It happens to the best employers: illegal activity in your workplace, drugs, a sudden amount of thefts, a worker threatening violence, or some other kind of misconduct. The question is, “What types of prevention methods can be taken during the staffing process to prevent such occurrences?” The most efficient methods are through drug testing, personality testing, integrity testing, aptitude testing, and background checks.

Today, taking a drug test is as routine as filling out a job application. While implementation of a drug testing policy may initially reduce the pool of unfit applicants, regular pre-employment testing will help an organization to ensure a safer workplace, and facilitate the delivery of better quality products and services. According to the Indiana Prevention Resource Center at Indiana University [1] more than seventy percent of current illicit drug users are employed. This means that more than 10 million employees use illicit drugs, making the workplace an important environment in which to intervene with drug users and to help prevent employees from starting to use illegal drugs. Em

An integrity test assesses an individual’s honesty and moral character. An example of an integrity test is a polygraph test. It is designed to measure very small changes in heartbeat, skin temperature, and dryness. According to Preston [8] the machine works on the assumption that there is a direct relationship between these changes and a person’s conscious attempts to avoid the truth. A polygraph test is useful in detecting lying in an interview. Some employers have previously used polygraph testing, but for most employers the use of polygraph testing is now against the law. Because of the significant growth of banning polygraph testing there has been a growth in paper-and-pencil integrity test. These test are relatively easy to administer and can be done within thirty to forty-five minutes at the place of employment. The responses are called in to the testing center and then they return a score.

In conclusion, each testing procedure has its own effective means of contributing to a successful element of staffing. Each procedure compliments each other making for a better staff. Testing and background checks can always be an important issue in staffing but, according to Robert Half [7] if you are not careful, testing can be a legal minefield for all situations, and its up to you – not the testing company – to make sure that whatever testing procedure you use meets fundamental criteria established by the Equal Employment Opportunity legislation. There are two considerations here. First, consistent with all EEO legislation, any of the tests you use as part of hiring must be related to the specific job for which the candidate has applied. Second, the nature of the questions themselves cannot reduce the chances of minorities or women being hired. As long as an employer establishes a workplace policy and presents it to potential employees with these considerations included, he or she can expect a healthy staffing operation.

Even though drug testing is routinely done there are some individuals whose viewpoint on drug testing is that it is a violation of the employees’ privacy and are unreliable at detecting drug use. One group expressing this viewpoint is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [5]. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) oppose indiscriminate urine testing because the process is both unfair and unnecessary because they can not detect impairment and in no way enhance an employer’s ability to evaluate or predict job performance.

According to Paul Preston [8] formal testing of personality may be considered an unfair labor practice. Further, there are some serious questions of ethics involved when managers undertake to probe into the psyche of employees. Such testing can be an unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy. Hiring an individual who seems to have a personality that conflicts with the personality mix in an organization is an invitation to future problems. This seems to place a manager in a dilemma: to evaluate personality or not to evaluate personality?

innocent. Some applicants may have a tendency to fake their responses to the test, which can lead to a concern for most employers. Staffing Organizations [10] suggest that if faking does occur, it does not severely impair the predictive validity of integrity tests. It has been sugges

Some topics in this essay:
Indiana University, Opposing Viewpoints, Workplace Policy, According Dolan, According Preston, Paul Preston, Mitchell Sack, Resource Staffing, Lisa Guerin, Staffing Organizations, drug testing, background check, background checks, integrity test, personality test, testing policy, drug test, test positive, drug testing policy, aptitude test, drug abuse, liberties union aclu, civil liberties union, alcohol drug abuse, invasion individual’s privacy,