Global HRisk

With globalisation of businesses, it is becoming increasingly critical for corporates to hire candidates with a global exposure assisting organizations in meeting challenges and opportunities posed by globalization. For a multinational firm, a culturally fluent and internationally experienced candidate is crucial in order to remain globally competitive. Also such persons hold a competitive advantage in their ability to operate in a range of geographic markets.

However, with news pieces of corporate frauds and terrorism spreading like wildfire, it is imperative to look at background screening of these candidates too. In todays time and age, employers prefer to hire candidates who have an international exposure; be it in terms of education, employment or both. A candidate with a global exposure is critical for a recruiter as he/she brings diverse knowledge to the organization. But, the same person can come with his/her share of drawbacks as well.

An often overlooked gap in many employers HRisks programs such as conducting enhanced screening on international candidates. This includes not only conducting background screening on candidates sourced from locations outside of the home country, but also conducting global screening on local/in-country candidates who have a history abroad. An effective international background screening program helps employers more thoroughly screen candidates to help mitigate risk and improve the overall quality of hire, both domestically and abroad.

Though, the essentiality of global background screening cannot be stressed enough but it is supported by the following arguments:-

1. Safeguard against fallacious hiring:

such an instance arises when an employee harms another individual in the capacity of his/her job. Here the mantle of fallacious hiring falls on the employer, if he/she cannot demonstrate that thorough screening was conducted while considering the candidate for the job.

2. To ameliorate recruitment standards:

searching, training and retaining a talented human resource is the top most priority of an organization. When it comes to global screening, 32 percent of organizations that screen internationally do so to ensure a high global standard for hire quality.

3. Compliance:

for numerous organizations compliance with international regulatory requirements is the most important reason for conducting global background screening.

4. Data:

background screening data indicated that up to 52% of candidate background checks conducted in the Europe and Asia contained either a mis-statement or an inaccuracy. Consequently, human resource managers need to ensure that the candidates do possess the experience and credentials that they claim to have.Consequently, human resources managers need to ensure that the international candidates they are considering do, in fact, possess the experience and credentials they Overall, global background screening is performed for ensuring competency, protecting against physical, legal and financial risk but it all boils down to: protecting the organizations global brand reputation.

Many of the domestic challenges are magnified when background screening is done internationally and new challenges emerge. As a result, international background checks generally require much greater savvy, more resources and a longer timeline. However, certain hurdles have been enlisted as below:-

1. Complexity of conducting global background checks:

Each region/country is governed by its set of boundations which can be a result of language barriers (including translation of documents), legal differences (countries are steered by different Acts of the law), political uncertainty and cultural differences (local culture is the main driver of global HR practices). These various arenas add to the background checks becoming complex.

2. Privacy and data protection laws:

Another major legal issue to contend with includes the stringent data protection in countries where data privacy laws have been enacted (European Union and Canada). The various data protection principles in these privacy laws direct the manner in which information is obtained, utilized and transmitted across borders.

3. Credibility of sources: lack of data integrity:

Accurate, complete and timely information – and the level of credibility of various sources make the reliability of background checks questionable in terms of the manner of obtaining and how these would be used

4. Imperfect due diligence:

To exercise due diligence in hiring, employers must match their international screens to the same standards as their domestic background checks as hiring based on partial information could cause harm to the organization.