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.
