Post Employment Background Check: What You Need to Know [2025]

To ensure your new hires continue to meet your standards following their hiring date, you should conduct post-employment background checks.

At iprospectcheck, we have extensive experience conducting employment background checks for employers across the nation across all industries.

In this blog, we’re sharing what employers need to know about these critical checks.

What Is a Post-Employment Background Check?

Post-employment background checks are screenings employers complete on existing employees at specific intervals, before promotions, or randomly.

By contrast, a pre-employment background check might be conducted on a candidate during the hiring process but before they begin work.

Employers that conduct post-hire screens typically do so at one or more of the following times:

• Annually. The best practice is to complete annual post-hire background checks from the date of hire just before the employee’s annual performance review. This allows your company to confirm if anything has changed that should be addressed during the review.
• At specific intervals. In some industries, including transportation and education, post-employment background checks might be required at specific intervals.
  For example, under 49 CFR, Part 391 § 391.25, transportation carriers regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) must complete annual post-hire background checks of their regulated drivers’ motor vehicle records.
• Before a promotion. Employers should also complete post-hire screens anytime an employee is up for a promotion to ensure they meet the company’s standards and haven’t engaged in any concerning behavior in the time since the last background check.
• Randomly. If your organization operates within a DOT-regulated industry, you might need to conduct random drug screens to meet your regulatory requirements. However, random background checks are generally not a good idea unless you disclose your intention and secure the employee’s new consent before conducting them.

Benefits of Post-Hire Screening

1. Discover New Criminal Convictions

Post-hire screening at regular intervals helps employers identify employees who have new and problematic criminal convictions that could threaten workplace safety or impact their job duties.

2. Protect Client Safety

Organizations that serve vulnerable populations, including elderly people, children, and people with disabilities, must ensure their employees and volunteers are safe and do not have a history of abuse, neglect, assaults, theft, sexual abuse, and other serious misconduct.

Conducting regular post-hire background checks on existing employees and volunteers reduces the risk that a dangerous individual will slip through the cracks and potentially harm the organization’s clients.

3. Increase Client Trust and Confidence

Companies that routinely conduct post-hire background checks can increase client trust and confidence in their operations, especially if they deal with sensitive customer information and financial data.

Regularly screening your employees demonstrates your company is diligent in its efforts to ensure all employees, including those who have worked for a long time, remain trustworthy.

4. Protect Your Reputation and Brand

Your employees are your brand representatives. If one of them steals from a customer, commits fraud or embezzlement, or engages in workplace violence, their actions can make the news and damage your reputation.

Conducting post-hire screenings can help identify employees who might pose dangers to your company, clients, other employees, and brand so that you can take appropriate action before anything happens.

5. Maintain High Standards

Many employers want to ensure new hires meet the high standards their companies demand by conducting pre-employment background checks.

However, failing to conduct post-hire background checks means some of your existing employees might not meet your standards because of new criminal activity, lawsuits, and other issues that have occurred since their hire dates.

Post-hire screens help to ensure all of your employees continue to meet your standards and can be trusted in their jobs.

6. Reduce Liability Risks

Employers can face negligent retention and supervision lawsuits when incompetent employees negligently or intentionally injure others while working if a background check would have revealed they posed a threat of foreseeable harm.

For example, if a delivery driver causes an accident and has a suspended driver’s license or a new drunk driving conviction, the employer could be liable for failing to check the driver’s motor vehicle records post-hire.

7. Maintain Regulatory Compliance

Certain regulated industries must conduct regular background checks on existing employees to maintain regulatory compliance.

Others might hire people to work in positions requiring licenses and need to ensure they maintain their credentials to continue in their jobs.

Failing to conduct post-hire background checks for regulated positions could lead to civil penalties and stiff fines.

What is Typically Included in Post-Hire Screening?

While an employment background check doesn’t technically expire, some of the information can become outdated.

It’s important to note that an employment background check is a snapshot in time of an employee’s background information. Some of this information can change post-hire and should be checked regularly.

For example, while an employee’s education and employment history might remain the same, it makes sense to re-check the following information:

• Criminal records checks
• Drug tests
• Credit checks
• Motor vehicle records (MVR) checks
• Sex offender registry checks
• Sanctions checks
• Professional license verification

Let’s take a look at what might appear in these reports and why they are important to include in a post-hire background check.

Criminal Records Checks

An employee might commit crimes after being hired and be convicted of a crime.

Including a criminal records check in a post-hire background screen enables you to discover new criminal convictions and pending charges that could impact your company and your employee’s job duties.

Criminal background checks show the following information about pending criminal cases and convictions:

• Offense date
• Type of offense
• Criminal case number
• Offense severity (misdemeanor or felony)
• Disposition and disposition date (if available)
• Sentence information (if available)

Drug Tests

Drug screens are a snapshot of an individual’s substance use at a particular point in time.

An applicant could refrain from using illegal drugs for the length of the detection windows and immediately go back to using substances once they are hired.

Employment drug screens typically test for the employee’s recent use of the following substances:

• Marijuana (THC)
• Cocaine
• Amphetamines/methamphetamines
• Opiates/opioids (heroin, oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone, etc.)
• Phencyclidine (PCP)

Having a drug testing policy at your workplace for random drug tests of employees encourages people to remain substance-free and not come to work under the influence.

Credit Checks

Employers in the finance industry and others with employees who access sensitive customer and company information can benefit from post-employment credit checks for any employees who handle sensitive information and/or money.

These types of credit checks are soft checks and will not harm the employee’s credit score.

A credit check for employment can show whether an employee might be under financial stress and at potential risk of committing embezzlement, fraud, or theft.

An employment credit check shows the following information:

• Available credit
• Debt-to-income (DTI) ratio
• Bankruptcies within the past seven or 10 years
• Payment history
• Unpaid collections
• Other credit inquiries

MVR Checks

If your company has employees who drive as a part of their job duties, it’s important to conduct regular post-hire MVR checks.

This type of post-hire screen can show if an employee has racked up traffic violations or been convicted of any major traffic crimes since their hiring date.

If you fail to check the driving records of your existing employees regularly, your company could be liable if an unqualified driver causes an accident while on the clock.

In addition to your potential liability exposure in this scenario, your commercial vehicle insurer might not cover losses caused by an incompetent driver who should have been fired because of a suspended license or DUI conviction.

Sex Offender Registry Checks

An employee who had a clear record at the time of hire might subsequently commit sex crimes requiring sex offender registration.

Depending on your business, having a registered sex offender on staff could risk the safety of your other employees, customers, or vulnerable populations you serve.

A post-hire sex offender registry check will show whether an employee is registered and reveal the following information:

• Name and aliases
• Tattoos and other distinguishing marks
• Photograph
• Registered address
• Offense requiring registration

Sanctions Checks

Individuals working in the healthcare industry should undergo regular sanctions checks to confirm they have not been excluded or debarred.

Healthcare organizations that fail to conduct sanctions checks could face significant fines and potentially lose their ability to contract with Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs.

The following searches are typically included in healthcare sanctions checks:

• Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) List of Excluded Individuals and Entities (LEIE) – An OIG LEIE check shows if an individual has been excluded from participating in Medicare or Medicaid.
• Office of Foreign Asset Control at the U.S. Department of Treasury (OFAC) – An OFAC check reveals if an individual is on a federal watch list that restricts them from conducting business.
• General Services Administration (GSA) System for Awards Management (SAM) check – A SAM check reveals if an individual has been barred from engaging in contracts or subcontracts with the federal government.
• Fraud Abuse Control Information System (FACIS) check – A FACIS check is available at three levels and searches multiple, regularly updated, and reliable databases to confirm if an individual has been sanctioned, excluded, or debarred by multiple federal and state organizations and agencies

Professional License Verification

If you employ people who must have professional licenses to perform their jobs, it’s important to perform annual checks to ensure their licenses remain active and in good standing.

You could face potential legal liability and civil penalties if an unlicensed, suspended, or disbarred employee continues to perform work for which a license is required in your state.

How to Conduct a Post-Employment Background Check

1. Create a Post-Hire Background Check Policy

If you plan to conduct post-employment background checks, you should start by creating a comprehensive post-employment background check policy that describes the intervals when they will be conducted, the types of searches that should be performed, and the groups of employees who will undergo them.

Your policy should be applied uniformly to all employees in a group to avoid potential bias, and your HR staff should undergo thorough training to ensure they understand the policy and how to implement it.

2. Choose the Timing of Post-Employment Background Checks

Include the timing of when post-employment background checks will be conducted.

Best practices typically include annual post-hire screens and post-employment checks whenever someone is up for a promotion.

3. Comply with Notice and Consent Requirements

Before you conduct a post-employment background check, provide your employee with a disclosure notice on a standalone form.

This notice should track the language required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and should not include extraneous information.

You can include the consent form on the same document. Ask your employee to sign the form to consent to the background check.

4. Hire a Professional Background Check Provider

Choose a reliable background check company to complete your background checks.

The company you choose should be reliable, legally compliant, and fast.

At iprospectcheck, our advanced research methods and extensive resources allow us to quickly return comprehensive background checks that are highly accurate and FCRA-compliant.

5. Keep Your Employees Informed During the Process

Make sure your employees stay informed during the process to alleviate worries. When you receive their reports, communicate the results with them promptly.

6. Individually Assess Convictions and Pending Criminal Charges

If you learn an employee has a new conviction or a pending criminal case, individually assess the criminal record as it directly relates to the duties of their job before making an adverse employment decision.

7. Complete the Adverse Action Process

If a post-hire employment screening reveals new information that makes you want to deny a promotion or terminate the employee, you must complete the adverse action process before making a final decision.

Relevant Employment Background Check Laws

Federal Laws

Fair Credit Reporting Act

A major consumer privacy law, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) restricts what consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) can collect, retain, and report about applicants and employees and what employers can do with the information they learn from employment background check reports about applicants and employees.

A notable requirement for employers that conduct employment background checks that is relevant to post-employment screenings is the disclosure and consent requirement.

Under this rule, employers must disclose their intention to complete background checks to applicants and employees on a standalone form and must also obtain their written consent before they can be initiated.

This means that an employer must notify current employees that they will conduct a post-employment background check and ask for their signed authorization.

If the employer discovers problematic information on a post-employment background check about an employee, they must complete the adverse action steps before making an adverse employment decision.

This involves sending a pre-adverse action notice to the employee, giving the employee a reasonable time (generally, five business days) to respond with mitigating information, and sending a final adverse action notice if the employer still decides to terminate their employment based on the information learned from the report.

They can only move forward with the final termination decision once they have completed the adverse action process.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is the leading federal anti-discrimination law and forbids workplace discrimination based on an applicant’s or employee’s protected characteristics.

According to guidance for employers from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), employers should individually assess arrest and conviction records they learn about from background checks before making an adverse decision based on that information.

This means that when an employer learns about a current employee’s conviction on a post-employment background check, they must consider the nature of the offense, how it relates to the employee’s job duties, and whether it affects workplace safety before basing a termination decision on the conviction.

State Laws

While some individual states have separate employment background check laws, all states follow the FCRA and Title VII.

This means that regardless of which state your company operates in, you must comply with the notice and consent requirements of the FCRA before conducting a post-employment background check.

You must also complete an individual assessment of conviction information under Title VII and the adverse action steps under the FCRA before basing a decision not to promote or terminate an employee based on conviction information learned in a post-hire background check.

While employers in some states try to use an evergreen disclosure and consent for background checks so that they can conduct future post-hire screens without completing a new disclosure and consent process each time, it’s generally not a good idea.

Doing so could result in privacy concerns in many states and potential lawsuits.

In California, using an evergreen disclosure and consent instead of completing a new notification and consent process each time before conducting a background check is illegal under the Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA).

iprospectcheck: Your Trusted Source for Reliable Post Employment Background Checks

Many employers conduct pre-employment background checks to ensure their new hires are trustworthy, competent, qualified, and safe.

However, some types of information in a pre-employment background check can become outdated, making post-hire screens important to ensure your employees continue to meet your company’s standards.

At iprospectcheck, we provide comprehensive background check services, including post-hire screens.

To learn about our services and receive a free quote, call us today: (888) 509-1979.

DISCLAIMER: The resources provided here are for educational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Consult your counsel if you have legal questions related to your specific practices and compliance with applicable laws.