Uber boosts background check program

In a recent blog post, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the company will be boosting their background check program in two fundamental ways:

• Annual reruns: In the past, Uber conducted background check reruns in jurisdictions where required. Going forward, the company will proactively rerun criminal and motor vehicle checks each year, regardless of whether there is a legal obligation to do so.
• New offense notifications: Uber will go beyond annual reruns and be among the first to invest in technology that rapidly identifies new offenses. Using data sources that cover most new criminal offenses, they will receive notifications when a driver is involved and leverage this information to help continuously enforce their screening standards.

The company previously didn’t have a uniformed policy on rerunning criminal background checks.

“We can do more to ensure drivers continue to meet our standards on an ongoing basis, long after they take their first trip,” Khosrowshahi wrote in the blog post titled “Getting serious about safety”.

In addition to this focus on their background checks process, the post also announced several other safety measures to be introduced, including the addition of a safety center in the app, allowing users to identify trusted contacts, facilitating and improving 911 communications for users, and expanding their Safety Advisory Board.

Insufficient background checks and safety measures have been  two of the key criticisms Uber has faced in their nine-year history. Time will tell whether these new measures do anything to reduce that criticism and improve the safety of their users.