Public Access to Court Records
Taking risks is part and parcel of the make up of any business nowadays. For example court records show that 60 % of new businesses fail within the first year of business (that's about one in every 4) and over a course of a 5 year period this number rises significantly to three in five.
When such risks are assessed, it is common to assume that external market forces are influential in the development of any business, and attempts at forecasting such forces should indeed be on the agenda of any business owner as these external factors do play an important part in the risk taking process. What is often times summarily brushed to the side are the internal risks though, factors that do not dependent on outside circumstances but rather on internal structure or even actions from within the company itself.
Workers operating heavy equipment for example introduce an added element of risk into the equation. Likewise, businesses operating motor vehicle also fall within this category where the human factor becomes a risk.
The truth is businesses are at risk as soon as there are interactions between customers and employees, particularly when these employees make mistakes which can then have negative influence on various levels. This added risk thus expands beyond the confines of the company's premises into customers' homes etc
And so, an employee's solitary mistake could have a potentially damaging effect on the business in financial terms which could affect its very livelihood and at best could result in a substantial increase in liability insurance premium.
In other words, the actions of a single careless employee can significantly alter the delicate balance between success and failure, and plunge the business in a situation which can at best be costly in terms of customer service and or litigation costs, or at worse be fatal to the business.
Of course it is impossible to foresee every element of a workforce method of operation and ensure that mistakes do not happen. Frailty is part of human nature, and as humans, we make mistakes.
It is therefore of vital importance that appropriate pre-screening at the recruiting level be taken in order to ensure that if a mistake does happen, it is not from someone with a history of making such mistakes or worse, someone with court records indicating a criminal past.
There is always an element of unease when talking about the subject of court records. After all we live in a free society where the privacy of all us is something we should all be proud of, and thus whenever the issue of background check is raised there is a sense of guilt or discomfort show casing everyone desire to stay out of other people's businesses.
But we do live in a world ripe with litigation lawyers and lawsuits and the risks of damages imposed by a court to a company who has been found guilty of negligence or worse can mean the death of that company as a business.
After all, the idea here is not only to protect the business owner's investment and business but also to ensure that the rest of the workforce are not adversely affected by the actions of a single person who should never have been hired in the first place. Court records then become essential for the job security of all other workers.
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