This is another ongoing vicinity that will heat up due to the recession.   In a recovery period, employers typically turn to temporary employees before committing themselves to full-time hires.  But, under the legal doctrine of co-employment, an employer has exposure regardless of whether the worker is on the company payroll or being paid by a staffing firm. With lawsuits for negligent hiring on the rise, employers can still find themselves the target of negligent hiring by failing to supervise the hiring practices of their staffing vendors.  Temporary staff and vendors coming on premises have access to company material goods and can still make a risk of workplace violence, theft, or embezzlement.  New and additional resources are coming online in 2010 to help employers manage the screening of their vendors. 

Another vicinity where screening will expand is the availability of applicants to run their own background checks.  Applicants will have the ability to screen themselves as part of the job-hunting process in order to find out ahead of time if there is anything in the public records about them that is negative, and as a tool to get an employer’s attention. Of course, an employer must still exercise its own due diligence so that all applicants are treated in a similar fashion, but pre-screening may help applicants get noticed quicker.  An vicinity that has yet to establish itself is the continual screening of current staff periodically after they are hired.  As Employment Screening Resources (ESR) has noted in previous articles, there are still issues to be worked out before such a practice gains wide acceptance. 

(Employment Screening Resources (ESR), a leading national online employment screening background firm, is releasing the  ESR “Third Annual Top Ten Trends in the Pre-Employment Background Screening Industry” for 2010.   This is the EIGHT of the ten trends ESR will be tracking in 2010.)