Your Candidate Has A Criminal Record: Now What?
Court Convictions, Disclosable Court Outcomes: Individualised Risk Assessments – the new Australian Standard AS4811 way.
Research has found that about most employers do not perform any type of individualised assessment when criminal convictions are present. Therefore an adverse or derogatory Police check “Result” from one of 165 providers should not provide you any comfort whatsoever. The hard work now begins. What makes that Police record bad enough to say no? Gut instinct is not enough. Where’s your documentation, where’s your analysis? Where is your assessor’s qualifications to make such a decision?
The Cleard Life process creates an individualised assessment which evaluates all the important factors surrounding the discovery of adverse information – including that easy-to-get Police check. This includes the nature, type, recently, frequency and severity of the behaviour. Most importantly the process allows the candidate the opportunity to provide truthful information for why that disclosable court outcome should be discounted to some degree.
AS4811-2022 Workforce Screening – consider by most as the world’s best practices – has these two figures. Both are a must.
Making the Decision Not to Hire
Cleard Life includes a two-step adverse action process. Cleard Life discovers risks and questions are asked of the candidate in full and frank way about any adverse information – including being arrested or charged (not just being convicted of an offence) in Australia or overseas. Then all the favourable and unfavourable information is then analysed. By outsourcing the two-step adverse action process to all candidates, the employer is able make standardised hiring decisions.
- It provides the candidate the opportunity to be heard. What does a 1:1 suitability interview feel like?
- It standardises your company’s risk assessment criteria – to a standard that 400,000 Australians have gone through.
- Risks are appropriately analysed and reviewed by security cleared, qualified assessors using the PSPF Adjudicative guidelines for personnel risk, meeting Australian Standards 4811-2022 for Workforce Screening.
- It all but eliminates employer discrimination risk: 1 in 4 Complaints to the Human Rights Commission are due to Criminal Record Discrimination. Are you next? Just because a candidate has a conviction or some other adverse issue in their past, it doesn’t mean they should be disqualified from the job. Having Cleard Life take care of the fair and standardised process and having a policy in place to enable making decisions about backgrounds will help organisations remain consistent, fair and compliant as they evaluate prospective employees.
Why increase the ‘scope’ of risk to include more than just criminal history found on a Police certificate?
Because counterproductive workplace behaviours may not escalate to a conviction (or not for a long, long time) and because personnel security is fundamental to good business.
The risk of compromise to information and assets from the employer’s workplace is too high to ignore – or to trust – with a garden variety Police check. Past behaviour could be deliberate or unintentional. Who knows – it could be a pattern. How well do you know your candidates? You need to know before they log in to your systems. You can’t leave this to chance – or rely on a point-in-time Criminal History Police check. That maybe even be seen as borderline negligent. Why? Consider the below insider threat behaviours (and the harm they can cause). They may never result in a formal police conviction. You would therefore NEVER know. You need to open the aperture to assess the whole person by using fair whole-of-person protocols.
Action/threat >> Harm
Theft, fraud and corruption >> Financial losses, unauthorised access or dissemination
Information leaks >> Reputational damage, loss of intellectual property
Privacy breaches >> Compromised client information
Sabotaged systems or equipment >> Disruptions to operations
Violent acts or threats >> Safety risk
Source: Table I Insider threat examples.
Conclusion:
We enable organisations to safely put the right people in the right place, at the right time. It reduces the pain of engaging the wrong person.
What lies beneath a candidate’s profile … needs to be a cleard life. Just like the tip of an iceberg, the candidate may present well, may or may not have a police record, but it can conceal an even larger mass of risk. Cleard Life checks ‘what lies beneath’ so employers can hire confidently.
We are leaders in this space and have transformed screening into a high-end, candidate-centric, faster, fairer, cheaper, more thorough, better solution.
Our solutions are built for the processing demands of a modern economy – fast recruitment, temporary workforce, tender due diligence and personnel compliance. If you are happy with your outsourced ID & Police Check provider, then keep them if you wish. We know they don’t offer individual interview & risk assessments. Choose our suite of standalone CL Products as an ‘overlay’ to your existing services to keep you safe, compliant, and reduce personnel security risks.
Talk to us about how our we can help. Phone (02) 6171-4171.
__________________________________________________
Read more:
Critical Infrastructure Clearance
If your industry membership has a reputation to uphold, then include us into your application process. Read more here.
Small Business Owner: Legitimately dig in to a Candidate’s past without fear of anti-discrimination, or bias. Read more here .
Existing Employees: Vet them as part of the annual personal conduct review. Read more here.
Pre-employment: Screen using a third party, for compliance, due diligence. Read more here.
