Who is really running my store? A Strong Case for Employee Background Checks

Coming from big box retail, I never realized just how uncommon employee background checks are in terms of smaller businesses, until I worked for one. While it’s standard practice for major retailers to run a pre-employment screening, there are plenty of stores and business out there that simply don’t. This could be a problem. It could be a problem for you, your business, your other employees and your customers. Knowing who you employ shouldn’t be a luxury. It is and should be, a necessity.

One of my first LP jobs was a district manager position for a very small chain of hardware stores. If I recall, they only have about 50 stores. When I first came on, they were building up their LP program and lacked several basic control measures in place. Think EAS, CCTV, exception based reporting and basic physical security measures. Heck, the stores weren’t even equipped with alarm panels. Part of my job was to help build their LP department to better assist the stores in becoming more profitable, assist in inventory reductions as well as limiting a very high turnover rate. After my first couple of weeks, it was clear that in order to help all of those categories, store managers needed to make better hiring decisions and that all starts with a thorough background check. 

It didn’t take much convincing and the company eventually found a company to process the screenings for us for a very competitive rate. Part of our new policy was to run the background checks on all of our current store managers. What we found was very disturbing. Out of 50 store managers, nearly 20 of them had extensive criminal records. Records that including prison time, drug and weapons charges, assaults, counterfeiting, forgery, fraud and even murder. These were our store managers! Not surprising, these 20 or so managers all had some of the worst performing stores. Literally, every one of those stores had shrink, turnover and moral issues. Coincidence? I think not. 

It took almost two years to fully implement and turnover some of those managers, but eventually the company was able to start with a clean slate. Now, every employee, prior to being offered a position with that company is required to submit to a background check. Anything other than simple misdemeanor traffic violations results in a disqualification of employment. I can tell you that those stores operate more efficiently, there is less shrink and turnover and employee morale high. If your company is not reviewing the backgrounds of your employees, ask yourself, “Who is really running my store?”