The Use of Home Operators

Some screening firms use home based operators to perform employment and education verifications.  That of course represents a big financial advantage for the screening firm.   They get cheap labor, and may even classify them as independent contractors in order to get even additional savings by not paying workers’ compensation, benefits or other costs associated with employees.    However, it does very little to help employers.  Below are the top 10 reasons NOT to utilize a background firm that sends your applicants’ personal data to home operators working from kitchen tables and dorm rooms across America.

 

1. Privacy: A screening firm would be directly responsible for making private information viewable and printable on people’s home computers.
2. Professionalism: A screening firm would have difficulty accurately claiming that at-home researchers are “professionals” when they are unsupervised, unregulated and acting as cheap substitutes for what is supposed to be a professional service. Ask yourself how the sound of barking dogs, crying babies and television sets in the background may strike those asked to provide verifications.
3. FCRA Defensibility: A screening firm would  have difficulty defending the practice of using at-home researchers against a claim under FCRA section 607(b) concerning reasonable procedures for accuracy.
4. IC Classification: A screening firm cannot classify someone as an Independent Contractor (IC) when they work only for you, when you tell them exactly how to do their job, and when they are providing the same core services provided by your in-house staff.
5. Training/QC: A screening firm cannot train and discuss production issues in real time. It is also difficult for at-home researchers to learn from each other when everyone is working in isolation. Furthermore, since everyone works alone it is harder to enforce quality rules across the entire organization.
6. Supervision: Unsupervised at-home researchers are very difficult to supervise. In addition, since they are paid by the completed verification, they may be more tempted to fake orders since there is no one supervising them in real-time.
7. Reliability: A screening firm would  be dependent entirely on the researcher’s priorities, which may not be your own. They may put a hair appointment ahead of your forty new verifications that have to be called today. You want load balancing to be under your control and not secondary to at-home researcher’s personal schedules.
8. Hidden Costs: There are hidden costs to managing and maintaining multiple remote researchers as opposed to a central pool of talent. Take, for instance, the time lost to the unreliable performance of at-home researcher’s internet connections, home computers and printers.
9. Due Diligence: A screening firm and employer could face significant legal exposure if the  at-home researcher’s performance falls below a professional standard of care due to lack of training and supervision.
10. Disclosure: Would you want to disclose to your applicants that the sensitive, personal data and professional service they’ve entrusted you with was being performed by unsupervised home workers?

 

ESR does not utilize any home based or offshore operators in order to  provide you with critical employment and education verifications.  All work is done in a professionally supervised call center dedicated to the highest level of customer service, privacy, accuracy and speedy turnaround time.