No reputable business plans to hire bad employees - people who steal from the company, sully its reputation through improper behaviour and business practices, and even commit violent physical acts against other staff. But these bad eggs are hired, in key jobs, more often than we could imagine.

Bad hires usually sting businesses with a lax pre-screening hiring policy, companies that have to "hire somebody right now," and end up taking on someone they shouldn't, says Ray Renaud, co-founder and director of Bison Security Group.

Renaud spoke to dozens of Calgary business people at a noon-hour meeting this week, making them aware of the information they have access to when checking backgrounds on job applicants, whether they are top-level executives, sales managers for small retail stores or drivers for a transportation company.

As a matter of corporate policy - and with the applicant's permission - most prudent organizations will check for criminal backgrounds, civil litigation, credit histories, driver's abstracts (demerits, etc.), and will verify resumes. The checks are done on people where a measure of trust is required. However, many companies don't do checks, or don't do a thorough job, says Renaud.

"All this information is available to companies providing they have the time to search it out," he explains. "But that's the problem. Some don't have the time, don't know where to start, don't have a process, or don't have contracts with agencies."

As part of an expanding business of 60 full-time employees in Calgary and Edmonton, Bison Security has started focusing on pre-screening as a significant part of the service it offers to clients. Renaud and Lance Saunders, both former RCMP officers, founded the company in 1980, initially offering polygraph services.

Bison has since evolved into a multi-faceted investigation and security-consulting firm. Its services include criminal, civil and insurance investigations; due diligence; security consulting; and retail loss prevention. Many of its staff formerly worked for the RCMP, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Calgary Police Service and Alberta Department of Justice.

In recent speeches to business groups, Renaud has outlined the benefits of pre-screening policies, and a unique web-based program designed by Bison that provides criminal and credit background checks for employers in as quickly as three hours.

Pre-screening, says Renaud, provides more information for companies to make a decision, limits company liability, reduces staff turnover rates and increases competitive advantage because firms hire more desirable candidates.

"We've decided to focus on this because more often than not when we investigate a company that has problems, we find that if they'd done a better job of pre-screening, they would have saved themselves a lot of grief," he says.

Bison typically investigates companies that have had money or company products stolen or employees who have stolen from clients in such areas as the hotel and tourism industry. Also, though not as prevalent, more cases are surfacing in the United States where employees are physically assaulting other staff in acts of rage, or sexually assaulting female staff. Victims, in turn, are suing their employers.

"In some cases, a criminal check would have identified these people when they were hired," says Renaud. "So a company can't stand up and say: 'We didn't know.' The courts expect that they should know."

Renaud guesses that about 10 to 20 per cent of the people pre-screened by Bison have some dubious history, usually surrounding criminal or credit issues. "You'd be amazed at the number of people who live beyond their means and have collectors after them, had bankruptcy issues, and had credit cards stopped."

These issues raise serious questions: Does this person just not know how to handle their money? Or are they high flyers living on the edge, substance abusers or problem gamblers? And what if that person has been hired to work in accounting? How vulnerable is the business?

Somebody who may have missed a few credit card payments is not an issue, but people who have collection agencies on their cases are a concern. These are the types of characters most likely to cause problems at work, the types who spend their day plotting and scheming.

Not all employees require pre-screening because they aren't in positions of trust. Nevertheless, companies are encouraged to apply "honesty tests," pre-hiring psychological tests that benchmark a person's level of honesty before they even proceed to the interview.

"One thing that we have found to be true is that a good worker will provide a good day's work for a good dollar," says Renaud. "A pre-screening process helps ensure you don't get someone who's going to disrupt the henhouse."

Anecdotally, Renaud can talk for hours about the "messes" specific companies have found themselves in - small operations and multi-nationals alike. Companies have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases; employees find themselves under the scrutiny of police or private investigators; fingers are pointed; and the workplace becomes dysfunctional.

As a rule, these companies are more than happy to sit down with Bison and develop a rigorous pre-screening process, says Renaud. They've seen how vulnerable they can become - and aren't willing to be stung again.

(Mike Dempster can be reached at miked@businessedge.ca)

Source: "Effective Pre-screening Weeds Out Bad Hires", Business Edge, January 16-22, 2003, Vol 3 No 3.