Are Your Criminal Background Checks Legally Compliant?

Why Should You Attend:

Most of your employees are likely to be honest and reliable. At the same time, hiring employees always involves at least some risk. Are they honest? Are they reliable? Are you, your employees and your clients safe if you hire them? Hopefully your worst hire was simply someone who underperformed or wasn’t a match for your company. What if it’s worse, though? You can then be liable for negligent hiring or retention of those employees if a criminal background check would have revealed this information.

On the other hand, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and many of their state and local counterparts are scrutinizing if, how and when you may conduct and use information you obtain from criminal background checks in the hiring process. What should you do?

Through this webinar, attendees will learn how to conduct legally compliant criminal background checks. The course will discuss parameters of several pertinent laws and regulations such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA), EEOC’s 2012 Enforcement Guidance, and Ban the Box laws.

Areas Covered in the Webinar:

• What are background checks and why should you consider performing them?
• What is negligent hiring/retention? Cases of negligent hiring/retention.
• What is the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)?
• How do you comply with the FCRA?
• Cases involving the FCRA
• Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA)
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) position on criminal background checks
• EEOC’s pre-2012 guidelines
• EEOC’s 2012 Enforcement Guidance
• EEOC cases
• Ban the Box laws

Who Will Benefit:

• HR practitioners
• Managers
• Recruiters
• In-house counsel
• Employment, business and contract attorneys

Instructor Profile:

Janette Levey Frisch is an attorney with over 20 years’ of legal experience. Ms. Frisch, owner of The Emplawyerologist Firm, is on a mission: to help employers stay in compliance and out of court. Her extensive areas of expertise include federal and state anti-discrimination laws, FMLA, ADA, wage and hour issues, I-9’s, criminal background checks, employment agreements, terminations, and a myriad other challenges impacting employers today. Ms. Frisch worked as in-house counsel in the temporary staffing industry for almost nine years prior to starting her own practice.

Topic Background:

Government agencies concerned about equal employment opportunity for ex-convicts and for minorities have moved to restrict how and when employers may conduct and use information obtained background checks from a criminal background check when they are looking to hire employees. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and some of their state counterparts also have something to say. Used properly, a criminal background check can be an invaluable tool in your decision-making process. If you do not make sure your background checks are legally compliant, however, you could find yourself facing a lawsuit or an investigation from a federal or state government agency. If you do not conduct a background check at all, you could be exposing yourself to liability for negligent hiring/retention. These do not have to be your choices. You can conduct a background check that protects you from negligent hiring liability and keeps you under government radar.

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