Protecting Workers Comp Costs with Employee Pre Screening

With so many different things causing potential cost increases in your workers’ comp budget, every employer needs to make employee pre-screening a top priority. Effective pre-screening of potential employees optimizes workforce productivity and INCREASE the company’s bottom line.

 

Pre-screening during the employment process identifies a variety of issues such as medical, alcohol or substance abuse, and other factors not always detectable during the normal interview process. Some issues may make a particular candidate a poor fit for employment at your company. (Keep in mind laws and regulations governing hiring the disabled and anti-discrimination rules.) As a general rule, "medical tests" can only be done AFTER a contingent job offer is made.

 

Conventional pre-screening, such as background checks and drug testing are good ways to weed out obvious candidates. However, even these methods are not fool proof as there are quite a few ways for some individuals to sneak by these common pre-screen tools. Human Resources (HR) must use strict guidelines with very sophisticated forms of drug testing and background research to prevent applicants from slipping by. They may also consider "integrity testing" which has an excellent track record for detecting people with the inclination to lie, cheat, steal or malinger.

 

The added cost of such tests may appear to reduce the company’s profit margins, or hiring process overhead, but in reality spending a little more money during the hiring process will undoubtedly save the company more money on the backend, and provide a better level of qualified candidates. Many companies find that a very high percentage of new hires (hired within one year) account for the majority of their new workers' compensation claims.

 

As part of the employment process, many larger companies use a phased process starting with the basic employment application and aptitude or personality assessment tests. As the hiring process continues, interviews are conducted and HR personnel gauge their impressions against the employment application and test results. If HR chooses to move forward in the hiring process with the applicant drug screening, background checks, and medical evaluations can be performed; if not, HR moves on to other candidates.

 

As the hiring process moves closer to making a choice of one or more potential applicants, reviewing all of the application data including aptitude and personality tests, background information and medical evaluations helps human resources personnel form a profile of the each candidate — a wealth of information they then use to make their final decisions.

 

Smaller companies with tighter hiring budgets can still take advantage of the phased hiring process, by applying the methods as needed to either further qualify or reject a potential candidate. In situations where medical evaluations aren’t required, they can be by eliminated, further reducing expenses in the hiring process. (workersxzcompxzkit)