WARNING – CONTENT MENTIONS ABUSE

Free BBSafe safeguarding webinar 26 May, 12-1pm AEST

Our next free safeguarding webinar will be on Recognising the signs of grooming and what to do about it: Would you and your team recognise grooming behaviour? And would you know what to do about it? Join us for practical tips on this tricky subject. Register here:
https://events.humanitix.com/bbsafe-lunchtime-webinar-recognising-the-signs-of-grooming-and-what-to-do-about-it-12-00pm-aest-eva887t6

Safeguarding practice in reference checking
You may have heard us talking about safeguarding practice in recruitment over the years (if you haven’t and you would like our “Top 10 recruitment tips” fact sheet – drop me an email!). Robust practice means we can do a lot to make sure that the people working and volunteering with our organisations are committed to working safely with our clients and know what this means in the context of their role – whether they are a front line worker or the CEO. 

However, I think the online processes and platforms increasingly being used for reference checking is creating a weakness in safe recruitment practice. It is fairly typical these days to receive a reference request by email, with a link to complete an online reference. You’re often doing this amongst the many other things on your to-do list, and sometimes the questions are pretty generic. 

What is lost in this type of process is the opportunity for a conversation – and this can be critical in relation to safeguarding, for example:

– generic questions may not be digging into matters like “do you have concerns about the candidate working with children/older people/people with disability/your client group?”; and “would you work with this person again?”
– with an online and written response rather than a conversation, there is a lost opportunity to hear the hesitation in the referee’s response to questions like these, or to follow up on why they answered in a particular way
– a referee may be much more willing to express a concern verbally than to write it into an online form.

No matter what roles you are recruiting for, if the organisation is working with children or vulnerable adults, safe recruitment practice is a critical risk management strategy. There are so many things we can and should be doing.

What’s your current internal reference checking process? If you are working with recruiters, ask them how they are conducting reference checks and insist that there a conversation and targeted safeguarding questions.

We would love to know your thoughts. Feel free to get in touch. Sarah.lim@bbsafe.com.au