As businesses grow and expand, more employees are needed. The temptation to hire new employees in haste, without thoroughly evaluating those employees can cause you legal problems. One of our excellent clients can attest to that. They didn’t have time to perform all the pre-employment disciplines they normally perform so they hired an individual with every intention of doing those immediately after the hire. Unfortunately, they hired a bad apple whose actions resulted in a large lawsuit against the company.
While we do not in any way mean to be critical of our client (all of us have hired people on the spur of the moment with every intention to fill in the blanks later), in this kind of labor market, we recommend being a little more patient than usual. Take your time and make sure you hire the right employee. If you’re hiring someone to drive a company
vehicle, be sure to check their driving records beforehand. The additional time it takes could prevent your being in a lawsuit later. If you’re hiring a person who will have responsibility for childcare or eldercare, take the additional time necessary to do a complete background and criminal check before hiring them. Again, the additional time required to be thorough before hiring could prevent a very unpleasant and expensive problem later.

If you’re unclear what your responsibilities and rights are as an employer, we suggest you check with your attorney or with some of the capable people in our area who specialize in employment practices. We can help direct you to some of those people if you want us to.