The Ethics of Employment Data

Why HR Tech Should Reconsider Consent with the Age of Real-Time Verification

In the current work ecosystem, online screening tools are no longer optional. Recruitment sites pledge to make onboarding simpler, riskier, and more complaint-friendly all while trimming hours from the vetting process. Under the guise of convenience, however, belongs an ethical question much deeper below the radar screen: when employees’ data is compiled by companies, whose control are they actually under?

This question becomes all the more pressing as sites like MyEmployment are first out with real-time, employee-authorized verification processes. Those processes are the exception to the old, slow, error-prone verification databases. Even in this newer progressive approach, though, the same question remains - how do we make sure consent is substantive, not formalistic?

Consent Has Been Rendered as Checkbox

In the classic background checks, consent is regularly the equivalent to paragraph of small type in an online onboarding portal. By the time an employee begins entering their I-9, they have probably accessed a few “I agree” terms, allowing access to credit reports, criminal records, you name it. Missing is not only transparency but also control.

All too frequently, the onus is left on employees to slog through heavy compliance text phrased for the benefit of the law but not necessarily the reader. And where the employer is technically within the law, the ethical ground is even foggy.

Consent under employment circumstances must imply something over coverage by the law. It must be an indication of the employee’s genuine awareness of what information is shared, with whom, and why.

The Emergence of Real-Time Verification Software

Sites such as MyEmployment work toward transferrin