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Voters in Oklahoma have elected to legalize medical marijuana, making it the 30th state to allow the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. Oklahoma State Question 788 allows individuals 18 and older to obtain a medical marijuana license with a board-certified physician’s signature. A new office in the Oklahoma State Department of Health will enforce…

We run a lot of reference checks for our clients, and we speak to many, many more organizations that have run their own reference checks in the past. The most concerning thing we see? The lack of care and attention most organizations give to these checks. A reference check is a fantastic opportunity to really get…

The National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS) has released the results of its second annual background screening survey background screening survey. The report revealed that a sizeable 95% of employers said that their organization has been implementing employment screening in 2018. In this instance, employment screening is defined slightly loosely as “information compiled on an…

According to ‘The Employment Situation‘ report released by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the United States rose to 4.0%, while the economy added 213,000 jobs, in June. The unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage point to 4.0 percent in June, and the number of unemployed persons increased…

Your company is hiring — great! You want to find the best possible employee, the one that will work well with the rest of your team, fit in to the corporate culture, and be an asset to the company. But before you hire that first qualified candidate, you’ll want to do some research. One of…

The unemployment rate for people with disabilities decreased last year, falling from 10.5 percent in 2016 to 9.2 percent in 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). “This is a significant decline,” said BLS economist Janie-Lynn Kang. “The decline reflects the trend in the overall labor force, which has been recovering since the…

The 2018 HireRight EMEA Employment Screening Benchmark Survey revealed that only 39% of employees are re-screened after being promoted or changing roles and, what’s worse, only 15% of employers currently re-screen employees with no role change. While pre-employment background checks are common practice for most companies, ongoing screening has yet to be accepted as standard policy. Employers…

According to a new report on CNN, thousands of criminals have been cleared to drive for Uber despite their significant criminal history. The report found Uber and Lyft “pushed back on government efforts to add other layers of scrutiny to the screening process” and “successfully fought off additional backgrounding requirements for drivers such as fingerprint scans…

Earlier this month, the Washington Fair Chance Act took effect and implemented ‘ban the box‘ protections for job applicants with criminal records seeking employment in the state of Washington. Now, all west coast states, and some west coast cities (such as Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle), have ‘ban the box’ laws. The new legislation prohibits both private and…