Blog, Resources
With the weather warming up and students finishing up their school year, businesses are starting to hire temporary employees for the summer. These workers are vital to companies where business grows during certain months of the year.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, amusement parks, museums, restaurants, spectator sports, and fitness centers, all experience spikes in employment during the summer. Similarly, jobs in the retail industry rise during the winter.
A seasonal employee is hired for a position that lasts six months or less. Typically, these employees are employed at the same time each year. Many temporary workers are high school or college students with little work experience.
Workplace Safety Concerns
Since these employees don’t always have an employment history to check and are unlikely to have a criminal record, some businesses think it’s safe to slack off background screening for all seasonal hires. However, this is not helpful in the long run. These kinds of blanket policies help keep the door open for criminals and bad employees.
Sometimes seasonal employees have little loyalty to the company, a lack of training and are less supervised, which could lead to unreliable employees, attendance issues, and theft. Even though seasonal employees usually have limited access to company information and facilities, they still can pose safety threats to full-time workers and customers and can have a detrimental effect on the business’s reputation.
An employee is 5.4 times more likely to steal from their company than a customer is. As a result, employee theft alone costs U.S. businesses $50 billion annually. Seasonal workers can be apathetic and may tend to fall into this category more often because they do not have a long-term relationship with the employer.
Being Proactive
Many companies use seasonal hires as a pool of employees to choose from to keep on year-round. Observing performance in-person is a great way to find the staff you’d like to keep on. However, if they didn’t properly screen their summer workers, then they could have missed something as important as a pattern of aggression in the workplace or criminal charges. This kind of behavior could ruin the company’s reputation or cause the loss of customers.
Employers run background checks to protect the safety of their employees and customers. According to a National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) national survey, 89 percent of employers stated that public safety was the top reason they conduct background checks. Workplace safety is a top concern for employers. If it is compromised, then the employer will be held accountable for it.
Although this isn’t true for most seasonal employees, when it comes to the safety of your workforce and customers, it is better to be proactive.
Use a Third-Party
Outsourcing the responsibility of background checks to a professional screening firm is the right choice. By using a third-party, this allows the experts to provide your potential hire’s criminal record accurately. It also saves the company time, so you don’t have to call past employers and check references. Background screening candidates can help businesses make smart and knowledgeable hiring decisions.
Background screening companies are compliant with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) regulations and labor laws, and many are accredited with the NAPBS. A right background check partner should provide all the documents you need to stay compliant.
According to an NAPBS national survey, 96 percent of employers run background checks on employees, and only 67 percent of employers surveyed say they screen their part-time employees. Still, be thorough in your employment screening process and run a background check for all employees regardless of the length of employment.
Smart Hiring
It is a huge responsibility to ensure a safe working environment for employees. The best step towards meeting this goal and preventing worker theft is by running background checks on all employees, no matter how long their employment will be. Employers will be protecting their reputation of a safe, secure work environment if they have screened qualified employees. Background checks are the final step to ensure smart hiring and protect employers from possible hidden risks.
Employers will have peace of mind when they know that they are hiring the best candidates. A business’s name is just as important to employers as attracting the most qualified workers. If they want to make sure that they’ve chosen the right person, then running a background check is just as important as the rest of the hiring process.
Contact us today to see how SELECTiON.COM® can take your employment background check process to the next level.
NOTE: The contents of this article are not legal advice for your particular situation. You should neither act nor rely upon anything stated in this article without first consulting your own legal counsel.
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In the background check business, just like protecting against the Summer sun, there’s no sunscreen with a high enough SPF to completely protect against the potential perils of hiring teenagers.
And with Summer hiring season beginning to heat up, more businesses are asking about the process, and even the validity, of conducting a background check or drug screening on a minor.
Unfortunately, the answers to such questions can be a bit complicated.
As is usually the case, it is always a good idea to start with the basics in an effort to develop a best practice for your company. At SELECTiON.COM® we ALWAYS recommend that you consult legal counsel before creating any policy. That is especially true when said policy relates to age, gender, race, etc.
By definition, as of 1995 most states classify a minor as someone under the age of 18. Although legally, as it relates to alcohol or gambling, people under the age of 21 may also be referred to as minors.
However, in terms of criminal responsibility, not all minors are considered juveniles and as you might imagine those laws vary widely by state.
Typically, someone considered a juvenile is usually tried in juvenile court. For some crimes, especially those of a more violent variety, the age at which a minor may be tried as an adult is relatively undefined when the accused is below the age of 18. For example, in Kentucky, the lowest age a juvenile may be tried as an adult, no matter how egregious the crime, is 14.
What does all of that mean to you when you’re just trying to hire a couple teenagers for Summer employment? 
Well to put it into perspective, an estimated 250,000 youth are tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults every year across the United States. That’s well less than 1% of the total population.
When you consider that most offenses committed by minors, tried and charged in juvenile court, are not going to be reported by a criminal court in the first place you realize that running a criminal background check on a teenage applicant is probably not going to return much. For example, the majority of criminal records for minors are sealed, making them unattainable. Unless, of course, they are in that .078% of the population tried and convicted as an adult.
It is important to remember that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) mandates that the process for all applicants must be consistent and two applicants applying for the same job should have the same searches and investigations run on them. If you routinely hire staff above the age of 18 for a specific job (and title) with certain background checks being required, the EEOC requires the same process to be followed when the applicant is under the age of 18.
Always make sure you keep your process uniform to avoid charges of discrimination.
Questions also arise when asking an underage applicant to sign the background check consent form.
Third-party background checks for minors fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), just as they would for any other applicant or employee, making it very important that all employers fully understand consent specifically as it relates to a minor.
Legally, minors lack the capacity to make a contract. Yes, a minor can legally enter into a contract, but they also legally have the right to either honor the deal or void it altogether. Unfortunately, the employer doesn’t have the same latitude.
The Society for Human Resource Management suggests that employers wishing to run pre-employment screenings on minors, and be protected during the process, should require parental or legal guardian consent. In cases when the minor is unable to provide parental consent, employers should consult with their attorney for a recommended practice.
Even when parental consent is obtained, however, not all records an employer usually requests will be available on minors. Criminal records, as mentioned above, and credit – given that most individuals under the age of 18 have limited access to establishing credit – are least likely to be obtainable. Past employment and educational records should be available. In most instances, personal references can also be obtained.
Therefore, when using pre-employment screening information in the hiring of minors, your company may need to adjust its policies and practices in terms of what information is available to use.
As always, SELECTiON.COM® strongly recommends that our clients seek legal counsel to draft a screening policy that best protects the employer when hiring any applicant, not just minors.
SOURCES:
Gaines, Larry K and Roger Leroy Miller. “Criminal Justice in Action” 4th ed., Thompson Wadsworth Publishing, 2007. Pg 495
Campaign for Youth Justice, Key Facts: Youth in the Justice System. Washington, D.C.: Campaign for Youth Justice, 2007. Web. May 2011. Citing Woolard, J. “Juveniles within Adult Correctional Settings: Legal Pathways and Developmental Considerations.” International Journal of Forensic Mental Health 4.1 (2005)
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. http://www.eeoc.gov/.
The Society for Human Resource Management. http://www.shrm.org/.
