In the state of Kentucky, only employees of nursing homes and assisted living homes (nurses, etc.) are subject to criminal background checks. These employees are typically the ones who provide direct care to residents. Members of the public are hailing this as a sane, common sense law, while others are lauding it as unfair to those who have undergone criminal rehabilitation.

On Thursday, the legislation was introduced to the 2012 General Assembly. The law states, among other things, that criminal background checks must be conducted for all long-term care employees. This law would extend background checks to janitors, and even dining room workers.

The motive for this law stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010. A Fayette Circuit Court found that a nursing home in Lexington unknowingly hired a registered sex offender as a maintenance worker.

The legislation is very exhaustive, and prohibits employment in nursing facilities or assisted living communities based on a variety of factors. The factors that would exclude employment are as follows: conviction of a felony related to theft, abuse or sale of illegal drugs, neglect, abuse, sexual exploitation of an adult, or any sexual crime.

The legislation was explicitly brought about in light of cases in which nursing home employees took advantage of residents. The exploitation was not only financial, but cases also documented workers taking sexual, emotional, and physical advantage of residents.

Lobbyists worked for nearly five years to draft legislation that would require background checks for all employees. The legislation was unanimously praised by these interest groups. One lobbyist stated "It's important because it affects the quality of the people taking care of our elderly population."

Similar legislation has also been brought about (Senate Bill 44) in the 2011 General Assembly, however, it failed. Lobbyists state that this may be because some lawmakers misunderstood the bill. Currently, no nursing home industry representatives have voices any opposition to the bill.

In June, a $3 Million dollar federal grant was given to Kentucky to conduct criminal background checks, using state of the art fingerprint technology instead of name based checks only. This grant for background checks was primaraly used by those in direct care facilities.

Top 5 Tips to Avoid FCRA Non-compliance
The ramifications of not following the “rules” surrounding pre-employment screening may lead to financial catastrophe as described in a complimentary guide provided by Pre-employ.com. You can download it here: http://www.pre-employ.com/5Tips

Free analysis:
Reviewing an organization’s background screening process yearly helps ensure that the procedures used follow the prescribed steps, and will identify areas of concern. Pre-employ.com offers a free analysis of background screening programs here: http://www.pre-employ.com/quote

*We welcome relevant comments and questions from consumers, experts, and human resources professionals. Please do not submit comments with advertisements as they will not be posted publicly. Thanks for visiting our blog!

Service is the hallmark of your nonprofit organization. But in order render that service, your organization’s legal standing and its status and reputation in your community must be preserved.

To help insure this, your nonprofit organization needs reliable employee background checking and volunteer screening before a worker joins your team. Once people are onboard, your organization becomes vulnerable, and damage may be done before you become aware problems even existed.

If your organization’s reputation is damaged, its ability to raise resources and funds within your community can be seriously, and perhaps irreparably, compromised. You simply cannot afford to expose your organization’s image and sensitive information to new workers who have not been properly screened.

But the need for background checks introduces the problem of performing them lawfully. Lawsuits over unlawful background checks are a reality. Organizations cannot risk performing these checks without a thorough knowledge of federal, state and local laws. This dual problem of needing checks while not having the expertise to perform them without legal risk puts many organizations between a rock and hard place.

Pre-employ.com exists to solve these problems for you. Pre-employ.com provides the expertise and tools you need to rest easy knowing your employees and volunteers match the integrity your organization embodies. Our experienced staff will sit down with you to develop a set of services that meet your unique needs. Our nationally-recognized Volunteer Screening platform is easy to use and efficient.

A leader in pre-employment checking, Pre-employ.com provides criminal background checks on the national, state and local level, testing for drugs, sex offender scans, license verifications, credit checking, as well as other services. Pre-employ.com was founded in 1994 and maintains a stellar record of regulatory conformity and research. A recognized provider to Fortune 1000 companies, Pre-employ.com continues to set the industry standard for timeliness, service and technology.

*We welcome relevant comments and questions from consumers, experts, and human resources professionals. Please do not submit comments with advertisements as they will not be posted publicly. Thanks for visiting our blog!

In the state of Kentucky, only employees of nursing homes and assisted living homes (nurses, etc.) are subject to criminal background checks. These employees are typically the ones who provide direct care to residents. Members of the public are hailing this as a sane, common sense law, while others are lauding it as unfair to those who have undergone criminal rehabilitation.

On Thursday, the legislation was introduced to the 2012 General Assembly. The law states, among other things, that criminal background checks must be conducted for all long-term care employees. This law would extend background checks to janitors, and even dining room workers.

The motive for this law stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010. A Fayette Circuit Court found that a nursing home in Lexington unknowingly hired a registered sex offender as a maintenance worker.

The legislation is very exhaustive, and prohibits employment in nursing facilities or assisted living communities based on a variety of factors. The factors that would exclude employment are as follows: conviction of a felony related to theft, abuse or sale of illegal drugs, neglect, abuse, sexual exploitation of an adult, or any sexual crime.

The legislation was explicitly brought about in light of cases in which nursing home employees took advantage of residents. The exploitation was not only financial, but cases also documented workers taking sexual, emotional, and physical advantage of residents.

Lobbyists worked for nearly five years to draft legislation that would require background checks for all employees. The legislation was unanimously praised by these interest groups. One lobbyist stated "It's important because it affects the quality of the people taking care of our elderly population."

Similar legislation has also been brought about (Senate Bill 44) in the 2011 General Assembly, however, it failed. Lobbyists state that this may be because some lawmakers misunderstood the bill. Currently, no nursing home industry representatives have voices any opposition to the bill.

In June, a $3 Million dollar federal grant was given to Kentucky to conduct criminal background checks, using state of the art fingerprint technology instead of name based checks only. This grant for background checks was primaraly used by those in direct care facilities.

Top 5 Tips to Avoid FCRA Non-compliance
The ramifications of not following the “rules” surrounding pre-employment screening may lead to financial catastrophe as described in a complimentary guide provided by Pre-employ.com.  You can download it here: http://www.pre-employ.com/5Tips

Free analysis:
Reviewing an organization’s background screening process yearly helps ensure that the procedures used follow the prescribed steps, and will identify areas of concern. Pre-employ.com offers a free analysis of background screening programs here: http://www.pre-employ.com/quote

*We welcome relevant comments and questions from consumers, experts, and human resources professionals. Please do not submit comments with advertisements as they will not be posted publicly. Thanks for visiting our blog!

Drug testing is an extremely popular process in the business world. Many businesses practice drug screening techniques in order to prevent drug abuse from occurring in the workplace. This can help to avoid possible accident, injuries, and errors while on the job. If you own a business, you can benefit from this screening process.

It's important to have a plan and policies in place before beginning testing. It's possible to require a drug screening process in order to offer employment to a potential employee. This practice has been ruled legal and constitutional continuously over the years. In order to practice these techniques, you will need to have a policy written out regarding your testing procedures.

How does pre-employment drug screening work? Applicants must show up at a testing site in order to give a urine sample. In many cases, negative results can be determined within 24 hours.

These tests take into consideration many different drugs. Most five-panel drug screenings test for Marijuana, Cocaine, PCP, Opiates, and Amphetamines usage. Employers also have the opportunity to use a ten-panel test in order to test certain prescription drug use. These tests are able to detect drugs that are present in an individual's system for certain periods of times. Many drugs are able to be detected if use has occurred within 2-4 days. Other drugs are able to be detected if drug use has occurred within 30 days.

It's a good idea to make applicants test within a given time period. This will not allow applicants to stop their drug use in order to illegally pass the urine test. Most drug testing laboratory centers can detect if a test has been altered to force favorable results.

The pre-employment drug screening process can be affordable. It's important to think of this service as an investment. As you put forth the money needed to accurately test applicants, you can avoid hiring employees who would perform poorly. If you don't choose to employ these testing methods, you may risk hiring an employee with drug use problems. With training and hiring and firing costs, you can actually spend more money by not including pre-employment drug screening into your hiring process.

If you want to look out for the overall well-being of your company, it's a good idea to create a pre-employment drug-screening plan. With this tool, you will be able to hire quality employees and will be able to minimize work accidents and problems.

Pre-employ.com offers a variety of drug screening tests as well as convenient solutions to integrate the drug screening tests seamlessly with our premier background check services. Contact Pre-employ.com to implement a drug screening program into your on-boarding process.

*We welcome relevant comments and questions from consumers, experts, and human resources professionals. Please do not submit comments with advertisements as they will not be posted publicly. Thanks for visiting our blog!

Most employers can easily grasp why running a quality background check is important, but unfortunately there are many myths floating around about background checks that could get even a well-meaning employer in trouble.

One myth is that there is some kind of national database to which private employers have access which contains all the information an employer could ever need to ascertain a potential employee’s criminal history and to confirm the education and employment information they have claimed. If only it were that easy.

Doing a thorough background check necessitates a lot of legwork and attention to detail. You have to know where to look, and you have to look in a lot of places. For a criminal background check, for instance, there are over 10,000 courthouses in the United States that have relevant records. These courthouses must be visited in person; they do not combine all their records somewhere for the convenience of employers.

A related myth is that to do a proper background check you need only consult commercially available databases.

Unfortunately while such commercial database services might seem attractively inexpensive, you get what you pay for. How likely do you think it is that the folks who compiled these databases went to all 10,000 courthouses and checked and double checked everything to minimize false positives and false negatives? Not very.

A third myth is that as an employer it’s really not too hard to do a background check that’s “good enough” so that if anything does go wrong you can’t be blamed.

In fact, the due diligence that is required of you can be quite stringent, not to mention unpredictable since it may boil down to what a given jury decides on a given day would have been a reasonable effort on your part to investigate a potential employee.

A fourth myth is the common belief that employers can disqualify an applicant based on a criminal conviction without a business justification.

Once a person has “done his time” the law does not allow him to be indiscriminately penalized the rest of his life by being rendered unemployable. If the nature of the job, the specific offense he committed, the amount of time that has elapsed since the crime, etc. indicate that he would be a substantial risk, then yes, you are within your rights as an employer to deny him a job. You are not required to hire a convicted sex offender to work at your day care, for instance. But if he smoked marijuana 25 years ago, that’s not sufficient grounds to rule him out for employment repairing clocks in your shop.

If you’d like some help maneuvering around these background check myths, the professionals at Pre-employ (http://www.pre-employ.com) are available to provide background check services to enable a growing business to avoid the legal and staffing problems that can arise all too easily in the hiring process.

*We welcome relevant comments and questions from consumers, experts, and human resources professionals. Please do not submit comments with advertisements as they will not be posted publicly. Thanks for visiting our blog!