Red-faced in Florida
Boy, are they red-faced at the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF). That's the state agency responsible for making sure that children in the care of the state are treated properly. The agency has been in the headlines before for a variety of problems. Now the Orlando Sentinel reports that "Florida DCF to screen employees' backgrounds." What's involved is a review of the records of all the 13,000 plus agency employees to make sure that every one has been fingerprinted and every one has had a criminal background check. Why would they do that? The situation is a bit [...]
New background check policy
The Parthenon, the student newspaper of Marshall University, reports on the adoption of a background check policy by the University. Here's the lead. Employees who apply for jobs at Marshall University or Marshall Community and Technical College must now undergo background checks. The Board of Governors passed the background check provision, Policy No. HR-14, during its Oct. 16 meeting, marking the first time the university has required background checks campuswide, the policy said. The story gives us a look at many issues that have to be considered when an organization that hasn't mandated background checks before makes them a requirement. [...]
If one background check is good…
The Houston Chronicle recently ran an editorial about background checks for taxi drivers in that city. Here's the gist. By April, taxi drivers who wish to pick up or drop off passengers at Bush Intercontinental Airport will have to pass a background check by the Transportation Security Administration. The cabbies, 80 percent of whom came here from African nations such as Ethiopia, Nigeria and Somalia, protest that the background checks are redundant and discriminatory. They are right about the redundancy. Houston taxi drivers must undergo an FBI background check before they receive an operator's license. If that screening is meaningful, [...]
Background checks and more in hiring
Advance, a web site for health information professionals, asks: "What's more expensive than the time and money invested in hiring and training a new employee?" Their answer: "Doing it again, when a new hire exits unexpectedly." Then they lay out several strategies, including background checks, for doing a better job of hiring. The article is aimed at people who hire for positions called "medical coders." If that's not you, skip the article and read what follows. Here are a few highlights, along with my comments. "Know exactly what you need." Far too few companies do this. I'm not taking about [...]
See the government. See the government move slowly.
Sometimes I wonder what my government does with all the money I send them. I've been following the background check process of the Federal Government, hoping that I'd learn something about how to use background checks more effectively. Boy was I looking in the wrong place. There's an article in Government Executive about how "by Oct, 27, 2007, federal agencies were supposed to complete background checks for employees with 15 years' or less experience and begin issuing new identity cards." Want to guess how many Federal agencies met the deadline? The answer is none. Zero. Not one. And this was [...]
Background checks on chaperones?
I confess that when I read the headline, "Livonia schools runs criminal checks on chaperones," I found myself thinking that some people might be going overboard. But the article reminded me of an important thing about background checks and how you use them. You use them as part of a process of judgment. You decide whose background should get checked. The Livonia schools thought it was a good idea to check on chaperones because they're in positions of trust with young people they could easily take advantage of. Who should you be checking out? Who will be in a trusted [...]