'Tis the season to be careful!

Christmas is often the busiest time for HR departments, with the strain on usual staff resulting in the decision to employ temporary workers to ensure that business continues to run smoothly throughout the festive season. But while temporary workers can provide some relief from the increased pace of business, don’t be tempted to scrimp on your usual security measures in order to speed up the hiring process because it could have costly implications.

Whatever industry you are in, from retail through to logistics, the festive season often calls for extra staff to help support your regular workers. You likely have a comprehensive background check procedure in place for your permanent staff, which helps protect your company from a bad hire, as well as the resulting reputational or financial fallout of problems with personnel, but can you say the same for your temp workers?

Your temporary staff will often have the same access to business assets, customers, other staff and members of the public as your permanent workers and provide just as much of a risk to company wellbeing. And, depending on the role in question, a DBS check might be necessary to satisfy compliance.

There are four types of DBS checks. The basic check shows only unspent convictions and conditional cautions, this is the lowest level of check and is the only one that an individual can request for themselves. The standard check shows spent and unspent convictions, cautions, reprimands and final warnings. The enhanced check is the same as the standard check but also includes any information held by the local police. And the highest level of check, enhanced check with barred, also shows whether a person is barred from performing certain roles. Standard, enhanced and enhanced with barred must all be requested by an organisation.

A specialist screening company can advise you on whether or not a DBS check is necessary for your Christmas temps, as well as suggest any other personnel checks which can help provide peace of mind to you, your staff and your customers at this time of peace on earth and festive cheer.