Results of ACCS’ Employee Background Checks

Recently the Alabama Community College System completed background checks on all of their current employees. Although some of their newer hires underwent the investigations as part of the employment procedure, many who had been with the system for a while had not.

The background checks on ACCS employees took a total of three months. During the process, the system found out that less than 1 percent of all of its workers had felony record. The final number of individuals who had these charges against them was 73.

“This is very good news for ACCS employees,” said Chancellor Bradley Byrne. He went on to say that the majority of those who did have felony records were accused of low-level crime, most of which were for older offenses.

“Every one of these 73 cases is being reviewed on its own individual merits,” said Byrne. “If the president would like to retain the employee, he or she presents it to me for my approval. We will continue this process with all new employees in the future.”

During the background checks, a number of identity theft cases were discovered. ACCS reported that 37 employees found out that they had been the victim of this crime, which might have not come to their attention otherwise. This is often a benefit of employment related background checks.

Instead of handling these investigations internally, ACCS officials decided to outsource its employee background checks to The Integrity Group. Altogether ACCS employs approximately 10,500. Of this number, TIG investigated 9,400 full and part time employees. The rest had recently undergone background checks and, therefore, did not have to do so again.

The outcome for the 73 employees with felony differed. As of September 30th, the decision had made to keep 23 of the employees because both the president and the chancellor felt that the crimes in question had happened far enough in the individuals pasts, the crimes in question were not serious enough in nature to be a concern, and the employees were found to be valuable members of the institution.

ACCS found reason to terminated 8 of the employees, another 4 left voluntarily and 6 were non-renewed. At this time, 32 individuals are still under review by either the chancellor or the institution’s president.