Online Pay-As-You-Go Employment Screening Brings Big Organisation Background Checking To SMEs For The First Time

UK small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can make their employment screening as robust as that of larger organisations but without incurring the costs associated with traditional in-sourcing or outsourcing alternatives. UK employment screening company, Know Your Candidate has launched an online service for SMEs enabling them to source background checks such as Credit Checks, CRB Checks and Driving Licence Checks inexpensively on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Manchester 28, 01, 2010: For the first time, SMEs can enjoy the same level of employment screening certainty as large organisations; with a new online pay-as-you-go service from Know Your Candidate (www.knowyourcandidate.co.uk). Know Your Candidate allows businesses of any size to order, pay, track and download high-quality employee screening reports online. Registration is free and takes less than 5 minutes. Customers can buy any volume or combination of background checks they wish; with no set-up or annual fees to pay.

The service eliminates the costs and complexities of traditional in-house or out-source alternatives. In-house options mean investing time and money in set-up procedures and relationships with data brokers e.g. Credit Reference Agencies for Credit Checks and Identity Checks, Criminal Records Bureau for CRB Checks and the DVLA for Driving Licence Checks. Fees can run into thousands making it uneconomical for organisations recruiting less than 50 staff a year.

The outsourcing option also proves difficult and expensive if there are only a handful of employees to check at any given time and the employer does not know when they’re likely to require the services of the screening company again. This can lead to a second class service compared to large scale employers.

Barry Hetherington, Director of Know Your Candidate, says that the status quo discriminates against SMEs commenting, “On investigating the market we found employment screening providers consciously and unconsciously placing significant hurdles and barriers in the way of SMEs. These include issues such as: inflated pricing, lengthy supplier paperwork and forcing customers to buy set combinations of background checks. In addition, screening providers are very reluctant to give SMEs access to their online systems meaning that the employees’ details required to conduct the checks must be submitted by fax, giving the customer no visibility of progress until a final report is produced. This is a wholly unsatisfactory state of affairs.”

“We couldn’t see any reason why SMEs should pay more or receive a lower level of service than larger organisations. With the highest unemployment for a decade and their large corporate customers demanding ever increasing levels of security, the requirement for SMEs to conduct more robust background checks on their new employees has never been greater. Know Your Candidate delivers a high quality, cost effective employment screening service, on a pay-as-you-go basis.”

Commenting on the new service, leading enterprise email-management company Communicator Corp (www.communicatorcorp.com), with around 50 employees is a typical Know Your Candidate customer. As John Readman, Sales and Marketing Director at Communicator Corp explains, “Hiring the best people has always been a priority as success comes from having a good product and service delivered by exceptional people. For us, we know that this underpins our ability to provide our customers with the best service and it drives product innovation. Therefore, we need to ensure we have the best candidates. The Know Your Candidate service helps to ensure we achieve this.”

“Indeed it is now even more important as our customers and prospects are increasingly asking how we background check our staff, including Co-Op Financial Services who have been impressed with our proactive approach. Having the ability to source background checks quickly and inexpensively helps us to continue our policy of hiring only the best quality people and in turn this means that we can demonstrate our own stringent vetting requirements to our customers.”

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