HireRight Compliance Webinar Recap

Our friends at HireRight recently had their recap of 2019 compliance changes on their educational webinar. They covered the rule changes from the past year and forecasted some regulation changes that we could see in the near future. Here are some of the key points they covered in the webinar:

• Ban the Box Laws - Some extra rules have passed to add on to ban the box laws. In California, Chicago, Seattle, and a few other places, employers must now identify specific criminal conduct they are investigating during background checks.
• Clean Slate Laws - Hawaii, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Vermont, and West Virginia have passed new laws that permit the sealing or expungement of certain adult convictions. Pennsylvania recently switched to an automatic system of doing this, which is expected to catch on in other states because of its efficiency and lower cost.
• Credit Use Restrictions - 13 states and Puerto Rico have increased restrictions in credit usage in the hiring process.
• Pay Equity - More and more places are eliminating questions about pay at former jobs on applications, including in New York, New Jersey, and Colorado.
• Medical Marijuana Accommodation - Six new states, including Illinois now, have adjusted rules regarding the usage of medical marijuana. You can no longer discriminate against legal medical users provided they have the proper certification or aren’t in specific safety sensitive positions. There are still no real regulations that require that an employer permit marijuana usage, though it’s likely that future rules will trend that way. Maine, for example, has just become the first state to offer full protections for recreational users and companies in other states have begun to stop testing for marijuana voluntarily.
• California Consumer Protection Act - Already in effect, the CCPA has required California employees to be informed what/how personal information employers have collected, how that information is used, and if it is sold to third parties. Consumers also hold the right now to have that info deleted or be exempt from sharing the information with third parties.
• Worker Classification - tighter rules are coming into effect that define independent contractors. These continue to vary widely state by state, but are now gaining more clear requirements. California for example has implemented their “ABC test” where contractors must meet three basic standards to be considered independent. HireRight predicts this type of requirement will be copied by other states soon.
• Artificial Intelligence - for those companies who use AI as part of their evaluation process in recruiting (for interviews, etc.) certain states are now requiring consent by the applicant before it may be utilized.
• 2020 - HireRight also mentioned that exploratory inquiries into the use of biometrics and AI, as well as continued reform to marijuana regulations and data privacy will be ongoing this year and probably lead to rule changes of some kind.

Be sure to brush up on your state’s regulations in these categories and adjust your compliance documentation accordingly. For more information and access to webinars like this one, head over to HireRight’s jam-packed Resource Library, which has updates to regulations, blogs, and other useful resources.