Workplace safety is of utmost importance to employers as well as employees. It is in an attempt to provide safety in the workplace that most employers conduct employment background checks.

There are few things as devastating to a business as an act of violence committed at the workplace, against a co-worker or member of the public. Even a threat of violence can be cause havoc. It is to prevent this that drug screening and employment screenings are essential.

Employers who have not taken employment screening seriously and have had incidents of workplace violence have had to pay a high price. More than two-thirds of companies taken to court by employees because of employee violence have had to pay a high price. The average penalty given to companies for negligent hiring has been $ 3 million.

Employee background checks are a crucial element of the hiring process. But the entire process needs to be done taking into account all the different laws. It is for this reason that most large corporate organizations hire employment screening services for the task.

Most experienced employment screening companies have the ability to have public record researchers go to any courthouse in the United States to research whether a particular applicant has a criminal record. All that these employment screening companies require to carry out this search is consent from the applicant as well as the applicant's social security number, birth date ands whether the applicant went by any other name previously.

Most employment screening services will search each county where the applicant has lived worked or studied for the past seven years. The seven years is the time frame that an employer can take into consideration while hiring an individual.

Employers who plan to initiate national employee criminal background checks on potential applicants need to give employment screening services considerable time. This is because there is no national database that employment screening services can log into for this data. They have to have their researchers search through court records in all states.

Employers who are employing the services of an employment verification company also need to make sure that the company conducts the search in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If not, the information that is obtained cannot be used by the employer.

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