Have you “lied” about the languages you know on your CV? Exaggeration of language ability is pretty common, but can it ever cross the line? Came across this gem on the BBC and needed to share. Here’s an excerpt:
Several years ago, Facebook started allowing users to add ‘languages spoken’ to their profiles.
One thing became abundantly clear: I had, apparently, been living a life populated with polyglots.
All at once, everyone I knew started claiming to be multilingual – despite the fact that I had never heard these people mutter even a word of a foreign language before. (My favourites were the people who said they spoke both US English and UK English.)
This trend doesn’t end with Facebook profiles either. The embellishment seeps into the workplace, surfacing when people apply for jobs. On LinkedIn and in job applications, many people don’t think twice about slapping down a greatly exaggerated foreign language ability.
https://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/lying-1562272_960_720-1.jpg720960Timhttps://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sterling-risq-logo-1.pngTim2018-08-22 06:47:022021-07-23 13:26:05Are You “Lying” About Your Languages on your CV?
Do you ever think of the on-demand workforce? New advances in digital technology are making traditional workplaces a thing of the past. While many workers now have the option to work remotely outside of their office, many businesses are beginning to adjust their workforce models to take advantage of a more agile contingent approach.
According to research by IDC, the mobile worker population is now made up of more than 1.3 billion people, which is 37.2% of the global workforce. Meanwhile, contingent workers now make up 20% of the Australian workforce, as freelancers, consultants, and contractors continue to take the place of full-time employees.
Massive growth.
The massive growth in the on-demand workforce is giving organisations greater agility but they need to be aware of the risks. The recent case of a rogue contractor in Queensland illustrates the worst-case scenario for a small business. When a small trade business trusted the contractor with a work truck and a company credit card, he stole the truck and racked up a $23,000 bill at Bunnings. To make matters worse, Bunnings then claimed the business owner was liable for all of the transactions.
The lesson here is clear – regardless of whether you consider a contractor, freelancer or consultant one of your employees in the technical sense, by law they are your responsibility. That’s why employers need to investigate and understand how they plan on adapting their recruitment, and in particular their screening processes, to reflect the changes brought about by the on demand workforce.
We know that the shift in the global workforce is being reflected by many employers reducing their screening practices. But there needs to be a realisation that the matter how you classify an individual on your own books, they are a representative of your brand, so they’re just as capable of causing significant damage as one of your own employees. In fact, well-known businesses that rely on a contingent workforce such as Uber and Lyft have suffered some of their biggest PR disasters due to negligent and criminal behaviour by their contractors.
Application of standards.
Also important to remember is that employers need to apply the same standards to a position that will be filled by a nontraditional worker, or else they could be subject to allegations of biased treatment of contractors over full-time employees – a potential minefield considering Australia’s industrial relations legislation still prioritises traditional employment contracts.
Ultimately though, employers need to remember that background screening of on-demand workers is a mandatory part of their due diligence. In the years to come, many precedents will be set for cases of negligence where organisations haven’t exercised reasonable care in determining if a contractor or freelancer is unfit for the position.
https://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/linkedin.jpg720960Timhttps://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sterling-risq-logo-1.pngTim2018-08-21 06:45:082021-07-23 13:26:11How Do you Manage The Risks of an On-Demand Workforce?
Background checks matter. Here’s why. There’s no shortage of cases in recent years of individual employees causing massive brand damage to their employers’ business. Currently, the Royal Banking Commission in Australia is once again throwing the spotlight onto poor corporate governance and the expected cavalcade of detrimental outcomes. While senior leaders continue to fall on their sword and share prices begin to slide, all of us are examining how we can use these cases as a lesson for our own corporate brand.
One side-effect of these widely publicised governance failures is that it allows forward-thinking organisations to carve out a market position as an ethical and governance best practice leader. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, reputation accounts for up to 75% of a company’s value. Research from Real Business also shows that corporate governance, including perceptions of fairness, ethics and transparency, now accounts for 17.2% of a company’s overall reputation, second only to perceptions of their actual products and services.
So, how do we go about creating a positive perception of our corporate governance? Obviously, good corporate governance is the first place to start, as our business’ reputation is developed slowly and steadily over a number of years. Put simply, there are no shortcuts in building your reputation.
What we can do, however, is be more transparent about the processes and practices behind our corporate governance (background checks play a role here). It’s easy to pay lip service to “consistently excellent levels of ethical behaviour”, but any cynic who reads that on your websites and shareholder reports will know that it only takes one rotten apple to prove otherwise.
To mitigate these concerns, it’s worth letting your stakeholders know about the lengths your business is going to in order to attract and retain a highly ethical workforce. So, can background checks save your corporate brand? In a word, yes. A major reputational safeguard is your pre-employment screening processes, as these can outline the steps your business is undertaking to ensure that unethical, and potentially criminal applicants aren’t slipping through the cracks.
Background checks stand behind good process. If a particular individual is exposed for negligent, unethical or criminal behaviour while employed by your business, one of the first steps your business can take is to highlight your pre-employment screening processes. If those screening processes have been carried out in full, and the employee has been given the right level of ethical and conduct training, you can respond to media reports on the front foot by illustrating that best practice corporate governance procedures were followed. While this doesn’t give you an automatic free pass, it will greatly reduce the potential brand damage your company could suffer.
By partnering with a world-leading pre-employment screening provider, you can be sure that the recruitment processes you publicise are of the highest quality in your marketplace. This provides shareholders with a greater sense of security in your governance practices, while also being an essential component of your brand position for customers. On top of that, a robust and stringent recruitment process indicates to potential applicants that you’re serious about hiring the best, making you an employer of choice and influence.
https://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Nick-Roberts-on-ABC-Radio-National-mp3-image.jpg600600Timhttps://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sterling-risq-logo-1.pngTim2018-08-14 06:43:282021-07-23 13:28:19Can background checks save your corporate brand?
For companies challenged by a reputational crisis, there is good news –the path to better days starts with people.
It’s worth sharing a recent story from Business Insider Australia on big changes happening at Commonwealth Bank, where a series of public issues has challenged its image. Its new CEO, Matt Comyn, is rolling up his sleeves and building recovery on simplifying structures, getting back to basics and, above all, relying on people to build a solid future. It is precisely because of this dependence on people that it is so important that best practice employment screening be front of mind.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Matt Comyn, the Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth, has taken a key step on the path to restoring the reputation of Australia’s biggest bank, announcing six appointments and changes to the Executive Leadership Team.
The restructure is the second announcement today in his simplification of the bank, bringing the CBA back to its core banking businesses. He earlier outlined plans to demerge the bank’s wealth management and mortgage broking businesses.
He says the new team members bring a strong mix of deep experience in banking, risk management, digital transformation and cultural change leadership.
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We are always on the lookout for ways to improve employee happiness, engagement and productivity –this article from Fast Company fits the bill. One thing to note is a key feature behind our screening methodology is also a key element in what supports employee happiness: trust. It turns out that finding ways to build trust is probably far more effective than more direct approaches to “happiness”.
When Google promoted a software engineer named Chade-Meng Tan to the role of “Jolly Good Fellow,” his career–and the entire culture of Silicon Valley–took a sharp turn.
Meng, a cheerful employee valued for his motivational qualities, went from developing mobile search tools to spreading happiness across the organization. Happiness became his job.
Google wasn’t the first to hire someone with the sole remit of enforcing employee contentment. In 1999, when Google was still a startup, French fashion brand Kiabi hired Christine Jutard as its chief happiness officer. She was one of the first to perform the role.
The role remains popular today. There are more than 1,000 chief happiness officers listed on jobs website LinkedIn. But a closer look at what really makes employees happy shows that lots of companies are going about it the wrong way. But once Google did it, employee happiness became a key metric, and other organizations quickly adopted their approach. Three years after Meng’s appointment, fast food giant McDonald’s even promoted Ronald McDonald from brand mascot to CHO.
AI is moving very quickly and so is the rise of biometrics. What do you know about AI and facial recognition? We are seeing the combination of the two across a range of industries including human resources and employment screening. It’s worth sharing this article from The NY Times that takes a close look at the risks inherent in putting too much faith in these systems when it comes to assessing human beings. For example, facial recognition and the evaluation of physical gestures can actually lead not only to erroneous conclusions but to prejudiced ones.
Here’s an excerpt from the story.
When I was a college student using A.I.-powered facial detection software for a coding project, the robot I programmed couldn’t detect my dark-skinned face. I had to borrow my white roommate’s face to finish the assignment. Later, working on another project as a graduate student at the M.I.T. Media Lab, I resorted to wearing awhite mask to have my presence recognized.
My experience is a reminder that artificial intelligence, often heralded for its potential to change the world, can actually reinforce bias and exclusion, even when it’s used in the most well-intended ways.
A.I. systems are shaped by the priorities and prejudices — conscious and unconscious — of the people who design them, a phenomenon that I refer to as “the coded gaze.” Research has shown that automated systems that are used to inform decisions about sentencing produce results that are biased against black people and that those used forselecting the targets of online advertising can discriminate based on race and gender.
https://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Cool-facial-recongition-image-e1529725394224.jpg454852Timhttps://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sterling-risq-logo-1.pngTim2018-06-22 06:31:562021-07-23 13:28:45Are AI and Facial Recognition A Risk In Hiring
We’re always on the lookout for good resources to help organisations improve governance, develop best practice and protect themselves. One critical area is the issue of employee fraud. Here’s an excerpt from CPA Australia’s white paper on the subject with a link to the full document below:
Employee fraud is more common than most businesses think. It can have differing impacts on the success of a business. In the most serious of cases, employee fraud can lead to business failure and destroyed careers. Misplaced trust, inadequate hiring and supervision policies, and a failure to implement strong internal controls create an environment that is ripe for an employee to commit fraud. Employee fraud is therefore about opportunity. Subsequently, businesses should take steps to reduce this opportunity.
The following guide includes:
• an overview of fraud, including common examples of fraud
• examples of strategies to reduce the risk of fraud
• information on what to do when a fraud is detected.
Businesses designing strategies to reduce the risk of fraud will have to balance their desire to minimise such risks with the business needs. In other words, a business must avoid becoming so focused on reducing the risk of fraud that it impairs the ability of the business to meet its commercial objectives.
Business culture is changing fast, really fast, and technology is leading this charge. So-called “people analytics” may still be in soft-focus like the image above but it is starting to be embraced by a wide spectrum of companies to determine employee engagement, happiness and other qualitative measures that in the past were often overlooked and undervalued.
It’s worth sharing a recap of this trend from Forbes. The story explores how smart use of these measures can improve productivity, career development and uplift company culture for the benefit of all (and the bottom line). Forbes also takes a look at how engagement is becoming more about experience and how HR is quickly becoming digitalised. Josh Bersin of Deloitte’s argues that we will soon be toppling legacy HR solutions with fresh digital tools.
Coming from employment screening these developments are welcome and also part of a trend that we have already identified. That trend, in which the employee’s company experience begins prior to employment through best practice user-friendly approaches that values them as a person has already begun.
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As exposure to risk becomes a growing concern for organisations worldwide, employers should consider more extensive, best practice procedures during the pre-employment screening process to avoid future pitfalls.
A recent report indicates The Global Employment Screening Services Market accounted for $3,012 million in 2016 and is expected to reach $4,743 million by 2022. The CAGR growth rate is estimated to rise by at least 8% by 2025. This market growth may be explained by increasing cases of fraudulent claims, expanding regulation, growth in hiring, and emerging markets and new employment sectors.
This growth may also represent an underlying shift in how companies perceive and weigh employee risk. We may be moving away from a mindset of correction after the fact to one of prevention of a problem in the first place. The additional benefits of this include increased efficiency, arguably a boost to productivity and a reputational safeguard. Employers are recognising that the protection of their brand starts with screening, and the implementation of a best practice screening process also helps them build trust across their organisation and into their relationships with business partners and clients/customers as well.
We wanted to take a look at the trend around #MeToo laws as part of our role in keeping ahead of the background check/employment screening curve and look beyond into the larger context of employment and the workplace. Here’s an interesting excerpt:
In reaction to a litany of high-profile scandals, Maryland has joined a growing number of states in enacting legislation intended to prevent employers from sheltering perpetrators of sexual harassment. Approved by Governor Larry Hogan on May 15, 2018, the Disclosing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act of 2018 (DSHWA) purports to ban employment contracts requiring sexual harassment claims to be resolved through private arbitration. It also mandates that large employers report certain information about sexual harassment settlements to the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, which in turn can make some of that information available to the public. Hampered by weak enforcement provisions and faced with a potential preemption challenge, however, DSHWA may not have a significant impact on current employer strategies for avoiding and managing sexual harassment claims.
Ban on Mandatory Arbitration of Sexual Harassment Claims
DSHWA declares that, except as prohibited by federal law, any provision of an employment contract, policy, or agreement that waives a substantive or procedural right or remedy to a claim for sexual harassment or retaliation for reporting or asserting a right or remedy based on sexual harassment shall be null and void as against public policy of Maryland. The law applies to contracts and policies executed, implicitly or explicitly extended, or renewed on or after October 1, 2018.
https://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/metoo-1.jpeg168300Timhttps://www.sterlingrisq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/sterling-risq-logo-1.pngTim2018-06-08 06:23:352021-07-23 13:29:19Looking global: #MeToo laws on the rise