I would understand if the readers of this article think that the title of the article ‘ Employee Background Checks and their Socio Economical Impact’ is a little too far-fetched. Let me explain my reason for why I believe that a stringent and mandatory employee background check can have far reaching affects on the social and economic conditions of the country.
First let’s understand what an employee background check entails. Background checks typically include the following verifications:
- Professional Verification
- Educational Verification
- Address Verification
- Criminal Record Verification
Now for a moment let’s assume that the need to carry out a detailed background check, by the hiring company, was a law in India. Would the mandate for a background check change the job seekers approach towards the job? Would it require the job seeker to be more honest and transparent? The answers to the above questions lie in the depths of human psychology. A large pool of the population wants to be law abiding and in the process leads a stress free life, free from the fear of getting caught. As per mass consensus, any requirement that is not a law is open to self interpretation or can be tweaked to suit one’s needs. Implementation of a law translates to a case of imposing honest by making dishonesty punishable.
Employee background check is one of the few checks that take into consideration multiple aspects of the candidate’s life into picture. It’s not a check for a given instance of the candidate’s life rather it spans over multiple years, taking into account the candidate’s educational and professional history, while being refreshingly current. Now if the employee background check was the law or for that matter a mandate in all companies, big or small, then it would push the candidates to be more focused on studies, as forging educational certificates would be a big risk. It would require the candidates to choose their career paths more carefully, apply themselves more honestly to their work and to be more honest about other aspects of the background check.
Not all people will be honest – there will always be a few that will try to game the system; the emphasis here is on having a large set of the population to follow the system. A study in comparison would be the mandatory military service law in Israel. In spite of this law not all Israelis would be disciplined but I am sure a large majority are. From a social aspect a strictly implemented employee background check process would result in a more transparent and honest society.
The economic gains from the above suggestions are a natural outcome. A country where the employee background check process is a law is a haven for all businesses, big or small. It’s a fact that companies that conduct stringent background checks have a higher retention rate and the employee background check being a law would put also put pressure on the job seeker to be honest.
Mandating a stringent employee background check will definitely create an positive impact on both the social and economical growth of the country. It will allow distribution of jobs to the most deserving candidate, curb falsification of educational or professional documents, and provide a win-win situation not just for the employee but also for the employers.
