Pre Employment Screening Articles

This initiative which started in early 2002 is the result of a congressional appropriation of $2 million. Congress directed NIOSH “…to develop an intramural and extramural prevention research program that will target all aspects of workplace violence and to coordinate its efforts with the Departments of Justice and Labor.”

In terms of extramural research, five grants totaling approximately $1.8 million were funded in September 2002.

The intramural funding is being used in the following areas:

A Federal Interagency Task Force on Workplace Violence Research and Prevention has been developed and the inaugural meeting was held January 23, 2003. The Task Force was formed to provide a forum for Federal agencies to share information on workplace violence research and prevention efforts as well as opportunities for collaborative efforts.

The NIOSH Initiative also includes an outreach component comprised of stakeholder meetings focused on four different areas of workplace violence(violence in health care settings, violence in retail trade, domestic violence in the workplace, and violence against law enforcement and security professions) to participate in separate meetings that will provide an opportunity for stakeholders who have an interest in workplace violence issues to share information about their organization; identify possible research gaps; and, identify opportunities for collaborative efforts.

Several research efforts are also encompassed under the initiative including analysis of the Workplace Risk Supplement that NIOSH funded as a special supplement to the National Crime Victimization for the period January through June of 2002, a telephone survey of workers treated for work-related assault injuries in a sample of U.S. hospital emergency departments, and planning for a survey of employers with regard to workplace violence policies, training, and related issues to be conducted in collaboration with the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Survey of Work-Related Assaults Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) maintains a database of injuries treated in a nationally representative sample of U.S. hospital emergency departments (EDs) called the national Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). Data routinely collected through NEISS include a brief narrative description of the injury event and basic demographic information such as intent and mechanism of injury, work-relatedness, principal diagnosis, part of the body affected, location where the injury occurred, involvement of consumer products, and disposition at ED discharge. For assaults, summary data are also being collected in the relationship of the perpetrator to the injured person and the context (i.e., altercation, robbery, sexual assault, etc.). For work-related cases, occupation and industry information is collected.

The current study consists of a telephone interview survey of workers treated in NEISS hospital EDs for injuries sustained during a work-related assault. The data collection will occur over a one year period. The survey includes an extended narrative description of the injury incident as well as items regarding general workplace organization; personal characteristics of the worker; work tasks at the time of the assault; training on workplace violence risk factors and prevention strategies; security measures in place and how they impacted the outcome of the incident; and return to work after the assault. This study will provide critical information for understanding the nature and impact of nonfatal assault among U.S. workers. In combination with data collected from other sources, this information will ultimately contribute to the prevention of violence in the workplace.

The Evaluation of State-Based Approaches to Workplace Violence Prevention
In 2001, there were 639 workplace homicides in the U.S., the lowest number since the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries began in 1992. It is not clear what factors have influenced this reduction and whether it will be sustained in subsequent years. The National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated 1.7 million nonfatal workplace victimizations occurred each year from 1993 to 1999, accounting for 18% of all violent crime during the 7-year period.

As the risks for workplace violence have been more completely described and recognized over the last decade, states and other policy-makers have begun to develop statutes, administrative regulations, or technical assistance information for workplace violence prevention. Unfortunately, there have been no rigorous evaluations of the effectiveness of any of the regulatory or other state-based efforts undertaken to date.

NIOSH is conducting an inventory of state-based approaches to workplace violence prevention to serve as a starting point for in-depth evaluations of the various efforts that have been implemented. Preliminary results indicate that there are some states, such as California and Washington, that have mandated requirements for training or other assessment of workplace violence risks, especially in particular high risk settings such as health care or late night retail. Others, such as Michigan, Minnesota, and Connecticut conduct special training programs related to workplace security. Some states (e.g., Indiana, Minnesota, Alaska) have issued general duty clause citations for workplace violence hazards. For the initial evaluation of a state-based effort, NIOSH funded a research contract for a comprehensive process and outcome evaluation of the California requirements in hospitals. A final report on this contract is expected in Fall 2003.

Employer-based Workplace Violence Prevention Survey
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has been conducting research on workplace violence risk factors and prevention strategies for a number of years using data from NIOSH sources, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, and others. The vast majority of the knowledge regarding workplace violence is based on information about worker victims of violent incidents, both fatal and nonfatal. Very little information exists regarding policies, training, and other related issues from an employer’s perspective. The employers’ perspective is a critical gap in the current workplace violence prevention effort.

To help fill this gap, The NIOSH and the BLS are conducting a survey of U.S. workplaces to evaluate the employers’ perspectives regarding policies, training, and other related issues on workplace violence prevention, including risk factors associated with workplace violence and prevention strategies. The findings of the survey will allow characterization of how the issue of workplace violence is being addressed in the United States workplaces and may be useful to identify where educational interventions are needed. Additionally, the information obtained through this survey will assist employers, decision makers, trade groups, unions, and government agencies in implementation of more comprehensive workplace violence prevention programs.

For More Information go to: http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/injury/traumaviol_research.html

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Introduction

Pre-employment screening is not only a necessity in today’s world but it is also a regulatory requirement for all financial institutions. To prevent fraudsters, terrorists and money launderers from entering the system as legitimate employees, the FSA has provided guidance on what they consider to be adequate levels of vetting for approved persons and by extension all others entering the industry in a permanent, temporary or contracting capacity. The FSA recently issued a report which stated, that there is evidence to suggest that organised crime groups deliberately target firms to place staff to commit financial crime, particularly identity theft.

A recent survey of 1500 UK employers found that 71% had encountered lies on CVs and 49% said it was a serious problem when recruiting staff’ The Guardian

Similar research conducted by Powerchex this month, found that in financial services, the percentage of employees lying on their CV is substantially lower, but still significant at 25%. Clearly, the industry’s pre-employment screening requirement has resulted in a lower incidence of discrepancies and fraudulent background information.

Employment screening practices

Employees need to be screened to meet companies’ standards of internal control and to meet the requirements of the FSA. Failure to have regard to the requirements of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA) can lead the authorised firm to be in breach of its own obligations to the FSA, and also exposes the firm to risk of employing individuals which can pose severe risk to the organisation.

The obligations of the regulated employer begin at the time of recruitment. To employ an individual who will be performing a controlled function or who will be occupying a position of significant influence, approved person status must be obtained from the FSA. The individual cannot carry out a controlled function until they have been deemed “fit and proper” for the role.

The concept of “fitness and propriety” can be further broken down into the following strands:

honesty
integrity and reputation
competence and capability,
financial soundness

The employer will need to submit Form A to the FSA regarding any individual who will be carrying on an approved person’s role, and will need to be confident that the individual put forth for the role fulfils all the requirements of “fitness and propriety” as outlined above. Form A requires a considerable amount of information and any reckless submission of inaccurate or misleading information is a criminal offence.

Completion of the Form A puts an employer in the unenviable spot of having to ensure to the best of their abilities that the 26 issues raised in section 5 of Form A are addressed and then verified. Extensive pre-employment references should be sought prior to confirming an offer and written consent should be obtained from the employee to undertake various credit checks and criminal checks.

It is obviously of paramount importance that the future employer is confident that the employee will be judged “fit and proper” by the FSA prior to confirming an offer. Should any adverse information come to light, then the employee may be unable to perform the role they were recruited for and the offer can be withdrawn prior to the start date of employment.

Issues

Most pre-employment checks are fast, unproblematic and relatively inexpensive. Such checks would include: credit and criminal record checks, directorship reports, academic and professional checks and money laundering /ID verifications.

There are however significant problems concerning pre-employment referencing. References should be sought from previous employers and many financial institutions have developed a standard form of questionnaire that follows closely the questions on the FSA’s form A.

Under the Financial Services and Market Act 2000 (FSMA), if a regulated employer is asked for a reference for a former employee and is notified that the prospective employer wishes to appoint the individual as an approved person, the former employer must provide all relevant information of which it is aware, as soon as practically possible.

SUP 10.13.12 of the FSA’s Supervision Manual (SUP) , which deals with approved persons states that if firm X is considering appointing an individual to perform an approved function, and requests a reference from firm B indicating to firm B the purpose of the request, then B must as soon as practically possible give X all relevant information of which it is aware. Under SUP 10.13.12, relevant information is considered to be:

Ø Any outstanding liabilities from commission payments.
Ø Any relevant outstanding or upheld complaints
Ø Section 5 of Form A in SUP Annex 4D; and
Ø Fit 2

Terry Saunders, manager of Small Firms Department at the FSA and previously responsible for handling the response to CP05/10 on approved persons; commented on the spirit of the regulation: ‘SUP 10.13.12R exists to reinforce good practice – providing full and frank references in respect of advisers and other customer function. FSA can and will raise the matter with individual firms where it appears that they are not fulfilling their obligations under this rule. However, it would be more satisfactory for firms to agree a common standard amongst themselves – via trade associations, discussion group’s etc- to ensure that the spirit, as well as the letter of the rule, is complied with’.

This is all well and good, when firms cooperate by sending each other regulated references in reasonable timeframes. The reality however is that few firms respond adequately. The majority tend to bounce the reference between HR the compliance department taking a very long time in producing a response (six weeks is not uncommon). Many firms will just provide a regular HR reference indicating only dates of employment, title and reason for leaving. The reason for this reluctance stems from employers’ fear of breaching data protection legislation and the risk of future employee litigation.

However, references given by one employer to a future employer may not be made the grounds for a liable action by the employee, even if the information proves to be inaccurate, provided that the employer believes the information to be correct and gives it without malice.

The Court of Appeal held that discharge of the duty of care to provide an accurate and fair reference will usually involve making reasonable inquiry in to the factual basis of the statements in the reference, and confirming unfavourable statements about the employee to those matters into which they had made reasonable investigation and had reasonable grounds for believing to be true.

The Court of Appeal held that although, to discharge the duty of care, an employer is not obliged to continue with an inquiry into an employee’s conduct after the employee has resigned, if an investigation is discontinued, unfavourable comments should be confirmed to matters that were investigated.

Although employers now often insert a disclaimer in references to declare to exclude liability for any loss or damage resulting from reliance on the reference, under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977, such a disclaimer will only be effective in so far as it ‘satisfies the requirements of reasonableness’. However, the conventional disclaimer is unlikely to be effective regarding those parts of the reference governed by the FSA handbook. Even so, it is perhaps worth including a disclaimer because it may take effect in relation to those parts of the reference that are not governed by the FSA handbook.

References provided under SUP 10.13.12 cannot be obtained from the referee by serving a subject access request under the Data Protection Act since confidential references are exempt from disclosure under schedule 7 of the DP Act. However, the employee may obtain a copy by serving a subject access request on the prospective employer.

Given the reluctance of organisations to provide full and frank references within a reasonable timeframe, the regulated employer is faced with the dilemma of having to either let the new employee start (but not be able to perform and authorised role) or risk losing the candidate to a competitor by taking too long to confirm the appointment.

A way around this dilemma would involve combining two kinds of references to achieve the regulatory requirement. Firstly an HR reference verifying dates of employment, title and reason for leaving and secondly a well placed phone call to a line manager or divisional director probing all the issues of fitness, propriety, integrity and competence.

Our experience at Powerchex is that most line managers are happy to discuss the performance, training record, fitness and integrity of a former employee once provided with a signed consent form from the candidate and the assurance that their reference will remain confidential.

The combination of the two references is enough for the employer to put forth the approved person for a controlled function.

Conclusions

Pre-employment screening is not as straight forward it first appears, as there are many issues that need to be addressed and considered especially when handling references.

An employer needs to be aware that an employee who makes a mistake does not necessarily breach the concept of ‘fitness and propriety’ unless there is reason to believe that one or more of the three components of the concept have been broken . These are:
· Honesty, integrity and reputation
· Competence and capability
· Financial soundness

The offer of employment should state that any inaccurate or misleading statements made to the FSA at the time of application by the employee is grounds for instant dismissal.

The offer made to the candidate should be conditional upon approved person status being achieved.

In most cases, the candidate’s previous line manager is able to provide the required assurance which will allow the recruiting organisation to put the applicant forth for a regulated role.

Employers should not hesitate in requesting verbal references from previous line managers since “a well placed phone call can be more useful than any written reference”.

http://www.powerchex.co.uk/documents/compliance%20monitor%20fit%20and%20proper.pdf

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According to a recent study up to 30% of all American workers say they have been “bullied” at work.
Many Americans are familiar with sexual and racial harassment, but not generalized workplace bullying,” said study team member Sarah Tracy of Arizona State University. Bullying can lead to higher company costs including increased employee illness, use of sick days, and medical costs, ultimately affecting productivity, she added.

Workplace bullying can include “screaming, cursing, spreading vicious rumors, destroying the target’s property or work product, excessive criticism, and sometimes hitting, slapping, and shoving.” Subtle behaviors, such as silent treatment, disregard of requests and exclusion from meetings, count as bullying.

Who falls prey to the office bully? Surprisingly it is not the grown up version of the awkward kid on the playground. In fact, according to the experts, office bullies go for the people who have the most potential to succeed. Gary Namie is a psychologist who not only studies workplace bullying but who has founded the nonprofit , BullyBusters,which is working to get states to pass anti-bullying workplace legislation.( 10 states have introduced legislation, none has passed a law)

“It’s much different than school-yard bullying,” he says. “This target isn’t the kid with the Coke-bottle glasses.”

Instead, workplace bullies tend to drive out colleagues they view as threats: those who are technically competent, independent, possess good social skills, and have strong ethics (and thus may be whistleblowers).

Targets tend to be reluctant to report bullying, primarily for fear of retribution, but also because they run the risk of being labeled a whiner or a snitch, or losing their job outright if the bully is their superior.

There is little evidence that workplace bullies go on to commit workplace violence. According to the Center for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, co-workers commit fewer than one in 10 acts of workplace violence.

While workplace bullying hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the U.S, it does seem to be a topic that has been “on the radar”in the UK and Australia for several years. There are several websites devoted to dealing with workplace bullying including Bully Online and Bullying that has posters and lots of information on how to deal with bullies.

How can you tell if you have a bully environment in your office? According to BullyOnline,

If you have a serial bully on the staff they will reveal themselves by their department showing excessive rates of

· staff turnover
· sickness absence
· stress breakdowns
· deaths in service
· ill-health retirements
· early retirements
· uses of disciplinary procedures
· grievances initiated
· suspensions
· dismissals
· uses of private security firms to snoop on employees
· litigation including employment tribunals or legal action against employees
http://funnybusiness.typepad.com/funnybusiness/2006/11/bully_bully_for.html

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Washington, DC - Fewer Americans are dying at work. It’s a long-term trend in workplace safety that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the nation’s top public-health authority, considers “one of the greatest health achievements in the 20th century.” Today’s workplaces are roughly 40,000 lives a year safer than they were in the 1930s, according to the CDC. By way of comparison, 40,000 U.S. women died of breast cancer last year and 42,000 Americans died on highways. Analysts say the biggest factors in improving workplace safety are:

· The expansion of U.S. service industries, which are relatively safe.
· Tougher worker-safety standards, whether voluntary or imposed under laws such as the 1970 Occupational Safety and Health Act.

· The reduction or export of high-risk mining, metals and manufacturing jobs.

· An increase in the number of working women, whose accident rate is about a tenth that of men.

· A decline in the number of small farms, where worker fatalities always have been high. “The kids didn’t get to use the new $50,000 tractor,” explained Guy Toscano, the retired director of the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “They got the old one without the roll bar and the other safety equipment.”

The latest numbers, released in August, showed that commercial fishing is the most dangerous U.S. job. Logging is second, followed by piloting or navigating planes, working in structural iron and steel on construction sites, and collecting refuse. The safest fields are office work and professions such as law, medicine, accounting and architecture.
Overall, workplace deaths totaled 5,702 for 2005, about 200 shy of the all-time low in 2003.

Three of the four leading causes of workplace fatalities are holding steady: highway deaths, falls and a category called “struck by object.” There’s been progress in the fourth: homicides. Convenience store employees and gas station operators – all of whom work with cash at night, often alone, and in all kinds of neighborhoods – are the main beneficiaries. About 75 percent of workplace killings begin as robberies.

For cabbies, the lifesavers are video cameras and partitions that separate drivers and passengers, according to Lucille Burrascano, a retired New York police detective who’s worked on the cab-violence problem for 25 years. In 1981, she said, cabdriver fatalities in the city totaled 26. This year to date there’s been only one.

For convenience store and gas station workers, one key was better lighting and visibility inside and out, according to workplace-violence consultant Rosemary Erickson, the president of Athena Research Corp. of San Diego, CA, and Sioux Falls, SD. Among her clients: 7-Eleven, Burger King, Wawa Food stores and British Petroleum.

Employees are instructed to cooperate when robbers confront them. Stores also discourage robbers with perimeter fencing that makes it harder to escape, plus drop boxes for cash and big signs noting that the register holds $40 cash or less.

The last strategy, along with many of the others, reflects insights that Erickson gained from interviewing more than 400 adult and teen robbers in Texas prisons. Among her findings was that $50 in cash motivated far more robbers than $40 did.

The BLS reports that workplace homicides in 2005 were down to 564 from a 1994 peak of 1,080. Here are the year-by-year numbers of U.S. workplace homicides from 1992 through 2005:
· 1992 - 1,044
· 1993 - 1,074
· 1994 - 1,080
· 1995 - 1,036
· 1996 - 927
· 1997 - 860
· 1998 - 714
· 1999 - 651
· 2000 - 677
· 2001 - 643
· 2002 - 609
· 2003 - 632
· 2004 - 559
· 2005 - 564

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