Top Reasons Why You Should Have DBS Checks Completed by Your Employees
Most employers screen the criminal background of prospective employees as part of the recruitment process. If you are not currently doing this for your employees, this article explains the reasons why it is a good idea to do so. By having DBS Checks for employees, this will help to protect your business from risk, it will also protect your customers and other employees. You want to be a conscientious, dutiful, and law-abiding business who customers trust, and be known for a good reputable reputation. Your employees reflect your business, and bad behaviour by them, damages your business. A good indicator of behaviour is how someone has behaved in the past. Checking someone’s past criminal record, may raise red-flags and set alarm bells off; or hopefully instead, it will reassure you that they have a squeaky clean past and are indeed the best candidate for the job.
What Will a DBS Check Look For?
There are different types of DBS Checks depending on what role the employee will be doing: Basic, Standard and Enhanced (with Barred List). A DBS check can check for spent and unspent convictions and can give information relevant to the job from the local police force.
Reasons to Get DBS Checks Done
Other good reasons to do a DBS Check are to:
Avoid Fraudulence
Half the people who have applied for jobs, have said that they have told lies on their CVs. When you hire a candidate, you need to know that they are qualified for the job and haven’t told lies about anything significant in their past and that they aren’t pretending to be someone different. Having a DBS check at least allows you to know, if they have committed any crimes that have caused them to have a criminal record. If your business is a bank or building society, you are unlikely to want to hire someone with a history of theft or credit card fraud. If your business is working with children or vulnerable adults, you are unlikely (and it would be illegal) to hire someone who appears on a Barred List for past violent or sexual offences with children or vulnerable adults.
Safeguard Customers and Other Employees
If someone has been convicted for violent or sexual crimes in the past, you are unlikely to want them near your customers or other employees. You have a duty of care and a responsibility to ensure your customers and staff are safe. You will want to avoid people with a history of causing physical or emotional abuse, hate crimes, discrimination, and extremism. None of these bode well for their interaction with customers or your other employees. A DBS check may flag these up as issues, and you would then know that this employee is not a good fit for your business.
Uphold the Reputation of your Business
Your employees represent your business, and the reputation of your business can rest upon how your employees behave and interact with your customers. You need to ensure that there are no breaches of data, and that nothing malicious is done with your business. Having reliable, trustworthy employees is a good step in the right direction to give you peace of mind that your employees build upon the solid business foundation you have created.
Meet Legal Requirements
As an employer, you are breaking the law if you offer someone employment in regulated activity (working with children or vulnerable adults) who you know is on a Barred List. The best way to check that you are not unknowingly doing this, is to ensure that any employees who will be working in regulated activity have completed an Enhance DBS with Barred List.
It is also important as an employer to ensure that you are not knowingly employing someone who does not have the right to live and work in the UK, this could lead to a five-year sentence and a £20,000 fine.
Ensure that DBS Checks are clearly written into your company’s recruitment policy as something you do with every candidate, to keep your business, customers, and employees as safe as possible.