Hiring Practices

Talent management: today’s marketplace has made it more important than ever for organizations to pay close attention to those two words. In our increasingly technocentric, globally-oriented business environment, how you acquire, manage, and maintain your talent pool has a quantifiable impact on your business’s ability to innovate, adapt, and remain competitive.

In today’s society, you often hear numerous accounts of bullying and teasing in America’s schools. You don’t hear much about these kinds of harassments in the workplace, especially on nursing floors. Although bullying exists in all professions, the problem seems especially prevalent in the nursing field – hospital floors, clinics and nursing schools.

Last summer, I reviewed a couple of states' social media legislation regarding sex offenders. 2013, however, has seen a fast-moving trend in state-level social media laws that directly affect employers. Arkansas, Colorado and Washington are the latest states to implement workplace social media privacy laws this past April and May. As of June 5, 2013, there are nine states with social media workplace privacy laws in place, which also include Maryland, Illinois, California, Michigan, Utah, and New Mexico.

PreCheck's Compliance Director, Vu Do, recently wrote an article that was published in the January 2013 issue of Compliance Today, the Health Care Compliance Association's publication only available to its members. If you are not an HCCA member, you may access the full-length article here.

You've heard the term and you suspect you know what it is, but what exactly is a social trace, and why is it important?

Background Report Basics

The social trace is a fundamental tool and part of most employment background checks. Let's first understand the standard components of a background check to better grasp the function of the social trace.

Typically, an employment background check consists of conducting some or all of the following searches:

Checking for criminal records on potential employees and students entering medical facilities is a definite must have for patient safety. What about their immunization records? Immunization tracking plays a very key role in ensuring that employees and clinical students are protected from contracting illnesses from the patients they care for and observe. Many healthcare workers are at risk for exposure to and possible transmission of vaccine-preventable diseases.

As a reputable employer yourself, it probably comes as no surprise that the majority of employers and educational institutions that we contact for verifying applicant history or credentials require that we provide them with an authorization (release) form signed by the applicant before they will provide any information. As people continue to become even more concerned with sensitivity of personal information and maintaining secure data, we are seeing an increasing trend in such requirements.

Ever wonder if there's a best time for submitting your background check order PreCheck recommends a general rule of thumb—the earlier in the day you can send in your request, the better. We don't publish a hard and fast cut-off time because we know that volumes and hiring practices can fluctuate, but we suggest sending in orders during the first half of your day.

Did you know that as of February 2012, 8.3% of the population was unemployed according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics? This has created what is known as an "employers market" where there are far more applicants to choose from to fill empty job positions.

A nurse with a drug addiction was charged with stealing Propofol from the hospital where she worked. Personally identifiable information was stolen and sold by a hospital employee with access to patient files. At the hospital where he was employed, a patient escort sexually assaulted a patient in his care.

These crimes didn't happen at the same hospital, but these are actual cases where those healthcare employers were then asked 1) what they knew about each employee's criminal history 2) when they knew it and 3) what they chose to do with that information.