Each and every recruiter must conduct background checks and make it a crucial part of their hiring procedures. Ranging from criminal history examination to accessing the provided references background checks are various in styles. Especially if your employees will be in direct contact with the clients, monetary transactions or any other sensitive info than you must perform a thorough screening before hiring any employee in order to steer clear of future negligent hiring claims.
Employer should run a background check the background of the applicants, they are considering as potential hires. Once job applicants have submitted all their information and credentials and the employer have interviewed the ones whom they are interested, the subsequent step must be examining their backgrounds.
Many researches and studies have elaborated that about more than half of the candidates misrepresent their actual credentials hence it becomes crucial to cross-check for their information. The employers who don’t perform a personality and screening check often cry over spilt milk afterwards as the hired candidate may encompass any criminal history or a personality characteristic that may hurt you later on.
Natures of Background Check
There are a number of screening styles which can be opted to check the job candidates and they range from general background checks like personal references accessing and employment history examination to crucial ones like law permits and criminal history check. Mainly the crucial background checks are performed only for particular job positions:
- Examining the educational credentials if the job desires a certain degree which will be judicious. Like assessing driving history if the potential candidate will be delivery person for a flower shop or a restaurant etc.
- If the employees will have access to sensitive information of your business like exposure to clients contacts, retrieving monetary transaction or any other crucial information. Hence you will wish to be extra cautious while hiring a candidate.
- Credit report analyses are prohibited by federal and state laws. They are only endorsed and acclaimed for certain employment positions. As if the candidate will prove to be harmful for your customers or other employees in future than it is likely that you will be trapped in a lawsuit.
Your business can be slapped legally by a lawsuit for conducting a negligent hiring process and you will be considered liable for not conducting a proper background check afore hiring that person. Negligent hiring will make you undergo a lawsuit as it will be deliberated that you fail to reveal the applicant’s ineffectiveness even after accessing their general background, references or criminal records etc.
Employer can be litigated for negligent recruitment for failure to be aware of the employee’s incompetence for that certain job or for the next failure to infer any precautionary measures like training, firing or reassigning etc.
An employer must be knowledgeable about what can constitute a negligent hiring claim. Once the employer will learn he will be able to cope up with the possible future claims for negligent hiring and will be able to combat it.
Reasons that Establish Negligent Hiring
The finest manner to elaborate the factors which causes negligent hiring as per the law is to get familiar with the general things which must be presented in order for a client, employee or any other third party to conquer the lawsuit of negligent hiring opposite the filer which may be another employer or a customer.
- Actuality of an employment relationship among an employer and the worker.
- The employee’s incompetence
- The real or factual and productive knowledge of an employer about the employee’s incompetence (failure to inspect can lead to a revelation of a productive knowledge)
- The deed of an employee or an omission which have caused hurt to the third party.
- The most likely cause for the third party’s injuries must be the employer’s negligence in recruitment process.
Instantly contact with your attorney if you are ever served a negligent hiring lawsuit. There’s always a way out and a first step before you receive the legal papers for the lawsuit, it’s especially crucial when you are slapped with the lawsuit and actually have particular number of days to file a reply to it to fight the claim. Days will be dependent upon the location the suit was filed.
Contending Negligent Hiring Claims
It’s the responsibility of every employer to conduct a proper inspection of an applicant’s background before hiring him. This duty can be stretched and differ with the conditions. Like you might be held responsible if:
- You haven’t performed a background screening.
- You have recruited an incompetent employee which you must have known about before hiring.
For employment which will include the candidate’s access to people’s homes or any other relative and sensitive information, you must cross check his background for criminal records.
Non-Negligent Hiring
Lotte was shamefully from the navy as she did a drug offense couple of years ago. She was discharged due to her accident which she did while working on a mechanic’s shop and she took the car to drive but accidently crashed it. But automobile owner was unable to file a lawsuit against the employer as the accident wasn’t actually foreseeable.
Negligent Hiring
A bottled water company’s owner was sued after his delivery boy assaulted one of his customers while delivering the water. He was held responsible for negligent hiring as if the employer would have conducted the background check, it would have been revealed that the particular delivery boy had a violent behavior. This accident was foreseeable and could’ve been prevented by the employer.
State laws might ask an employer to screen the criminal records when performing a recruitment process. Especially when they will be considered for a crucial position. As prohibited by laws an employer can’t cross check the arrest records; only conviction records. However the conviction records has certain relation to the jobs to some extent which can cause an adequate reason to hire.
Check your state laws to ensure what are the permissible background checks and what are prohibited so that you can conduct the screening according to that.
