Pre-employment screening

Integrity check of applicants

Benefits for the company and its employees

• Protection against applicants who have deliberately made false statements about themselves during the application phase.
• Protection against applicants who are unsuitable for positions of trust.
• Protection against the intrusion of organized crime groups or radical/extremist/terrorist organizations/groups or intelligence services into key functions of the company.
• Protection against potential reputational damage to the company.
• Demonstration of responsibility towards customers, business partners and employees.

Arguments for professional pre-employment screening

• Before signing, lawyers on both sides rightly review the employment contract thoroughly and charge a corresponding fee. However, the focus is only on legal and formal aspects, not on the question of who the contract is with! Even a perfect employment contract is of little use if the person you're signing it with lacks integrity.
• Reputational damage caused by negative media coverage in print, TV, radio, or social media due to employee misconduct can quickly result in significant financial losses for a company. Lost revenue and the termination of business relationships due to business partners' compliance regulations, as well as the costs of restoring reputation, add up quickly. Checking an applicant's integrity can prevent unpleasant surprises. Investigating such incidents often reveals that the person responsible has already behaved improperly in the past.
• The damage caused by information leakage from a company by a disloyal/criminal employee can be enormous, not only in research and development or the technology sector, but in all areas involving sensitive corporate data. In addition to the financial damage caused by lost sales/profits, etc., reputational damage is often the more serious consequence. Under certain circumstances, employee behavior can even result in criminal prosecution for those responsible for the company. Here, too, screening an applicant for their integrity can prevent unpleasant surprises. Both indications of intensive contact with competitors or even intelligence agencies, as well as potential vulnerability to blackmail due to personal weaknesses, can be identified through professional pre-employment screening.
• The liability risk for managers in connection with the recruitment of employees should not be underestimated. As part of the conscientious conduct of business, those responsible for the company (both those directly responsible such as the HR manager and bodies such as management and supervisory boards) must avoid or avert damage to the company. This duty is fulfilled through professional pre-employment screening. Investigations into incidents often reveal that the employee responsible has previously exhibited similar behavior or perhaps even terminated a previous employment relationship due to the same misconduct. In these cases, the obvious conclusion is that the damage to and for the company could have been avoided if a screening had been conducted before the hiring. Then the hiring would never have taken place. From this logical analysis, realistic liability and compensation scenarios can be derived – with corresponding risks also affecting the private sphere of the responsible persons.