Are You Background Checking Your Seasonal Workers?

For shoppers, the holidays are fun, frantic, and trying: to do lists as long as your arm, malls thick with traffic and impatient shoppers, budgets stretched like rubber bands. Throw in a few crying kids, desperate to see Santa Claus, and even the world’s best parent would be forgiven for being distracted. It’s natural and understandable.

Any mall that cares about its customers will do what it can to persuade their worries by conducting drug and criminal screening on Santa and his elves so parents know they aren’t sending their children into a dangerous situation. It’s just one of those careful business steps that need to be taken, to ensure that rigorous standards are being maintained.

Chances are that nothing is amiss. But criminals today are growing increasingly adept at hiding their identities, and keeping their secrets from prying eyes. And that’s a big problem for business.
Background checks for such sensitive issues need to be thorough and deep, and to leave no stone unturned.

Running drug and chemical screening for jolly old St. Nick might be an uncomfortable subject for many businesses because employers like to trust their employees. Yet background checks, on average, weed out about 7 to 10 percent of applicants, so it does demonstrate that mall managers need to be vigilant and thorough.

Think of it as one more ritual to make sure that the holidays are safe and happy for all.

Kristina Taylor
In 1989, Kristina began her career as a customer service representative at the newly formed American Tenant Screen, Inc. Ten years later, she pioneered tenant background screening on the Internet. As a long-standing member of the National Multifamily Resident Information Council (formerly the National Association of Screening Agencies) Kristina gains insight into the trends of the tenant screening industry to better understand the current and future needs of their clients.

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