Why has there been a steep rise in the number of businesses carrying out qualification checks?
Employee fraud is a growing concern. One of the biggest areas of employee fraud in recent years has been in relation to qualifications. People lying on CVs or actually purchasing fake documents are becoming increasingly common. Research shows that a typical organisation loses around 5% of their annual revenue due to fraud. After the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, this is a loss that many businesses can’t afford.
A Growing Problem
An investigation by the BBC in 2018 revealed the extent of the ‘staggering’ network providing fake qualifications in the UK. It was reported that qualifications, including PhD’s, were sold to NHS nurses and consultants and even a large defence contractor.
Considering the effort that goes into these operations it can be incredibly difficult for employers to know whether what they’re looking at is real. A recent study revealed that 75% of admissions staff couldn’t stop fraudulent documents awarded in their own organisation’s name.
There is a lot of research currently ongoing into how blockchain and AI could be used to verify the authenticity of academic qualifications. Despite the technology existing to be able to do this, implementing an internationally recognised way of managing and verifying qualifications in this way is going to be a lengthy process. It will be years, if not decades before a solution like this is available.
Reporting frauds
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) revealed recently that 51% of businesses have uncovered more fraud throughout the pandemic. Although it's known that qualification fraud is a growing problem, the true scale can be hard to judge. In the ACFE annual report, they revealed that only 59% of those they surveyed reported frauds to law enforcement. This suggests that employee fraud is potentially far more commonplace than reported.
What can you do?
For degree-level qualifications, Prospects, part of Jisc, have their own platform for verifying qualifications. Prospects HEDD, short for Higher Education Degree Datacheck, allows users to look up a candidate's credentials on the UK’s official hub. This is an incredibly useful tool to have access to. However, it only helps you when it comes to degree-level qualifications. So what else can you do?
Running qualification checks can help give you the peace of mind you need. These checks will verify an individual’s entire educational history. Incorporating these checks into your recruitment can help you confirm that the person you’re hiring has the qualifications they say they do. This can help prevent any nasty surprises further down the line.
For more information about how Personnel Checks background screening solutions can aid your organisation, get in touch! You can give us a call on 01254 355688 or drop us an email at letstalk@personnelchecks.co.uk