How to protect your recruitment from illegal workers
In recent years, the access to freelancers with specific skills have been made much more easy and available. Many platforms are appearing online, offering remote workers and freelancers the chance to connect to companies globally.
However, hiring people from other countries than yourself can still be challenging and not risk free. A significant challenge is to securely prove someone’s real identity.
This has created the need for hiring companies together with these freelancer platforms, to conduct their identity- and ID document screening process for all new employees.
Hiring illegal or fraudulent workers can have far-reaching effects on your brand, finances and organization. Hence, you need to adhere to these ten tips to protect your business.
1. Be Proactive
You need to advertise on your hiring sites that you conduct thorough ID and document verification. This will discourage those who wanted to apply for the position using counterfeit documents.
2. Right to Work Checks
You need to check the applicant’s Right to Work if you are a UK company. This check is vital to knowing your applicant’s legal status to work in the UK. Details to check in this process include visas and passports. You also need to check the required documents by the government regularly.
3. Keep Copies
Whenever an applicant submits their original documents and you verify the details, ensure that you photocopy them, stamp them and store them for future reference. You need to maintain the copies for the whole duration they work with you and at least two years after leaving your company. If the verification is done through an online based tool, it will store digital copies.
4. Do Due Diligence
You need to be thorough when verifying the identities of your applicants. Make sure that the HR department or your recruitment agency is as thorough as possible. Educate your team on how to differentiate counterfeit documents from real ones and invest in tools to assist in the process.
5. Invest in New ID Check Technology and Services
While manual processes are effective, automated verification processes are more effective. Use document identity scanners to pick out fake documents from real ones. Invest in document verification systems that will boost the accuracy of the verification process.
Outsourcing the ID verification process completely to a company like Evalid, will not just secure the most accurate outcome but also save time and money in the long run.
6. Audit Your Recruitment Agency
If you hire illegal workers referred to you by a recruitment agency, the burden of fines or legal wrangles will solely lie on you. Hence, you need to audit the agency and ensure they are following the right processes.
7. Seek Advice
The internet has all the information that you need. If you are not sure about the documents you need to check, turn to reliable websites where you can find all the details. Furthermore, you can also consult with an identity verification expert to fully secure the process.
8. Have a Backup
If you solely rely on technology and software to verify ID and documents, you need to be proactive and have a backup plan such as well prepared staff with hands-on knowledge on how to manually verify the details.
9. Check Documents After a While
Visas, passports and work permits expire after a while. Make sure that you note down and have a system in place to keep track of the dates when these documents will expire. You can have an automated system in place that will block those employees once their permissions expire.
10. Trust Your Instincts
If you have checked a document or ID, and you still feel like something is wrong, there is a high chance that you are right. If something doesn’t feel right, make sure you repeatedly check until you are convinced it is authentic.
Our identity verification service helps you accept identity documents with confidence and highlight any suspicious documents. To find out more about how an ID check can help your recruitment, get in touch!