But they already did a background check!
According to the Akron Beacon Journal, officials at the Scioto Youth Camp in Perry County, Ohio and Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, Ohio are pointing fingers at each other over a volunteer camp counselor accused of inappropriately touching three young boys at a church camp.
The camp officials say that they didn’t do a background check on Timothy Stephen Keil because “his church, Fairfield Christian Church, told them Keil had already passed a background check there to become a Sunday school volunteer.” The people at the camp didn’t think a second background check was needed.
Meanwhile church officials said they ran a background check, but couldn’t locate it in their files. When they asked the company that runs their background checks to review their records, it turned out that no one ran a background check on Keil.
Keil is now accused of molesting three young boys at the camp. He was previously convicted in Pennsylvania on the charge of corruption of a minor.
There’s a real simple lesson here. Do your own background checks. Nobody else’s background check is your background check. Only your background check is your background check.
Avoiding lawsuits
Business Journals around the country are running an article titled “Avoiding litigation that will keep you awake at night.” You can read the whole article here in the South Florida Business Journal if you have a business journal subscription. In case you don’t here are some key points:
If there’s a bully working for you, you can’t sit by and let him or her run roughshod over others. You need to confront the employee, point out the bad behavior and the consequences if it continues. Then deliver the consequences if behavior doesn’t change.
The article covers several issues like abuses of leave, where the lesson is essentially the same. When you’re confronted with bad behavior, you have to deal with it. It’s your job as the boss.
What about preventing bad behavior? The article offers two clear pieces of advice. Here’s one: “Conducting a thorough background check on new hires can save a lot of hassle in the long run.” If you’ve got an applicant who is likely to create problems for you, an effective hiring process, including a background check, can help you avoid a hiring mistake.
The other bit of advice is to make your expectations clear. The people who work for you need to know what your policies are. They need to know what you expect and what you forbid.
Tell new people when they’re hired. Review key policies with everyone regularly.
Take away these three rules to help you avoid lawsuits.
- Hire carefully and well, using reference and background checks.
- Tell people who […]
Trust in God, but do your background checks
I’m a preacher’s kid so the workings of churches have a special fascination for me. That’s how I happened to be reading an article about New Life Church in Colorado Springs and their search for a new pastor.
They’ve been hunting for a pastor since their founding pastor, Ted Haggard, was fired in November after admitting to an affair with a male prostitute that included drug use. That story was covered by all the major news outlets because Haggard had been a vocal advocate of “family values.”
As I was reading the article, one sentence jumped out at me. “Ware told the crowd that he was impressed by Boyd’s integrity and especially by two of his responses during the detailed selection process that included background checks.”
Background checks for pastors? Wow. I guess the world has changed a lot since I was a kid.
A background check wouldn’t have prevented the church’s problems with Mr. Haggard. Although prostitution is illegal in most states, and drug use certainly is, the behavior that got him in trouble happened after he was already in a position of trust.
Still, if you’re a church, you want to do everything you can to avoid the kind of embarrassment and anguish that New Life Church went through. And if you’re not a church, you still want to do everything you can to make sure that no one you hire winds up on the front page of the paper for a bad reason.
Just because it’s your policy doesn’t mean you’re doing it
UCLA is embarrassed. They missed checking a coach with a criminal past:
One day after news broke that wide receivers coach Eric Scott was arrested for burglary and had a lengthy list of prior arrests and convictions, Guerrero said the school would reserve judgment until it gathered all the facts, but he also made it clear that it knew little about Scott’s past.
UCLA isn’t alone. In Alabama, consternation reigns at the Dothan City Schools. Another employee with background check issues:
[Keaton Lamar] Battle, 34, was arrested last Friday in Donalsonville and charged with two counts of enticing a child for immoral purposes. Until May, Battle had worked as a teaching aide at PASS Academy in Dothan. Neither of the alleged incidents happened at PASS, but one happened while Battle was employed there. The Alabama Child Protection Act of 1999 requires anyone working in a job with unsupervised access to children to be fingerprinted and submit to a background check. The city school system also asks potential hires whether they’ve ever been arrested or convicted of a felony or misdemeanor.
The two incidents are different. But they have the same lesson for you.
The UCLA incident is the “Case of the Background Check that Didn’t Get Done.” UCLA has a policy to conduct background checks on fulltime athletics department staff. But no one did a background check on Eric Scott.
The Dothan incident is the “Case of the Background Check that Came Too Late.” In Alabama, the state runs the background check on teachers […]
Background checks as part of the hiring process
The NBA is scrambling to deal with a point shaving scandal involving one of its referees. The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the Big Ten think they have the answer: background checks for referees. Here’s how an article in the Baltimore Sun describes the ACC position:
For the second season, the ACC is requiring all of its approximately 225 officials for football and men’s and women’s basketball to allow the league to conduct a background check. Every official will be checked once every four years, and roughly 75 checks are conducted each year.
So far the checks have resulted in several referees being questioned about their activities. No referees have been removed from the ACC roster. That’s a good process: using the background checks to determine where to investigate further.
A criminal background check can tell you if a person has a criminal record. A credit report can give you an idea if lifestyle and reported income match up. But they’re only a starting point.
Most of the time you will probably want to do what the ACC does, use the reports as a starting point for questions. You should consider other things as well.
The combination of point-spread betting and the fact that a single player can make a huge difference in the score and outcome of a game make basketball a candidate for point-shaving scandals. One thing basketball leagues, college and pro need to do is look for ways to make this harder and to put systems in place to catch offenders […]
Rental agreement and background check: the Dynamic Duo
Batman and Robin were a team. They were a Dynamic Duo, just like your background check and rental agreement. But the team only works for you if you use them both. Background checks can help you eliminate people you don’t want in your property. Rental agreements will help you deal with people on a month-to-month basis.
Most landlords know about leases. But many landlords who rent month-to-month often don’t have any rental agreement at all. That’s silly. Rental agreements work for month-to-month renters the way leases work for longer terms: they lay out terms and conditions.
Some of the rental agreements are the kind you get at the stationery store. They’re one-size-fits all and may not fit your situation.
If you’re renting your units month-to-month, the rental agreement can make your tenants behave and help you with tenant screening. To get a rental agreement that works for you, start by drafting your own. Include everything you think is important or that will be helpful. Then have some other people review it
Include basic details about the rental. How much is the rent? When is it due? When and how are penalties for late payment assessed? What happens at the end of the month? What are the names of the people who are occupying the unit?
Include other terms that are important. You may want to specific things like the number of people who can be in the unit, whether or not pets are allowed, etc. What will you allow? What is forbidden?
Include some possible […]