Most organizations do a very good job at determining and documenting the requirements and qualities they are looking for in the candidates for their various jobs. However, some companies do not do a good job in determining and documenting the conduct and the reasons thereof that would disqualify a candidate for employment even if the candidate met the preferred requirements for education and prior experience. The first step in weeding out undesirable candidates is to also state in job descriptions or job postings what prior conduct will disqualify an applicant from being hired. Many organizations are reluctant to do this as it can be an uncomfortable process and requires legal reviews by your employment law attorneys whether they be in-house or outside contractors. In most instances there must be sound and specific reasons that have to be articulated and documented for listing disqualifying conduct. For example, if a children’s daycare facility is hiring for any position that may come in contact with those in the care of the organization, a prior record of violence or sex-related crimes would be too great of a risk to grant employment. We recommend that a conviction for a crime of violence, including sexual assaults, be grounds for denying employment for any position. If the applicant is hired and later assaults someone on your premises, plaintiff’s counsel will contend that their prior conviction made their future assault foreseeable and an example of your negligent hiring practices.

Questioning gaps in the employment record of applicants is one of the most important steps for the initial candidate screener. For example, in conducting a risk and vulnerability assessment for a client, we reviewed employment applications and found a current employee who had a two-year unexplained gap during her prior seven years with past employers. On questioning her, she admitted that this gap in employment time was because she had been incarcerated for two years for possession of illegal narcotics with the intent to distribute. Currently, social attitudes seem to be changing toward nonviolent offenders imprisoned for drug-related crimes and, if this woman was working in a janitorial capacity, her prison record might not have disqualified her for employment. However, the position she sought and obtained had her handing pharmaceuticals and controlled prescription narcotics for our client’s organization. This unquestioned omission could cause many problems.

Anything on a candidate’s resume or application that is not crystal clear needs to be questioned. Never assume that the issue is not important or that the candidate won’t truthfully answer the question. Until the issue is pursued, you cannot judge its importance and many people will not lie under direct questioning. They may omit information, which they do not consider to be lying, but will answer truthfully when the questions are asked. Even if the applicant has lied about the issue, you have, at the very least, asked about the issue, the absence of which would increase the organization’s potential liability should some incident occur at a later point in time. Any time that a candidate omits data or supplies questionable information, you must pursue the issue until information that puts the issue to rest is obtained. If this candidate is being seriously considered for the job, then an independent background check should also be conducted (we will discuss this further in another section).

Over our years in business, we have developed some screening questions that have been helpful in determining if someone has the potential to act out in anger or be a disruptive force in the workplace, such as:

These questions should not be asked consecutively but sprinkled throughout the other applicant inquiries that you normally ask. Also, these questions should be vetted with your employment law attorneys before they are added to your screening repertoire. You want to make sure the questions are legal to ask in the state in which your facility is located. Note: Make sure the legality of the questions is answered rather than an attorney or other executive merely passing judgment on their perceived effectiveness of the questions. Frequently an attorney or perhaps a human resource executive will not realize the importance of these questions, feeling that no applicants would supply negative information about themselves during an interview. To some sense they are correct; no rational person would supply an abundance of damaging information about him- or herself, but these questions are not designed to identify rational candidates. They are designed to identify the irrational person who felt justified in reacting to a situation with anger and/or other forms of workplace disruption of which the person enjoys retelling the stories.

Once the candidate pool has been narrowed to a final applicant, it is time to conduct further screening via a drug test and background check. You will recall that substance abuse is one of the warning signs that an employee is having trouble that, at the very least, will result in reliability and job performance issues and, in the worst-case scenario, might escalate to disruptive and even violent behavior. If any of your facilities reside in an area where recreational marijuana has been decriminalized, your organization needs to legally determine and document how recreational use will affect your hiring standards. For example, if you are hiring for a position that operates dangerous machinery, then any indication of impairment or substance addiction may be too great of a risk for employment.

Criminal background checks should be conducted within the applicant’s county and state of residence as well as all counties and states in which they resided for the last seven years. Seven years is the cutoff parameter given, as most jurisdictions will not provide any earlier information. You should consider running a nationwide check as well to see if the candidate has omitted any prior residences. Recently we conducted a background check on a subject whose personnel data showed that he lived in Michigan and Florida. No offenses were listed in either of those states, however a nationwide check showed someone with the same name who had a criminal record in the state of New York. On drilling down further into New York’s data, we found two burglary convictions belonging to someone with the same name, date of birth, and social security number, in other words, a direct match. Failure to conduct a nationwide search would not have uncovered this information.

Drug tests and background checks can be expensive and take time that you probably would rather not spend. You will, however, want to make sure that jobs that increase the potential for exposure and risk to the company have additional steps of vetting. If you are hiring a telemarketer, then any future misconduct might not put your organization at an enhanced level of exposure. However, if you are hiring a driver who will be transporting highly flammable, explosive, and/or toxic chemicals, you cannot risk even the perception of negligent hiring and will want to make sure that his or her driving history is good and that the driver is not using intoxicants and/or illegal drugs that may impair his or her driving abilities. You will also want to make sure that there is nothing in the driver’s background indicating that he or she employed violence as a form of vengeance in the past. If so, the driver’s access to dangerous chemicals again puts your organization at risk.

There are several components to your communication plan. The first component is how to communicate that the organization in putting together a violence prevention plan without causing undue concern. We have found that the best method is to align the violence prevention plan with your organization’s core values. Usually one of the core values relates to the well-being and/or safety of the company’s employees. Announcing that your violence prevention plan is an offshoot of a wellness program or safety core value is a great way to initiate the communication process. You can also relate that school systems have already adopted similar plans with which your employees are already familiar (if they have children). Failure to announce the reasons behind the establishment of your violence prevention plan will cause your associates to determine them on their own, the most popular of which is “there must be some problem that the company is not telling us about.” Early and honest communication will prevent the rumor mill from unleashing false and/or disturbing information.

The second component of your communication plan is to determine how to keep the violence prevention plan flourishing after it has been introduced. Every employee in every organization has sat through a program introduction that will fade from everyone’s memory in a few weeks or months. For this reason, we prefer to avoid referring to your violence prevention plan as a program. Programs are temporary and your associates recognize that program is a code word indicating a project that will shortly be out of sight and out of mind. This is why we prefer that the plan be introduced as a component of a core value that is recognized to be a long-term company strategy.

Once the violence prevention plan has been introduced and the initial training has been completed, there are a variety of ways to keep the information fresh in the minds of your associates:

The third and fourth component of your communications plan occurs if a violent incident happens; your communication challenge then becomes how to communicate with your associates and the public. The short answer is with honesty and sensitivity. The longer answer will be covered in Chapter 12 Managing the Aftermath of Violence.

Another reason that zero tolerance policies are a bad idea is that they tend to lure organizations into dispensing punishments that do not fit the crime. For example, there have been media reports of schools suspending students and considering expulsions after noting a box cutter in a student’s vehicle’s cup holder that was issued to the student at the grocery store where the student worked after school. [2] In another incident a female honor student was suspended and faced expulsion after school officials noticed plastic rifles in the back of her vehicle that were used by the military drill team in which she participated. [3] These students were suspended and faced expulsion, meaning that they would have to finish school via an online program, would not be allowed to attend or participate in any school functions, and would not be allowed to participate in the school’s graduation ceremony. Fortunately these incidents were brought to the attention of the news media, and the subsequent outcry from the public caused the schools to decrease the suspension time and cease the expulsion process. As we mentioned, the proposed punishments did not fit the crimes. Should a student be disciplined for having a box cutter in his or her vehicle? If it violates a known school policy, then the answer is “yes.” Should the student have his or her teenaged life ruined by expulsion and having to find an alternative method for completing his or her education? Absolutely not!

Another reason that zero tolerance policies are a bad idea is that they can cause an organization to shortcut the investigation and assessment process. As any violation of the zero tolerance policy results in the accused’s termination, some organizations do not see the need to investigate and assess the violation, as the outcome is predetermined. This is a poor course of action, as an investigation might prove that the accused is innocent or the investigation might also uncover that the violator of the policy poses a serious threat to the organization that requires further action to be taken to safeguard the people and premises. All of these problems can emanate from a policy that predetermines terminations and undervalues the investigation and assessment process.

While we do not recommend zero tolerance policies to our clients there are six other policies we recommend that organizations should have and enforce:

To encourage employees to report threats, disturbing behavior, restraining orders, and breaches of security protocols, you need to provide a vehicle that facilitates this process. Traditionally this has been accomplished by a direct, one-on-one discussion between the concerned employee and the employee’s manager or supervisor. It was soon found that some people do not feel comfortable coming forward and stating their concerns in a face-to-face meeting. This led to the rise of anonymous phone services that will transcribe the employee’s concerns and forward them to the appropriate management designee. However, the generation that is newly entering the workforce prefers to communicate through technology rather than the telephone. This necessitates that businesses respond by developing new processes whereby employees can anonymously report concerns via private forum messages, email, text message, or an online form. Along with increasing the probability that concerns will be reported, there is another upside to this type of communication: If the reported concern does not contain enough information to initiate an investigation, your technology solution can be built in a manner that allows you to respond to the anonymous respondent and request further information.

The first step is to conduct a physical security assessment. Here are some of the things you need to identify: