How technology is playing a crucial role for employee background verification and reshaping digital onboarding process

By Ajay Trehan, CEO & Founder, AuthBridge Research Services

Not all ideas are equal. But some ideas are vital! One such idea that has picked up pace in the pandemicis – digitization of business processes through complete automation. One domain where digitization can be of immense benefit is employee background verification. It’s a vital one and is seeing rapid adoption by companies, shaping the future of workplace and business overall.

Where technology steps in

It’s established that employee background checks are essential to the hiring process. I would like to add that with the changing workplace environment, we can expect newer risks emerging related to potential employee frauds. It’s bound to take more prominence in workplaces going forward.
With everyone working and even joining remotely, HR professionals will face a tough time conducting background screening on their candidates.

The conventional methodology is tedious andtime-consuming. Document collection,data arrangement, vendor management and regular follow ups makes the process in the current environment just makes it more difficult and inconvenient. On the other hand, repeated form filling, document sharing, joining formalities, delays while onboarding can lead to an unpleasant and unwelcoming experience for the employees.

But technology is changing all this.

With artificial intelligence (AI), large amounts of data can be processed in a few minutes. By entering a person’s name into a search engine, all matches to that name from databases across the web can be thrown up in a matter of seconds.

Complex Data Analytics that combine AI with machine learning helps prioritize data according to relevance and presents the hiring company with the more useful data first.

Deep analysis of risk and threats can ensure that you are hiring a trustworthy candidate. What new technologies can do is to pick up on phrases like ‘termination of employment’ and gather all data relevant to that point. A search result like this makes it much easier for HR to know why the person left/was fired from their last place of employment.

API and SDK allow seamless integration of these capabilities in any HRMS system. This gives controlled based access to clients so they can manage complete employee verification from their internal systems in just 3-4 steps.  In India, AuthBridge is writing the story of remote verification and contactless onboarding for the virtual workplaces of tomorrow. We build technology which allows real-time verification and seamless onboarding workflows to automate the entire experience of candidates and hiring manager.

Real-time verification and contactless onboarding

Real-time verification requires verifiable data, a source of original data to verify against and technology to verify as quickly and securely as possible. We have proprietary databases (education, employment, criminal history records etc.) and authentication technology that automates all processes involved like data collection, verification, analytics and more. Our propriety databases are the largest in the country, in the given domain.AI-based authentication, deep search algorithms, precise match score, OCR, face-match and other tech capabilities have effective adaptability to distinctive use cases. That’s how we offer customizable workflows with options of easy-to-use interfaces or APIs / integrations. One such example is iBridge – our end-to-end employee verification product.As businesses across the world go remote, we are helping organizations to automate their employee verification and onboarding processes.

Verifying identity, criminal background and employment records can be done in a matter of seconds. Address verification, which used to take days, can now be completed in matter of minutes with our digital address verification product. Criminal records check across millions of rows, with results ranked by probability score is all possible because of technology. Electronic signatures or Aadhaar-based esign can digitize the entire documentation part of onboarding process. All of this helps makes the hiring process seamless, secure and convenient.

Being responsible with technology

Data has huge power and data privacy is a matter of great responsibility. Digitization in this domain comes with the responsibility to keep user information secure and safe. As regulations and mandates around background verification evolve, it becomes an intrinsic responsibility of service providers to handle this data responsibly and all companies in this space need to take this up with utmost seriousness.Hence strong policies, data security measures and adherence to global guidelines becomes vital for our space.

The role of technology will only increase further in the verification space. With more and more government bodies, educational institutes and businesses moving towards digitizing their databases and AI-technology becoming more intuitive with machine learning – background data intelligence will help employers easily identify genuine candidates and hire employees with proven background of identity, profile and reputation.