How do I "Cost Justify"
Background Checking ?
The term "cost justify" means being able to show beforehand that
incurring an expense will either: (1) return much more than the item,
process, or procedure costs, or (2) help you avoid large penalties that
you would likely incur if the expenditure were not made.
Spending money on Background Checking can help you both hire more suitable
employees and avoid expensive personnel problems later.
In a society where lawsuits are very common, the really big savings
come from avoiding lawsuits or winning them. In
the field of Human Resources you should be particularly aware of not
doing something that would lead to a negligent hiring, or a negligent
retention, lawsuit.
There are several ways to look at the cost effectiveness of background checking.
 
First, it is just plain good business sense to hire people whose
background can be verified as represented and who are well
suited to your job. It helps you avoid potential problems
in the future, and it gives your current employees the
knowledge that their environment will most likely continue
to be good. You measure this in terms of your own Company's
productivity.
Second, look at the plain trade-off of your time vs. the cost
of a specialist like us that can get the results quickly and
deal with the myriad of small problems that constantly crop
up. Our sources, whom we pay promptly so that they make
serving us (and thus you) their top priority, our automation,
and our volume, make it unlikely that you could to do the job
less expensively yourself if you look at your total cost.
Third, you need to avoid the cost of negligent hiring and
negligent retention law suits. That cost not only includes
your legal bills, but all of your staff's time in the
preparation of materials for defense of the suit, and your
own time in the whole saga. You know your costs for these
things better than anyone else. We have never had a
prospective client decide not to screen because overall,
it was less expensive to be sued.
THREE HIDDEN COSTS:
If you cut corners and purchase background checking records from a vendor who
sells you stored data from CDROMs, Magnetic Tapes, or large compiled databases,
you run the risk of a large Federal fine for violation of FCRA Section 613(a)(2).
We sell ONLY freshly retrieved data. The amended law empowers each State's Attorney
General to enforce the Federal law through their State Labor Department. A normal
audit of personnel records for any reason would reveal your company's use of
stored data.
The FCRA particularly provides for civil suit penalties on behalf of the employee
who was damaged by illegally acquired information.
If you do become involved in a lawsuit, you will be very happy that you
have your Background Checking records in your files to show that you had
done the prudent thing. However, you will be very unhappy if
those same Background Checking reports are declared inadmissible at the
time of trial because they were illegally obtained. Be sure
to use Background Checking reports that comply with Local, State, and
Federal law.
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