Employers, more than ever before, need to protect themselves against accidents and crimes committed by their employees. With negligent hiring, lawsuits, training costs, workplace violence and theft on the rise, pre-employment screening as well as taking the correct pre-employment screening steps are no longer an option, but rather a necessity for businesses.

The faculty senate of the University of Akron gathered on Thursday, November 5th to discuss the future of their newly proposed background policy that included a provision requiring submission of one’s DNA as a part of the process.

Following the proceedings, Akron University reached a decision to remove the DNA requirement from the revised background screening policy set to go into effect November 21st. The University of Akron’s media relations specialist Laura Massie explained that the intentions behind the policy were to prepare the institution for the expected direction background screening standards will surely take over the course of the next few decades.

The policy had drawn intense criticism from University faculty members, the local branch of American Association of University Professors and from the ACLU on grounds that it violated the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination act (GINA). In fact, one of the university’s lecturers resigned mid semester in protest.

The DNA testing would have been applied to prospective members of the permanent faculty and administrative support staff, as well as any contracted workers performing work on campus grounds.

Tags: background checks, dna testing, employment screening

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.