GB : How to gain a 360 degree view of your employees

Published: Monday August 14, 2017

A blog by Mark Sugden, Director of Business Development at GBG on why having a true 360 degree view of your employees is so important for businesses.

An organisation's workforce is critical to its success. People teams the world over focus their efforts on enhancing employee engagement and attracting and retaining the best talent.

Its culture helps steer its core values, key motivators and recruitment processes.

In every instance getting the right people working in your organisation is paramount to deliver critical services and positively influence key performance indicators.

Right to Work

To ensure the individual is legally entitled to work in the UK, a single process to manage right to work checks should be adopted, across the organisation regardless of an employee's nationality.

At one level it's simple, individuals from within the EEA (and Switzerland) have an indefinite right to work. Those from outside require a work Visa.

However there are a variety of document types, potential forgeries and category of candidate that will be unfamiliar to most. For example non-EEA full time students are entitled to a 20 hour working week in term time and part time students can work up to 10 hours per week, there are different rules for Croatian nationals and employers may need to confirm a candidate is re-applying for their Visa through the Employer Checking Service. Therefore a higher degree and in-depth knowledge is required to fully get to grips with the legislation. With such complexity, organisations should designate an in-house expert to manage this. Getting it wrong can result in eye-watering fines.

Vet the role

The next check is not always so clear cut. It depends on the type of work being undertaken, regulated (or not), the risk exposure and whether it's supervised.

At this stage previous employment references are often taken. However, short of confirming a new employee actually worked for that organisation, the information received back is at best scant, difficult to come by, and says little about the qualities of the individual. Consider requesting the applicant provides payslips, bank statements, a P60 or a P45 as proof of their previous employment

Check the integrity

Multiple integrity checks will confirm the qualities of the people about to join your organisation.

For example

1. A simple name and address check will confirm the identity of the candidate via external data sources.
2. For professional roles; establishing their professional qualifications with an awarding body and academic qualifications with an institution, will help establish if the person is qualified to fulfil the role.
3. A criminal record check should confirm there are no skeletons hiding in the closet.
4. An adverse financial check will highlight if the individual is under financial pressure and potentially motivated to de-fraud an organisation.
5. Anyone driving on business, either in their own vehicle or company owned, must hold a valid driving licence. This is paramount to comply with the Road Traffic Act and Health and Safety at Work Act. Completing this check online enables you to repeat the checks for up to three years.
6. PEPs (politically exposed persons) and Global Sanction checks will flag serious criminals and known terrorists.
7. Global and social media searches are now undertaken by three quarters of all employers, with around a quarter of all employers having not recruited an individual based on their online content.

Monitor the work force

The challenge of an ever growing workforce is to then oversee the actions of your employees on an ongoing basis and determine if their credentials are as equally solid throughout their tenure as they were on the day they joined.

Maintain a 360 degree of your work force and find out how these processes can be automated with GBG KnowYourPeople. To find out more contact employ.comply@gbgplc.com