Reference Checking in Canada - Reference checking is distinct from employment verification

Here is a great article about checking employment references from Monster.ca. This is good advise for any hiring manager and has some tips that we can all use. The Renwick Group - www.therenwickgroup.ca

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Reference checking is distinct from employment verification

Article Source: http://hiring.monster.ca/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/screening-job-candidates/reference-checking-in-canada.aspx
By Howard Levitt and Michael Mulroy
Lang Michener, Toronto Office
Monster Employment Legal Advisors

A good hire is the surest way to eliminate from your workforce problem employees, who consume their manager’s time with performance issues, waste recruitment, hiring and training dollars and generate severance costs, when they are dismissed. A good hire is the end result of an effective hiring process which identifies high quality job candidates well suited to the available position, thus eliminating the problem employee by never inviting the employee to step through your front door.

A crucial step in achieving a good hire is checking references. Conducting a reference check is not a risky business. It is a sound business practice, which surprisingly is not always done. Every hire should have a reference check.

There is no legal impediment to asking prospective candidates to provide the names of referees and permission to contact them. Reference checking is distinct from employment verification.

Verification is confirming the accuracy of information that has been provided by the applicant, either in an application form, resume or verbally, about such factual matters as service dates, job title and salary. Reference checks gather qualitative information about the applicant’s performance, skills, weaknesses and similar matters. How the applicant performed with a former employer is an indicator of how the candidate is likely to perform in the future for you.

You may elicit from referees pertinent information about the job candidate’s suitability for the position. The law of human rights requires hiring practices to be free of discrimination. An employer cannot consider factors which are protected by human rights legislation such as age, race, sex, family status and disability, among others, when making a hiring decision. Do not solicit information about any prohibited ground of discrimination identified by the applicable human rights statute in checking references. If you would not ask an applicant the question in your own job application and interview process, then do not ask it in the course of checking a reference. With that caution, you may obtain from referees information to assess the candidate’s qualifications to perform the position you are filling.

Your job candidate may present written references to support an application. Reference letters are helpful, but limited. Often, a reference letter is more useful for what is not mentioned, than what is. A written reference should be augmented by a conversation with the author. Details can be gleaned in a phone conversation, which otherwise would not appear in print. You will hopefully be speaking to a person who can provide a snapshot of the job candidate’s contribution to a prior workplace. You can assess possible fit and the likelihood of a mutually rewarding relationship.

Who signs the written reference speaks volume. Is it a former supervisor or a human resources manager? If the former supervisor, you can likely obtain good relevant feedback. If a human resources manager is the author, the letter may be a product of the settlement of a wrongful dismissal action initiated by the employee. Red flags are raised. These concerns will be confirmed if your questions are responded to with limited information, thus confirming an agreement has been made in which the former employer has agreed not to comment outside the written reference.

A skillfully executed reference check elicits an honestly held, forthcoming opinion by the referee of the former employee’s qualities and limitations.

A reference is considered a communication protected by qualified privilege and the person giving the reference cannot be sued for slander or defamation, provided the comments are the referee’s honestly held opinion. The information obtain in the reference check should only be used for the purpose of evaluating the candidate’s suitability. The information could lose any protection, if communicated to third parties for purposes unrelated to a hiring decision.

Prospective employers may face obstacles in checking references, such as policies against providing references, difficulty reaching referees and resultant delays in hiring decisions. However, the effort is well worth it, as hiring mistakes will be minimized.

Article Source: http://hiring.monster.ca/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/screening-job-candidates/reference-checking-in-canada.aspx


If you need any reference checking information or assistance - call us www.therenwickgroup.ca

It is a good time to be a corporate investigator

 

Here is an excellent article from the January 2013 edition of The Economist magazine - it's about the state of the union of the American corporate investigation industry - take note of the comment that the 'due diligence side of resume background checks is a growing business.  It's a good read, so grab a cup of coffee and enjoy! The Renwick Group - www.therenwickgroup.ca

 

 

SHERLOCK HOLMES once remarked that: “It is my business to know what other people don’t know.” These days, detective work is a huge business. Thanks to globalisation, there is a lot that companies would like to know but don’t, such as: is our prospective partner in Jakarta a crook?

Corporate detectives sniff out the facts, analyse them, share them with clients and pocket fat fees. Yet, oddly for a multi-billion-dollar industry devoted to discovering the truth, little is known about private investigators. So your correspondent took up his magnifying glass and set off in pursuit of the bloodhounds of capitalism.

The best-known is Kroll, founded by Jules Kroll, a former assistant district attorney, in 1972. Along with a dozen or so rivals, it can undertake assignments anywhere in the world, at short notice, deploying teams of former cops and prosecutors, computer whizzes, accountants, investigative journalists and others. These firms are the big dogs of private detection. The industry has, ahem, a long tail of thousands of smaller ones. The precise number is unknown since the business is unregulated in some countries.

There is plenty of work to go round. Assignments linked to mergers and acquisitions have dwindled along with the number of deals, but other areas are expanding. One big source of work is the growing complexity of business regulation. Multinationals can never be sure that some employee, somewhere has not violated America’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or some other anti-bribery law. Corporate compliance departments often bring gumshoes in to assist their own investigations.

An increase in whistleblowing has created more work. So has the push by Western firms into emerging markets (see Schumpeter). “It’s a business we win in America but serve in Asia, driven by the export of Western ethics,” says Tom Hartley, head of Kroll Advisory Solutions. “We’ve seen double-digit growth in each of the past four years.”

Another growth business is “due diligence” work, such as running background checks on a client’s potential hires or business partners. Last year Mintz Group, a medium-sized firm based in New York, conducted more than 20,000 checks, up 40% on 2010. “We tell clients to invest globally but investigate locally,” says Jim Mintz, the firm’s boss. Some clients ask for checks on everyone they deal with, even chauffeurs. Sleuths are also hired to probe the provenance of money. Amid a global crackdown on tax evasion, companies have grown warier of doing deals with dodgers.

Even downturns are not all bad for corporate gumshoes. Hard times often expose wrongdoing by causing scams to collapse. Industry figures report a rise in fraud litigation, asset-tracing and insolvency work. Headline-worthy mega-frauds, such as those perpetrated by Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford, remind potential clients of the need for security.

Big jobs can occur anywhere. Kroll recently conducted a forensic audit of the failed Kabul Bank, from which nearly $1 billion was allegedly embezzled, for Afghanistan’s central bank. The client base is growing, too. Hedge funds and private-equity firms crave intelligence. In China, where accounts are unreliable, they vet acquisition targets by hiring sleuths to interview ex-employees. Post-Madoff, pension funds are doing more homework on their investments, often with outside help, says Ken Springer of Corporate Resolutions, an investigations and consulting firm.

You know my methods. Apply them

A curious development is the growth of what might be called “self due diligence”. Entrepreneurs from parts of the world where corruption is rife, such as eastern Europe and Africa, are increasingly hiring reputable corporate-intelligence firms to investigate them—sometimes with full access to their business records. If the investigator gives them a clean bill of health, they can wave it at banks, regulators or potential business partners who might doubt them. The head of one investigations firm says such work accounts for up to a third of its London office’s revenues.

Investigators have capitalised on the recent surge in cyberattacks and cyberspying. Some report an annual doubling of revenue in digital forensics. The least exciting digital work is possibly the most lucrative: electronic “discovery”, or the recovery and processing of e-documents to support litigation. Parties to big cases have to pass vast amounts of data to each other, especially in America. To cut costs, companies may hire a firm with smart technology to whittle down the e-material before the lawyers start expensively perusing it. This is done using programs that filter out e-mails and other documents that are irrelevant or privileged—though this “robotic” work needs to be supplemented with human judgment, says Vincent D’Eramo of Capstone Advisory.

Data! Data! Data!

In 2012 Kroll announced plans to double the size of its R&D team in e-discovery and data recovery over the next five years. Mr Hartley says the headcount in his division, the firm’s investigative core, grew by 15% in 2011. The number of Certified Fraud Examiners (CFEs) in the world has grown by 72% since 2007, to 37,400. (One of them, Harry Markopolos, gave the profession street credibility by spotting the Madoff fraud long before regulators.)

Kathy Lavinder, a headhunter, reckons the war for talent has driven up salaries for sleuths and security consultants by 20-25% since 2010. Members of “incident response” teams, who are expected to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice and are thus prone to burnout, have begun to ask for and receive guarantees of occasional time away from the daily grind for training courses, says Ms Lavinder.

The choice of employer has expanded as new firms enter the business, disrupting the established order. Physical-security companies, such as Securitas, Allied Barton and Andrews International, are trying to move further into investigations as a way to boost margins, which are thin in the guard business. The big accounting firms, led by Deloitte, are hiring more cybersleuths—though much of their work is internal: ie, scrutinising clients of other parts of the group. Some investigative firms, including Kroll, have counter-attacked by pushing into accountancy.

Law firms have long been big clients of the gumshoes, but they too are looking to do more investigations in-house. To this end, some are striking deals with investigative companies: in August, for instance, Pepper Hamilton, an American law firm, acquired a highly regarded boutique led by Louis Freeh, a former FBI director.

Most corporate investigators are privately held and publish little financial information. Kroll, probably the biggest, has had ups and downs. Its zenith was its sale in 2004 to Marsh & McLennan, an insurance broker, for a tidy $1.9 billion. By 2010, when Kroll was sold on to Altegrity, a security group, its valuation had tumbled by 40%. One slip-up between those two deals was to take on Allen Stanford as a client.

The firm is still admired by its rivals, whose upper ranks are stuffed with former Kroll people. But these days many consider the best in the business to be FTI Consulting, which also happens to be the only publicly traded firm of any size. Its forensic and litigation consulting division had revenues of $177m and a profit margin of 17% in the first six months of 2012.

After dozens of small acquisitions, FTI now employs 3,800 people. Its boss, Jack Dunn, has poached some of Kroll’s best snoops. FTI won much of the work of piecing together Mr Madoff’s money trail; ten years ago the Madoff trustee would probably have given the lion’s share to Kroll. FTI also gets a lot of work as a “corporate monitor”, checking whether firms that have promised to mend their ways as part of a legal settlement keep their word. The industry loves these assignments: they typically last a couple of years, providing a recurring revenue stream.

Another threat to the old order comes from K2 Intelligence, backed by Mr Kroll and run by his son, Jeremy. This was set up in 2009, when a non-compete clause with his old firm expired. These days Mr Kroll senior, now 71, is more focused on Kroll Bond Ratings, an attempt to disrupt the credit-ratings oligopoly.

K2 has started to make a mark, conducting the investigation into alleged bribery that forced Alcoa, an American aluminium firm, into a $447m settlement with Alba, a Bahraini one. Convinced that the future belongs to those with the technological savvy to “tell the story” by interpreting vast quantities of data, Jeremy Kroll has joined forces with Palantir, a security-software firm with past links to PayPal. Palantir and K2 have been crunching through 18 terabytes of transactions, e-mails and phone records in the hope of connecting dots to support the Madoff trustee’s litigation against investors who took more out of the Ponzi scheme than they put in. One program draws visual webs that show the length, destination and other features of phone calls made by Mr Madoff and his staff, and then looks for patterns.

A fast-growing business where technology will be crucial is fighting money-laundering. Banks are under pressure to weed out suspicious transactions, but they are drowning in data. They are willing to throw a lot of money at the problem because the damage if they mess up can be enormous. Witness the $1.9 billion in fines that HSBC recently paid to settle allegations that it had abetted money-laundering by clients in Mexico and elsewhere.

Mr Springer of Corporate Resolutions describes several recent assignments that turned into a game of technological one-upmanship with suspected wrongdoers. In one, his team eventually got the better of an IT employee at a non-profit who was suspected of fraud, by sneaking a black box into his office at night, using former National Security Agency experts to crack the administrator code and then blind-copying themselves into his e-mails. In many cases, the key is to combine digital expertise with traditional investigative techniques, argues Mr Mintz. Part of the job will continue to be “tracking down the disgruntled former secretary or book-keeper who knows where the bodies are buried, and knowing how to coax information from them,” he says.

The dog that barked at the right time

Jeffrey Katz, a former Kroll man who heads London-based Bishop International, which began life investigating claims in the Lloyds insurance market, sees new opportunities popping up all the time. His firm has been carving niches in intellectual property, from anti-counterfeiting (such as gathering evidence on how a particular faker operates) to buying trademarks on behalf of big companies before they launch a new brand. This must be done quietly, so as not to arouse suspicion and drive up prices. Bishop did a good job for Apple with names similar to “iPad”.

But the industry faces challenges, too. Large clients are looking to build their own investigative capabilities, especially in cyber-security, says Michael DuBose of Kroll, who used to run the US Department of Justice’s computer-crime division. This could cut demand for outside help. Barriers to entry in digital forensics have fallen. Competition is intense. Some big assignments are decided in beauty contests with 15 or more participants.

And even as the industry profits by helping clients cope with red tape, it can expect tougher rules itself. Private investigators in Britain face possible regulation in the wake of the News Corporation phone-hacking scandal. In America, the SEC and Congress may tighten rules on investigators and “knowledge brokers” that work for hedge funds, some of them suspected of abetting insider trading. Corporate detective work is anything but elementary.

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21569028-it-good-time-be-corporate-investigator-bloodhounds-capitalism

 

If you are interested in corporate surveillance - please contact us at The Renwick Group - www.therenwickgroup.ca

Winter Workers Comp Surveillance Tips

I like this article - It's from the Workers Compensation organization in the USA, www.workerscompensation.com - it's a bit tongue in cheek in places, and it applies to us here in Canada. Enjoy!

Winter Workers Comp Surveillance Tips

Now that winter has arrived with a bang, it is always a ripe time for surveillance on those questionable claims.  The hustle and bustle of the Holiday season is over, and people settle in to their normal winter routines, waiting out the cold weather for the arrival of spring.

For those problematic claims out there, this time of year is always a busy one for surveillance companies.  Adjusters cannot wait to try and get some film of their injured claimant potentially violating their medical restrictions by shoveling out their driveways or partaking in a winter recreational sport.

Here are some tips to keep in mind for a successful hunt of trying to get that elusive film that can direct a claim from compensable to suspended:

Strike Not Only After the Big Storm, but During It

If you are like me and do not own a snowblower, the best way to make shoveling your driveway easier is to do it a few times while the storm is going on.  This makes it a bit easier to heave all the snow off of your driveway.  True, the snow you are pushing may not weigh 500lb, but that is the point. Anyone with a lingering back injury is going to have a hard time pushing a shovel, and I think any doctor will lighten the medical restrictions if they see their patient spending a lot of time outdoors with a shovel.

When caught, most claimants will try to say they were only pushing the snow, and not lifting the shovel.  However, any activity is showing that they are active, and it can be a way to get that person back to light duty work if they are currently on a no-work status.

Use Snow Blowing to Your Advantage

If your claimant does indeed have a snowblower, this can mean that they are not actually lifting anything.  But they are on their feet, for long periods of time, pushing and pulling the blower around and being active in general.  This may not mean that they are 100%, but they are certainly capable of doing light duty or sedentary work. 

Even if they claim that the snow blower is self-propelled, the claimant is still walking behind it, bending down, and doing this for a period of time. I would find it hard to believe that any doctor would keep this person from doing sedentary work if confronted with the video evidence. Use your tape to get them back to work, and doing something beneficial for your workplace.

Watch For Potential Aggravation of Injury

Snow and ice are slick, and people slip and slide while shoveling and snow blowing.  They are also bent over while using the snowblower which could lead to an aggravation of your current back injury claim.  I am not injured, but I am sore after shoveling.  If I were to already have had a lingering back injury, this is only going to make it worse. 

The same could be said if you are watching the video and your claimant slips and tweaks their back, or even worse they fall hard, probably making their current injury worse.  The best way to handle this is to wait to show the doctor the tape until after their next appointment.  In the medical notes, the claimant may show worsening signs of injury, and they probably will not tell the doctor that their symptoms worsened due to falling on their rear end while shoveling. 

At this time you have good evidence to show that their injury wasmade worse by slipping and/or falling down.  Make sure you have the doctor be objective.  By showing the doctor the film, you have concrete evidence when paired with the worsened medical report that their injury is now exacerbated by their outside activity. This should allow you to be able to be aggressive in trying to end your comp claim and move it to a personal medical condition.

Know if they Have any Outdoor Hobbies

Since you know these people for a period of months or years, you may already know that they love to ice fish, or to snowmobile.  Snowmobiling is very arduous, since riding on the machine can lead to jarring of the back, resulting in a worsening of the injury.  Even if they do not claim to be medically worsened, if you can show them active on a snowmobile, then it would seem that they are healthy enough to return to work. The best evidence you could get is if the snowmobile gets stuck and they have to get off and lift the back of the machine to get it working again.  These machines weigh hundreds of pounds, and if you can do that, you should be good enough to be returning to work.

Ice fishing is not as arduous, in fact it is pretty lazy, but it can still show a person hauling their gear out to their fishing shack and sitting for long periods of time.  You want to show the doctor that this person is more active than they are leading on.  Once you can show that, you have some great evidence to show that this person is healthy and ready for a return to work in some capacity.

If You Strike Out, Keep Trying

Getting some great surveillance film is luck of the draw.  Sometimes there will be times that you send your vendor out and they return with nothing.  That is OK, you won’t strike gold every time.  But be persistent. Watch the weather reports, be aware of local fishing and skiing competitions, and send your vendor out again.  If indeed you cannot gather any evidence then that is not necessarily a bad thing. This means your claimant is avoiding any activity that will make their pain worse or aggravate their injury.  My friend calls surveillance “the art of verification.”

Summary

There are a lot of people out there that love the snow and the winter weather.  I know people that have fishing shacks that are like a mini house, complete with TV and propane heaters.  Some people snowmobile for miles in the bitter cold, and they actually enjoy doing it.  This doesn’t mean that everyone out there is up to something bad, but it is a possibility.  So take my pal’s advice, and verify that your claimant is doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing–which is laying low, resting, and giving their injury time to heal before returning to work. 

Article Source: http://www.workerscompensation.com/compnewsnetwork/workers-comp-blogwire/15799-winter-workers-comp-surveillance-tips.html

The Renwick Group can meet all your WCB surveillance needs - please contact us at www.therenwickgroup.ca

TIPS FOR MANAGERS ABOUT HANDLING STRIKES & LABOR DISPUTES

A few important tips about Labour Dispute Management for you to consider from The Renwick Group.  When your unionized company is the target of a strike or other form of labor dispute, your actions should be guided by two primary business objectives:

• To negotiate a fair and workable agreement, that also protects managerial prerogatives to control your workforce

• To minimize immediate and longer-range economic damage

By staying focused on these objectives, your management and security team will be less vulnerable to the legal, political and public relations tactics that have become potent weapons used by labor unions and protesting workers.

A time when friends turn against you:

Supervisors who’ve never gone through a major labor dispute can be caught off guard when formerly friendly subordinates turn belligerent.

Training should ingrain two points:

1. No matter what happens, don’t let your emotions get the best of you
2. Don’t do anything to jeopardize future working relationships.

The days when strikes involved angry mobs of hostile workers battling armed guards are rare in the present, thanks to labor law reform and social conditions, although they still have powerful political connections.

But labor disputes still create tensions – on both sides – so management must be prepared to deal with volatile outbreaks.

There are two kinds of picketing:

Orderly and peaceful informational picketing is intended to make the public aware of union grievances. It usually involves a relatively small number of reasonably well-behaved pickets.

Mass picketing has a very different purpose: to use sheer numbers to intimidate and otherwise discourage workers, truck drivers, customers and the general public from crossing the picket line.

Such picketing may be legal, if orderly, peaceful and it does not block ingress and egress to the facility, but large crowds and strong emotions frequently lead to threats and violence, and thereby become illegal.

For the best protection against work disruptions, management must:

• Create and maintain detailed contingency plans
• Establish a detailed labour dispute management plan
• Establish effective means of internal and public communication involving all affected parties, and
• Prepare for the proper documentation of strikers, union officials and others when they improperly interfere with company operations or engage in intimidation or outright attacks against people or property.

We recommend management plan ahead not only for strikes but also to other potentially damaging situations, such as,

• Plant closings
• Workforce downsizing
• Union representation drives or boycotting of non-union operations
• Acts of coercion, violence and destruction by disturbed individuals
• Floods, fires and other events that jeopardize plant operations
• Generalized riots that may effect company facilities
• Terrorist threats and attacks

If you would like more information about Labour Dispute Management - Please contact us at The Renwick Group - www.therenwickgroup.ca