The COVID-19 pandemic offers us a glimpse of the future, today. It’s forced us to rethink old ways of doing business, and to recognize that it’s time, perhaps past time, to embrace modern approaches to hiring, onboarding, and employing our most treasured asset, people. And it all starts with identity verification.
Verifying identity at the onset of candidate engagement offers crucial benefits to all employers, from the most traditional office-bound businesses to those with 100% remote workforces. Given announcements from several large companies, such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Twitter, stating their intention to embrace a partial or even complete remote workforce model, the latter category seems likely to only grow.
Creating safer workplaces starts with identity. Most background screening providers do not offer identity verification as part of their screening packages, yet many HR professionals mistakenly assume that identity is verified automatically as part of the background screening process. This is a risky assumption to make. In a recent 2019 survey conducted by HR.com’s HR Research Institute, 48% of respondents reported experiencing at least one instance of identity fraud in their organization. Data breaches and identity theft also continue to rise, exposing more identities to theft risk.
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s “2019 End of Year Data Breach Report,” 2019 saw a 17% increase in data breaches compared to 2018, with over 164 million sensitive records exposed. Verifying candidate identity at the beginning of the hiring process can allow you to detect fraud early and deter bad actors from even applying, which ultimately helps you create a safer workplace for you and your employees.
Verifying the identity of your candidates at the start of the screening process using convenient and remote automated methods can help reduce unnecessary risk. As an industry leader in background and identity services, Sterling provides a foundation of trust and safety that spans across industries, professions, and borders. Their flexible background screening, drug testing, and monitoring solutions can be tailored to fit specific needs and are designed to deliver a smarter, faster, and safer way to hire. Sterling Identity Verification helps reduce risk and verify the identity of your candidates at the beginning of the screening process. Through their relationship with OMNIA Partners, members receive savings up to 40%, access to a robust suite of background screening, verification, drug testing, identity and monitoring solutions, dedicated customer support, annual group volume rebate and service level guarantees.
Learn more about how Sterling Identity Verification can strengthen your background program.
