Is Background Rescreening or Continuous Monitoring More Effective?

Let’s say you’ve just onboarded a new employee. During your carefully considered hiring process, you performed a comprehensive background check. As part of this check, the individual’s identity, educational background, work experience, and professional credentials were verified. Furthermore, depending on the nature and requirements of the job, a candidate may have been screened for sanctions, criminal history, motor vehicle violations, and drug use. Having conducted these checks, you had reasonable confidence in your hiring decision and complied with all industry regulations.

However, that is all in the past.

Your focus should shift away from analyzing past behavior to ensuring a safe working environment once the employee is on board.

Background Rescreening Versus Continuous Monitoring: Is There A Difference Between The Two, And Do You Require Both?

Yes, both are necessary, and explaining their differences will help you understand why.

Background Rescreening

Background rescreening involves rerunning one of the initial screening checks performed during hiring. In most cases, education verifications and employment references will not need to be re-run because those things have not changed in years. Nevertheless, driving records, criminal records, drug and alcohol histories, and social media use are constantly changing. Even if your employee had a negative drug test before they were hired, there’s no guarantee it will remain negative after they’ve been hired. The same applies to driving violations, criminal records, and questionable social media behavior. Prior to being hired, an employee might have been “clean,” but once hired; they might not remain so.

Periodic rescreenings are required by many employers to ensure the safety and integrity of their workforce and prevent negligent retention claims. There is nothing illegal about rescreening employees. Depending on your industry, it may even be mandatory. A variety of situations may trigger rescreening, including:

• If a promotion is offered
• After an incident involving workplace safety
• At specific intervals, such as yearly
• Randomly: Random rescreening can be seen in drug tests.

Employees must be given the opportunity to consent to rescreening, just as they must consent to pre-hire background checks. Aside from this, all adverse actions must be in accordance with the FCRA.

Rescreening offers the following benefits:

In contrast to drug tests that provide current information, rescreening provides a review of the past. By rescreening your employees, you will be able to determine if there has been any activity in the time interval between screens that may affect your workplace. By rescreening employees, employers are able to:

• Keep accurate records
• Deter questionable conduct by implementing a deterrent
• Ensure compliance with industry regulations and standards
• Make sure they are protected from claims of negligent retention
• Resolve problems that were missed during the initial inspection
• Ensure a safe workplace for their employees

Ultimately, rescreening lowers risk, protects your organization, and ensures that the employment standards you set during screening remain the same.

Continuous Monitoring

Continuous monitoring, on the other hand, provides real-time data. It’s all about the present, not the past. This difference is significant, and there are a number of ways continuous monitoring can bring benefits to your organization. Here are a few examples:

• Your company’s executive posted harassing comments on her social media page recently. That’s something that you should be aware of before the media and your investors find out about it. Continuous monitoring of social media prevents unpleasant surprises and allows you to take prescient action when necessary, preventing you from having to play catch up.
• Sally joins your team as a driver. She had a clean driving record during her pre-hire background check. But a week ago, Sally was convicted of a DUI and cited for reckless driving. Before sending her out to represent your business, you should know that information, and continuous monitoring will ensure you don’t miss anything.

Continuous Monitoring offers the following benefits:

The goal of continuous monitoring is not to snoop into people’s private lives or be overly nosy; it is to identify threats and become aware of behaviors and choices that might jeopardize the success of your business. Despite the fact that most of what your employees do away from the office does not matter, some things do matter, and they matter a great deal. Being proactive requires ongoing monitoring so that you can identify and stay on top of those critical elements. Besides the benefits of rescreening, it provides you with real-time information so you can act instead of reacting.

Organizational Security

After hiring has been completed, screening is still necessary. Your organization can protect itself from employee and staff actions that may pose a risk to your vendors, investors, employees, customers, and reputation by conducting regular rescreenings when warranted and continuous monitoring of the essentials.

How are your employees’ off-hours actions or words affecting your organization? Affordable Background Checks’s background screening, and continuous monitoring provide the answer.

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