Right-to-work checks

According to the Immigration Act 2014, you must check that your applicant has the right to work in the UK before you employ them. You can check this by submitting information to be verified via the UK government website or by asking to see their original documents, which may be any of those listed in the government’s right to work checklist. As an employer, it is your duty by law to ensure that your employees are not working in the UK illegally. According to Section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, an illegal worker is defined as an adult over the age of 16 who fulfils any of the following criteria:

• They do not have leave to enter or remain in the UK;
• Their leave to enter or remain in the UK is out of date;
• Their papers are false;
• They are not permitted to perform this type of work.

The UK government website states that you could be sent to jail for five years and be liable for an unlimited fine if you knowingly employ someone who does not have the right to work in the UK. If you unknowingly employ an illegal worker, you may receive a civil penalty of up to £20,000 per worker. If this happens, you will be given a 28-day window in which to pay the penalty, file an appeal or object to the penalty. It makes sense to file an appeal if you believe that you completed the necessary right-to-work background checks for any employee deemed to be an illegal worker.

Criminal record or DBS check

Any employer can ask for a pre-employment criminal record check, or Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. Potential employees who will be working with children, in healthcare and/or with vulnerable adults will need a more detailed check. Not all sectors require a criminal record check by law, so consider how relevant it is to the role and seek further advice if in doubt. There are several types of criminal record checks that you can run, depending on how detailed you need the check to be for the role that you are recruiting for. They are as follows:

• A basic check, showing any unspent convictions or conditional cautions;
• A standard check, showing spent/unspent convictions, plus any final warnings, cautions and/or reprimands;
• An enhanced check, which shows the employer the same information contained in a standard check, with additional information from local police if it is deemed relevant;
• An enhanced check with barred lists, showing the same information as an enhanced check, plus confirmation as to whether the applicant is on the barred list for that role.

You can choose to repeat an employee check for any pre-existing employees. A DBS check does not cover information on any period during which the person was working outside the UK.

Medical checks

According to the Equality Act 2010, you cannot ask questions about an applicant’s medical history prior to offering them employment. Data on an applicant’s medical history falls under ‘special category data’ according to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and so can usually only be accessed lawfully with the consent of the applicant themselves.

Once you have made a job offer (which can be conditional on the results of a health assessment), you can complete a health check with the candidate. This commonly involves asking whether any suitable arrangements should be made for that candidate’s health conditions or disabilities. The Equality Act 2010 states that if your employee has a disability, you are required by law to make reasonable adjustments in order to reduce or remove any disadvantages posed to them by their current working arrangements with you.

Social media checks

Depending on the nature of your applicant’s future role, you may want to run a pre-employment screening of their online and social media presence or content. For example, a social media check may be relevant if you are recruiting for a role that will involve the employee using their personal accounts to share company content, in which case their social media presence should ideally reflect the professionalism that you would want your representatives to portray.

Although it is not against the law to assess an applicant’s suitability on the basis of their social media accounts, you should be careful about basing your final recruitment decisions on your candidate’s written online content. This is because the information on their profiles may not provide a complete context for their content, or may not accurately represent them.

Ideally, you should be using a social media check only to clarify that they are a suitable candidate. During the interview process, consider giving your candidates the choice to respond to any queries that you might have about their social media presence or content.

Qualification checks

You may wish to carry out checks to make sure that your candidate has the qualifications that they claim to have on their application. While this is not always required by law for every role, it is important if you are recruiting for a vocational position that requires a highly specialised set of skills or training such as a doctor, architect or engineer. In some industries, it is a requirement that these candidates have a professional membership, for example the British Medical Association. You should ask these applicants to provide their vocational or degree certificate(s). There are an increasing number of forged certificates in the job market, so if you have any doubts about the legitimacy of your candidate’s certificates, you can contact the relevant examination board.

Employee reference checks

As a final step before employing your chosen candidate, you should check their references. This will enable you to find out whether your impressions about the applicant’s personality and their claims regarding their work history are confirmed by their referees. Related: 5 Useful Questions Employers Should Ask When Conducting a Reference Check

Not all of these pre-employment checks are required by law. Right-to-work checks are essential and any business must carry them out diligently. However, many pre-employment checks are simply useful for making sure that your chosen candidate would make a safe and suitable new addition to the company. They also give you the opportunity to find out more about your candidate’s needs, such as any reasonable adjustments that you might need to make in the workplace.
Related: Onboarding Guide