Blog by Danilio Davila, Executive Director, GroupOne Background Screening
I was recently asked to put together some “hot topics” to consider when evaluating the risks of sharing consumer/background reports among employers in their respective networks. The National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) Industry Best Practice Committee is expected to share its collected content for industry-wide discussion in the future. From where I sit, current hot topics include:
1. The emergence of healthcare employees involved in patient abuses continuing to become employed by hospitals is a growing cause for concern. Hospitals follow standard processes and submit their requests for background reports. However, due to the administrative delays in reporting adverse actions to consumer reporting agencies, to include appeals and disputes, such employees gain employment at other hospitals during this time frame.
2. Healthcare employees, especially non-licensed employees, usually have a 20-25 percent turnover rate within a system, and these employees move regularly from different hospital systems in their respective geographic area. The presence of community-level reporting among these healthcare consortiums will increase patient and employee well-being.
3. In the last two HR.com and NAPBS client surveys, the primary concern expressed by leaders is the speed of returning completed reports. The active exchange of collected information between consortium end-users would reduce the time to collect individual reports and distribute them through traditional portals.
4. The absence of HR record-keeping requirements in hospitals and healthcare systems substantially increases the difficulty of attempting to discover adverse actions for job applicants.
5. The correlation between the “Ban the Box” movement and increased hiring of past offenders has created a rise in applicants with criminal records. A revamped process for reporting and distinguishing the severity of convictions and rehabilitation would provide value to HR leaders.