Background Check Saves Nursery Against Being Sued For Negligent Hiring

Earlier this month a woman was charged with several counts of misdemeanor theft in Faribault County, the state of Minnesota. She had committed multiple thefts of money from other employees and residents at a nursing home where she was employed as a nursing assistant.

During the police investigation the administrator of the nursing home was asked whether she had undergone any sort of employment background check, and the nursery’s administrator was able to produce a proof confirming every potential member of the staff at the establishment strictly followed the pre-hiring procedure that included criminal background check against the existing criminal and police records databases. The background check was being performed by a third party people background screening company, which also checked the potential employee’s credentials and certification as required by law.

This is a prominent example of how the employer avoided being sued in court for negligent hiring, while there are many opposite examples you can read about rather often in the news. Considering that nowadays, when the Internet is often referred to as a huge repository of digital dossiers of just about everyone, many employers (especially small and middle-sized businesses) choose to do their own background screening using some freely available databases of public records. By doing so they save money they would otherwise have to pay to a Private Investigator.

But do they really save? Probably they do, until something like the theft I described at the beginning of this story happens. You could use do-it-yourself background check for just a sort of preliminary background screening, but should incident occur, especially involving customers or clients, only a background check that was run by a professional background screening company would make you 100% safe against being sued for negligent hiring.