You are an HR professional grappling with delays in background verification. Now imagine having instant access to verified credentials for a prospective candidate with utmost accuracy in just four hours. This may soon be a reality!

Efficiency in background checks is imperative for HR users to save time and resources, enhancing their ability to make informed hiring decisions and maintain workplace integrity. From months and weeks, background verification (BGV) can be reduced to just 4 hours and eventually become instant, believe experts.

“Through APIs that will get integrated into the HR Management System, background verification will be done instantly and more effectively,” says Piyush Peshwani, co-founder and CEO at OnGrid and OnGrid.

According to Piyush, KYP (Know Your People), which is similar to KYC concepts, will get adopted, and it will essentially mean that organisations will integrate instant verification APIs into their onboarding process or HR systems.

Faster background checks offer significant advantages in the modern workplace, streamlining processes and delivering numerous benefits for both employers and job seekers. To explore the importance and benefits of accelerating background checks, People Matters and OnGrid hosted an exclusive webinar on ‘Shift in Background Verification | TAT from Weeks to Hours.’

The virtual session focused on three important aspects:

●    Importance of background verification for HR users to ensure a safe and reliable workforce

● Impact of expediting the hiring process to secure right talent quickly and minimise operational disruptions

●    Implementation of multi-channel verification methodology for KYC and background checks

How faster background checks help

1. Empower employers to make faster decisions, facilitating agile and responsive hiring process

2. Contribute to reduced time-to-fill metric, addressing critical staffing needs promptly

3. Quicker onboarding, increasing overall workforce productivity

4. Increasing attractiveness to top-tier candidates

5. Maintaining compliance with industry regulations and legal requirements, avoiding potential legal issues

6. Contribute to positive employer branding, showcasing the organisation as forward-thinking and respecting candidates' time

7. Improved employee satisfaction as they enter the workforce sooner

8. Better planning of workforce needs and resource allocation

9. Enhancing risk mitigation efforts

10. Adaptability to remote work trends 

Turnaround Time is Key 

Biggest challenge in background checks for HR leaders, Talent Acquisition professionals is the turnaround time (TAT), which can go up to several weeks. Today, only 10% of the background checks are done digitally. “Verifiable credentials for employees is here to stay; from the current 10%, we will go to 50% in the next couple of years and in 5 years, we are hopeful to see 90% background checks being done digitally,” feels Piyush.

Some organisations have started running BGV pre-onboarding or even before issuing offer letters to cut down time and enhance compliance safety standards. Besides the time consumed, accuracy is the second biggest challenge in BGV, according to our Webinar poll conducted live during the session.

Lack of standardised processes and cost constraints were other factors that the poll considered as a challenge.

“A combination of TAT, accuracy, standardised process and cost impacts employee verification,” observed Satinder Madan, Transformation Head of Global People Operations, Wipro Ltd, during the discussion.

Diversity of Reputation Systems

With the current reputation systems, establishing trust between employer and employee can create a lot of hassle and paperwork for both parties, leading to delays, high cost, and even lost opportunities for people from landing a job, or getting access to a service.

“Reputation systems in both organised and unorganised sectors are today evolving and there is a need to develop background verification history like we have a credit history to reutilise the existing information available to organisations,” says Satinder.

Leveraging Technology 

With the unorganised economy gradually entering mainstream and getting organised with digital footprints and formal background checks, the BGV landscape is becoming more digital, paperless and presence-less. Remote work has further accelerated the push for paperless BGV.
“Digital credentials to become a reality with staff-employer engagement to be based on reusable verifiable credentials in next 3 years,”  reiterates Piyush. As we adapt to the digital structure and have more robust data to collaborate, the BGV landscape will move more effectively. “It’s the responsibility of digital trust platforms like OnGrid to educate and participate in creating India’s digital infrastructure,” adds Piyush.

Vision for verification methodologies in India

Background verification will become more platform-driven. And one cannot deny the increasing importance of data security and data privacy. BGV service providers need to maintain a balance between client delivery, privacy concerns and data security. Organisations need to collect minimal information from prospective candidates that can be used to call an API to fetch results without any manual interventions, ensuring the information is secured and can be archived for future purposes.

Digital onboarding can not only reduce the time but also call for a hassle-free experience for the candidates. “Despite the different objectives for BGV, at the heart of it is the methodology: professionals and organisations cannot compromise on accuracy and within that, you need to have low cost and low turnaround time,” concludes Piyush.

OnGrid is a digital trust platform that is solving the problem of lack of trust by using technology solutions for verification, KYC, and background checks and helping organisations and service providers to onboard individuals seamlessly.