As a small business you might wonder if background checks are all that important. Often a small business may consist of a few family members or a couple of close friends. If this is the case, and you know all of the employees through and through, then maybe spending money on background checks isn’t all that necessary. However, if you plan on growing, it’s important you are informed about the risks involved in lax or inconsistent hiring practices. The potential cost to your company could be substantial if you decide to forgo the pre-employment screening process. Let’s take a look at a few ways that poor hiring decisions can impact your company.

Employee turnover in most industries isn’t a good thing, and bad hires often lead to this costly outcome. Recruiting, hiring and firing are all expensive. They take time and energy away from building and running your business. It costs money to place job postings or hire a recruiter. It takes time to onboard someone and train them. It’s expensive to provide an employee with benefits once they’ve been there long enough. And it costs your company money if they claim they were fired without cause and you have to pay unemployment. Consequently, it’s less expensive to vet a new hire and get it right the first time!

If the above reasons aren’t enough to nudge you to background screen your employees, you should consider the consequences of having a “trusted” but unknown insider. Most employees, at some point, end up handling sensitive information. This could be your customer list, confidential pricing, terms and conditions of deals and sensitive non-public information. These situations can lead to a loss of customers, profit and even your competitive advantage in the marketplace. Being aware of someone’s criminal history and previous employment are critical if you want to protect your company.

Small businesses face enough unforeseen challenges and hiring the wrong person doesn’t need to be one of them. Having a solid pre-employment background check program in place is vital to the protection of your small business. In our next post we’ll discuss what it takes to shield your business from threats like these and others, by going over what an effective screening program should look like for your company!

When your business needs assistance with employment screening, criminal checks, FCRA compliance, drug screening, education and employment verification, driving records (MVR), credit checks or social security number validation, contact the Swailes Background Team to get quickly signed up.