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If you’ve ever thought there’s no such thing as negative publicity, think again. Police or legal matters can bring the type of publicity no employer wants.

Another key reason to conduct background checks on job applicants is to protect a company from negative publicity. A police matter at a place of business quickly can become a television news matter and soon a business has a lot of negative publicity it was neither expecting, nor wanting.

While some larger companies can recover from an incident resulting in an employee not having been background checked, not all do. Radio Shack and The Food Network are just a couple of examples of companies who could have avoided embarrassment had they conducted proper background checks on their employees.

Small companies or family-run businesses rarely recover from such negative publicity as much of their business is based on their reputation. For a small business, it would not even take a national news story, but just a local news station discovering what happened and their reputation would be damaged.