It’s Time to Digitally Transform your Employee Background Verification Process

The past few years have been a time of unprecedented change for human resources and recruiting. As workplace innovations take centre stage, the eyes shift to the HR department to evaluate how they shall leverage technological advancements to improve outcomes and deliver greater value to the organisation.

The focus, in this quite naturally, shifts to candidate experience. Creating positive candidate experiences has been organisational prerogatives for quite some time now especially in the face of accelerating attrition. It can be easy to lose good candidates and alienate potential star recruits if the recruiting experience gets too cumbersome.

Candidates now want friendly and friction-free experiences. Studies reveal that 72% of candidates with poor candidate experience will share the same on sites such as Glassdoor or social media platforms. The background verification process can impact this experience if it fails to be at par with the elevated recruitment process.

BGV and the need to digitally transformation it

The background verification process (BGV) is an essential process that involves a variety of checks such as verification of the education and employment records, identity verification, address verification, past employer details to make sure that no hiccups from the employee’s past impacts the organisation’s present and future. This process needs digital revamp because of:

The impact on candidate experience

The BGV process usually takes 3 to 6 weeks if the employer is looking for more in-depth information. In today’s global markets, many organisations also have clients who want access to background checks of employees who are working on their projects to make sure their interests are secure at all times.

Having said this, while the background verification process is an essential recruitment process, it must be handled professionally and unobtrusively. Asking the candidate to furnish too many documents, extending the verification process by weeks, extensive reference checks are essential but all this can often be too much for the candidate.

While the organisation is right in demanding all relevant documents, asking for too much information leads to extensive time and resource wastage. It can also spell mistrust to a potential employee and unnecessarily mar the recruitment experience.

Misrepresentation and discrepancies on documents

Reports also show that cases of discrepancies across sectors like telecom, retail, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), travel and hospitality and manufacturing, etc. showed an increase in the discrepancy percentage.

According to the “Background Screening Trends Report for India” out of every 100 candidates screened, 11 had discrepancies in their joining forms. False information on previous compensation, address, place of origin, educational and professional degrees being the fairly common anomalies.

Avoiding these discrepancies are essential to fine-tune the recruitment process and ensure that only the most qualified and honest candidates join the organisation.

Global markets mean adherence to client’s compliance needs

Global markets, distributed teams, outsourcing, nearshoring and such activities are becoming a common part of the enterprise vocabulary. However, given the compliance, regulatory, and governance framework, organisations might need to provide background check certificates of employees working on client projects if the client needs so.

While organisations can, in some cases, provide old background checks of employees, the client might demand a more current background verification. Enabling the same in a short time frame can be a challenge since usually, this process in most organisations is a manual process and, hence, a long drawn one.

Given these forces at work, it becomes imperative to digitally transform the BCV process. By embarking on this journey, organisations can capably:

• Make hiring simple, fast, effective, and convenient: Using a comprehensive BGV solution, organisations can look into employees’ present and past employment information instantaneously. Getting details like details, tenure, salary credits & hike trends in the employee’s previous organisations can help the current organisation make smart and informed decisions. With this in place, it becomes easier to shortlist genuine candidates, make the right salary offers, identify no-shows before the joining date, and also avoid poor hires.
• Get quick and accurate information: Instead of focusing on leg-work and wasting precious time and resources on getting background information on an employee, a tech-enabled BGV solutioncan add economies of scale to this process.  No matter how many candidates you need to screen, a digital solution can provide quick and accurate information bringing in agility and speed without worrying about numbers. Organisations also do not have to worry about spending an inordinate amount of time in the background verification process and can gun for real-time Employment Verification using ITR, PF, Bank Statements & other reliable sources. A robust solution will provide you with the past and present employment background data in a snap instead of the weeks that manual processes usually take.
• Improve recruitment costs: A digitally transformed background verification process helps organisations find fake claims, and make the right salary offers, hire genuine and honest candidates. It also assists in saving on some bad costs that can emerge from erroneous background checks. Saving costs emerging from poor or wrong hires, avoiding settlement costs, and slashing spends on hiring and verification by 95% are some of the cost advantages of using a strong BGV digital solution. With the right solution, organisations can save up to INR Rs. 10 Lakhs per 100 hiresfor the organisation. With a digitally powered solution, an organisation can also deploy resources faster for billable projects.

In Conclusion

Organisations across the globe are looking at ways to infuse agility and speed into their processes. The BGV process is no different. Given the current climate of change, growing skills gaps and the need to fill positions faster, digitally transforming this process is not important but rather, imperative.

Connect with us to see how you can transform your BGV process and bring it up to speed with the rest of the enterprise.