STORES Magazine - July 2008 - (Page L16)

BACKGROUND CHECKS Future Shrink Post-hire screening tool helps retailers flag potential problems with current employees BY D. GAIL FLEENOR re-employment criminal background checks are a valuable tool used by many retailers as part of the hiring process. Such screening is no guarantee, however, that employees won’t participate in future criminal misconduct. CrimWATCH, a new posthire criminal screening solution, helps minimize shrink and other workplace crimes by monitoring employees for criminal activity. P CrimWATCH “gives employers knowledge about unacceptable behavior post-hire,” says Bill Bollinger, executive vice president of Ocala, Fla.-based National Background Data, which developed the system. “If a formerly good employee has a life-changing event that leads to CrimWATCH searches criminal records from criminal charges, this person might also be lookdata sources at the local, state and national levels ing to take money while on the job.” CrimWATCH detects information regarding Department of Public Safety, traffic criminal activity by employees and alerts loss precourts, sex offender registry and tervention staff; the company then can take the aprorist/fugitive watch lists. propriate follow-up action. The process is relatively easy for reNational Background Data (NBD) boasts that tailers and other employers to use. it has the nation’s largest privately held criminal After logging in and choosing the records database with access to multi-jurisdictypes of criminal searches to be contional data. It supplies this information to more than 400 background-screening companies, ducted, the employer uploads its acwhich serve as its network of solution providers. tive employee data, including names, Web-based CrimWATCH, rolled out in FebruSocial Security numbers and dates of ary, is available to retailers via this network. birth. The program will then regularCrimWATCH was developed with the retail inly go back through the database as it Bill dustry in mind, according to Bollinger. “Other is updated and report new or changed Bollinger products are more beneficial to human resources criminal information on current emL16 STORES / JULY 2008 WWW.LPINFORMATION.COM for pre-employment screening,” he says, “but once the employee is hired, HR is not as involved. “I have spoken with many loss prevention managers and vice presidents about what happens after employees are hired and the problems they have with shrinkage and internal theft. CrimWATCH was designed to meet the needs these LP managers and vice presidents said they faced.” Initial testing of 12 months of previously screened data showed a hit ratio of 1 to 2 percent, Bollinger says. CrimWATCH searches criminal records from data sources at the local, state and national levels. These include proprietary offender data, departments of corrections, U.S. Courts, http://WWW.LPINFORMATION.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - July 2008

STORES Magazine - July 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Dearth of Retail Creativity What Shoppers Think Wow, Is That a Wawa? 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Merchandising Strategy Concept2Watch Point of Sale Outsourcing Human Resources Top 100 Retailers Store Design RFID IT Operations Systems Managements LP Vantage Point Newsbeat Cover Story Emergency Response Systems Background Checks LOEB Retail Letter Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

STORES Magazine - July 2008

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