After several years of economic growth, the labor market has finally begun to tighten.  Companies are having more and more trouble hiring employees just as they are starting to contemplate expansion – which is unfortunately the way that labor market supply tends to work.

It’s no surprise, then, that the 11^th Annual HireRight Survey found that finding and keeping good employees are the top two areas for HR investment in 2018.  What might be more surprising is the very next item on the list – 49% of all surveyed companies are planning on making investments in improving the efficiency of HR processes.

Unfortunately, the pressure placed on HR to find qualified employees cascades throughout the entire department.  Companies with exhaustive screening processes often find interested candidates poached during the hiring process.  However, if companies conduct less exhaustive screening processes, they inadvertently hire candidates who don’t value company policies, have questionable ethics or otherwise tarnish the company’s reputation.  In fact, the HireRight report indicates that hiring managers are currently more worried about negligent hiring than any other compliance concern.

Failure to quickly remove negligent hires from the company can poison the culture, Ironically, this leads to an exodus of great employees – exacerbating the exact employee shortage the new hires were brought in to solve.

Any reduction of screening processes (or in hiring selectivity) places extra importance on the efficiency and effectiveness of compliance and investigations teams.  So it’s not just the hiring process that needs to be more efficient during tough hiring seasons – it’s all HR processes, including risk, compliance and investigations.

So if your team is facing pressure to increase hiring, and is having trouble filling positions, make sure that processes are in place to screen out employees with poor policy adherence or questionable ethics.  These processes should maximize your odds of efficiently identifying and removing these employees both pre-hire and post-hire.  After all, hiring one employee won’t help the company much if they cause ten good ones to leave!

To learn how CMTS:HR can help your company more efficiently manage your workplace investigations, call us at 855-636-5361 or email us at Team_CMTSHR@CMTSHR.com.