We have been asking a number of HR professionals this question recently, and there’s a host of different answers. Broadly it falls into the following;

• Direct costs of sunk hiring fees (approx. 20% salary),
• Sunk cost of salary of a poor or disruptive performer (ask yourself, how long does it take to work out they aren’t who you thought they were and then decide to do something about it, 6 months?)
• Then put together a package to manage them out the business (3 months payoff?)

In this example that’s 95% of their first year salary and we haven’t taken into account all the indirect costs, such as

• How much company time was taken up interviewing them in the first place?
• How much HR and management time was taken up working out what to do?
• How disruptive was this person to the rest of the organisation, or worse, externally to your clients?
• Did you need external legal advice to confirm your actions?

All in all, we’re now talking well over 100% of an annual salary. Our cost per screening to avoid all these issues is less than 1%.

For this you get the opportunity to make better decisions as we provide:

• A full digital profile
• Confidence that you are hiring the right people
• Improve the quality of your workforce over time
• Reduced wasted management and HR time on resolving problems

Even a small business can save hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

Background screening is often seen as a tick box exercise. But can your firm really afford not to screen people properly?