money by Changing Background Check Providers
How so? For starters, there are the obvious benefits like a lower price point. But as everyone knows, a lower price is only really worth it when other factors like compliance, customer service, and ease of use aren’t sacrificed in the process (shameless plug about how we offer each of these benefits and have the reviews and badges to prove it). And that’s where things can get a little more interesting.
When all of these benefits come together, companies can begin to see significant results. After switching to Certn, for example, Trucking Experts Ltd. saw their screening costs decrease by almost 50%.
Along with those benefits, it’s also worth noting that some background check providers don’t bog down clients with setup fees, mandatory monthly fees, or lock them in with long contracts. That means if you need to pause hiring for a while, you can do so without the headache of added penalties. It’s just one more thing that helps you stay nimble and adaptive during these perpetually evolving times.
Summary: Understanding the Real Value of Background Checks
Background checks can help your company:
- gain SOC 2 compliance (and potentially expand your client pool as a result)
- improve security by catching fraud attempts
- avoid preventable PR disasters
- cut costs and save money
It’s a lot, but it makes sense when you think about just how crucial it is to have a stellar team. Beyond anything else, the employees you hire will have the largest impact on your company’s success. And so it makes sense that the care you put into that process affects all aspects of your business.
Want to see what these benefits can look like in action? Book a demo to see just how easy it can be to order background checks with Certn.
