Collaborative post
Onboarding employees is often an overlooked yet critically important aspect of the employment process. Proper onboarding is necessary to ensure that the candidate in question is able to work safely and productively in their new role, with a complete awareness of what that role entails and how they need to integrate into the broader company.
A central component of this consists of carrying out criminal background checks, which in England is typically done using the DBS check. In this article, we take a closer look at where the DBS check fits into the broader onboarding process, to help you ensure that your business uses them effectively.
What are DBS checks designed for?
DBS checks allow employers to check whether or not a candidate is being transparent about their criminal history. While it’s important more generally to know whether candidates are being open and honest, in certain roles, DBS checks also play an important safeguarding role.
For example, if an industry involves working in close contact with children or vulnerable adults, it can be a legal requirement to check whether the person being hired to fill a role in that sector has a criminal history that could put those individuals at risk. In these cases, it’s the employer’s legal responsibility to use a service like Personnel Checks to complete these checks before the candidate can start working in their role.
When do they need to be completed?
In order to fulfil their safeguarding role, DBS checks need to be completed before the candidate comes into contact with the information or individuals that the business has a duty to protect. In a lot of cases, the check will be carried out after references have been checked, but before the employee can come into work to start their initial training.
This does depend somewhat on the role in question, however, as different industries entail different specific regulatory responsibilities. It’s important to be absolutely clear on where your industry sits within this broader legal context, to ensure that you implement DBS checks in a compliant and practically effective manner.
DBS Adult First check
There are some limited scenarios where someone in a regulated role can start working without having completed an entire DBS check. To prevent delays in the care sector in particular, the DBS use something called the Adult First check.
What this means in practice is that a care worker can start working with vulnerable adults before they’ve passed their full Enhanced DBS check, with just the expedited Barred List check. They will, however, need to remain under supervision while at the workplace until they’ve passed the entire check.
DBS checks can be a powerful onboarding tool, but they need to be used properly. Make sure that you understand why you’re using them, and how the regulations that govern your industry suggest that you implement them. Based on this, you should be able to integrate them into your broader hiring processes as easily and effectively as possible.