Employee Background Check

Small and Mid-Sized Businesses

Why should you screen your employees with an employee background check?

• 67% of criminals released from prison in 1994 were re-arrested for at least one serious crime within the next three years (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 6/2/02)
  
  
• The National Crime Victimization Survey, released by the U.S. Department of Justice in December of 2001, analyzed workplace violence from 1993 to 1999. On average, 1.7 million violent incidents per year were committed against employees at work.
  
  
• Nearly 60% of sex offenders are under conditional supervision (probation or parole) in the United States. (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

Small and mid-sized businesses are particularly vulnerable without an employee background check...

Small businesses are the most susceptible to employee fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In a small company, a single employee tends to have a large amount of responsibility and a small amount of managerial oversight. Obtaining access to sensitive information or the company’s finances is not very difficult for employees within smaller businesses.

Businesses with less than 100 people are more likely to incur fraud losses than companies with more than 10,000 employees. According to the 2002 Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud, the average loss for a small business is $127,500 and the average loss for a large company is $97,000. Victims recover less than 25% of their losses in about half of all cases filed.