Case Study: Friendly Reference Check
What Would You Do?
Case study provided by Keith Greene, SPHR, Society for Human Resource Management
Background:
You are the Divisional Director of Human Resources for Jetspeed Aircraft Corporation. Your company has a "verification only" reference policy, i.e., not giving out any information about former employees other than verifying their position and dates of employment.
Recently, Jetspeed downsized and eliminated many of its middle managers. One individual whose job was eliminated was Barbara Smith, assistant director of procurement and purchasing. Barbara was a satisfactory employee. She was also a casual friend of yours.
Five months after Barbara lost her job, she telephoned you to let you know that she is one of two final applicants for a great job at Whatajet Corporation.
A few days later, you receive a telephone call from the Vice President of Human Resources of Whatajet, whom you met several months ago at a professional meeting. Since then, you and she actually had lunch once or twice.
She tells you that she needs to discuss Barbara's past performance reviews in order to help Whatajet make a final decision. She assures you that anything you say will be "totally off the record."
What would you do???
Steps to Resolution
1. What relevant facts are known?
- The company has a "verification only" reference policy.
- You have a good professional relationship with the VP for HR of the company that wants the reference.
- The VP for HR needs more information to make her decision than your policy allows.
- Employers want references on potential hires but do not want to give references.
- Employers are concerned about litigation from employees for which negative references have been released.
- Many employers have resorted to only verifying employment dates when references are requested.
2. Identify the NACE Principles in question.
There is not currently a principles that directly relates to these issues. The closest is Principles for Employment Professionals #2 - "Employment Professionals will know the recruitment and career development field as well as the industry and the employing organization that they represent, and work within a framework of professionally accepted recruiting, interviewing and selection techniques."
3. Discuss practical alternatives that are consistent with NACE Principles. Questions to consider:
- Should employers be giving references for employees or former employees?
- Are "verification only" policies too restrictive?
- Are employers hurting qualified candidates by not providing references beyond verification information?
- Why are employers not giving references—is it a result of internal legal counsel or state laws?
- Is litigation a potential threat for organizations who share documented information?
- Do the changes in the employment environment, (i.e. employees changing jobs more frequently, companies not keeping employees long term, employees being released or downsized through no fault of their performance, employers being held accountable for not checking references for problem hires) merit changing verification only policies?
- Can alternative policies be established that are not as restrictive but protect the employee from sharing of confidential information?
4. Decision (outcome)
Ethically, you need to follow the reference policy of your organization, even though your colleague assures you that your response will be "totally off the record." You might want to suggest an alternative of having Barbara get copies of her evaluations to share with the potential employer.
For the future, you might want to re-evaluate the company's "verification only" policy to provide employees who have left the company a chance to have their employment record shared with potential employers. With multiple changes in state laws, it would be beneficial to see if your state provides protection against litigation concerns.
