It is important that organisations include background checks in their processes. Background checks are essential as they serve as a vital tool to eliminate fraud and wastage within organisations.
Kola Olugbodi (Managing Director, Background Check International) believes that background checks are a powerful tool to restore sanity in corporate organisations. He stated that it helps to avoid wrong hiring by making sure employers do not hire people who could be deceitful to the company.
BCI boss explained to me that background checks do not focus on hiring at face value or by the resumes of individual states. It is about eliminating frauds among employees.
He advised corporate organizations to accept background checks as a vital tool to eliminate frauds and wastage from their systems.
Olugbodi stated that Background Check International had a significant impact on their work. Know Your Staff (KYS) is not only about what potential employees claim to be but also corroborating and verifying those claims.
KYS also involves knowing more about your staff. This ensures that you know if the staff have the skills required to get a job.
He said: Background checks also help ensure that potential staff do not have criminal records. It also helps to ensure that applicants who claim to be working experience have a solid character as well as proper conduct in the past.
Olugbodi stated that his organization has been involved in pioneering background checks in Nigeria for over 17 years and had saved many organisations from blind hiring. He also said that his organisation had made employment decisions based on statistical and empirical evidence.
He said that corporate organisations must see background checks as a crucial tool that will assist in corporate hiring. Background checks will help organisations avoid criminally-minded or fraudulent individuals who cause bottlenecks.
He said that background check is not witch-hunting. We advise our clients to make sure that any staff involved consents to the verification process. We advise organisations to take the steps necessary to prove their actions. Everybody should be included in background checks.
Staff have sometimes decided to resign instead of being verified. This could be because of fraudulent activities in their past employment. Background checks are not a discrete inquiry. It is about checking public records and institutional data about the staff. Staff can give consent or not, which means that appropriate actions would be taken to verify and authenticate the information provided.
