Fast-Tracking Volunteer Background Checks

The idea of “fast-tracking” hiring and onboarding has become a prominent talking point in background checks during the pandemic. In the early stages of COVID-19, essential businesses—particularly grocery stores and other retailers—were working to build out their teams quickly to take on heightened demand.

Later, as the first wave of COVID-19 dissipated, conversations began about how employers could fast-track their hiring in the aftermath of the pandemic to take advantage of growth opportunities afforded by a recovering economy and a vibrant potential applicant pool. These “fast-tracked” operations created questions not only about how to find and hire talent quickly but also how the need for expediency might affect criminal background screening.

Now, the conversation has shifted again toward the vaccine rollout and the volunteer capacity necessary to keep that rollout moving at maximum speed.

In New Hampshire, more than 3,500 people have signed up as prospective volunteers hoping to lend a hand with the state’s vaccination efforts. Volunteers help run vaccination clinics, providing patients with information, directions, wheelchair assistance, and other simple steps. Healthcare professionals are still the ones administering COVID-19 vaccinations and briefly observing patients for potential side effects. Volunteers play an essential role in making sure that COVID-19 vaccine clinics can operate effectively and efficiently.

As was the case with employers that needed to fill early-pandemic hiring gaps, expediency is a critical factor for health departments, hospitals, and other providers to consider in finding and vetting volunteers to help with the COVID-19 vaccination rollout.

Nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, there is eagerness to get back to normal. A well-paced vaccine effort is one of the key pieces of the puzzle necessary to reach that point. Having the right team of volunteers to put on a vaccine clinic could make all the difference—particularly volunteers who can mobilize with little notice, given the fluctuations and shortages of vaccine supply that have so far determined the pace of the vaccine rollout.

An essential step toward building a volunteer team for vaccine efforts is criminal background screening. Organizations may overlook volunteer background checks because they do not view volunteers as being a part of an organization in the same way that employees are.

Volunteers in this kind of scenario would be interfacing with the public as part of a major healthcare effort. To protect patients and their information as well as overall public perception of vaccination efforts and their trustworthiness, healthcare providers must demand volunteer background checks for their volunteers.

In New Hampshire, the state is handling the vetting and criminal background checks for its NH Responds COVID-19 vaccination volunteer effort.

If individual hospitals or health departments require assistance in the fast-tracking of volunteer background checks for vaccination clinics, backgroundchecks.com can help. We regularly work with volunteer organizations to provide thorough, low-cost, fast-turnaround volunteer background checks. Contact us today to learn more.