Backgrounds Online's Knowledge Bank

Understanding the rights of the employee under the FCRA is essential to ensuring consistent compliance for you and your employees.

While the FCRA governs what can and cannot be done as part of a pre-employment background check, it also provides employees rights under the FCRA. This was done to make sure that all job applicants and employees are treated fairly and equally when background checks are being completed on them.

A few of rights include that a person must be told if information is used against them. Backgrounds Online provides its clients with the pre-adverse and adverse action letters, which are sent when an applicant is denied employment. Applicants and employees rights under the FCRA also include being able to dispute what has been reported on them. The CRA must then re-investigate the claim and correct any information that was reported incorrectly, if those changes should be made. Furthermore, a CRA cannot resell the data or background check to third parties. It can only provide the information to the applicant or employee and its clients. Finally, probably one of the most important things covered in employees’ rights under the FCRA, consent must be required for reports. This means an applicant or employee must sign a release of information before any information can be released. A CRA, or background check company such as Backgrounds Online, cannot report any information without the employees’ permission.