Submitted by DataScreening

Maintaining a company's culture is often more important than hiring that star employee for the success of the company. No matter how smart or how good a person may be, if their behavior negatively affects others in your organization, it's probably not worth it.

Fortunately, companies and CEO's today realize this more than ever. With information being exchanged so easily and rapidly, a company’s culture and reputation is extremely important to the success of a company. In Deloitte's 2016 Global Human Capital Trends, 86% of executives surveyed viewed corporate culture as vital to the success of business. From this, many companies have developed many different types of tools to exemplify their culture; mission and vision statements, carefully worded handbooks, written definitions of their culture, and designed meetings discussing the culture from within.

Sounds good, right? Let's unpack that for just a moment. Let's say someone you just hired isn't "fitting in" well. He's not very happy, other employees that have been there for a while are not happy, and he's actually disrupting others' work performance. Not the behavior he had shown in the interviews. But you caught it early and were able to let him go only after 2 months. Oh well, back to the drawing board. So, how much does that actually cost the company? According to a SHRM report, that departure will cost the company about 1/3 of that employee’s annual earnings. I guess that's the cost of doing business.

But what if we can figure out if that new hire will be a good fit before we hire him? Or at least lessen the chances that he will not be a good fit. You mean like doing a background check? Well, sort of. While a background check will give you an idea of a person's past behavior, let's face it, something that comes up on a background check may not mirror a new hire's cultural fit very well. And a conviction on a background check can be a one time mistake that occurred in the distant past.

What about something more in the present? Something like what they post online, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter... Background checks are now offering Social Media Checks as a service. This isn't getting someone's password and secretly looking in their accounts, this is about viewing someone's online presence; looking at what a person displays as their own behavior and casting their own social media reputation. Because think about, whether you like it or not, once someone is hired, their social media presence is part or your company's reputation. As more companies are allowing employees to work from home, Social Media Checks will become more important in screening a potential employee.

Having the ability to protect your company's culture and reputation as quickly as possible, will undoubtedly help your employees enjoy their work and help the organization achieve their goal.