As a PA, you probably book numerous temps during the year, bringing them in to cover your holidays or colleagues’ absence or to provide extra admin support for special projects. But how can you be sure that you’re not inviting a fraudster into your organisation?

Although difficult to quantify — firms fight shy of admitting losses — employee fraud is reaching record levels in Britain. The fraud prevention service, CIFAS, estimates from its own research that losses from fraud exceed £40 million, and that more than 1,500 staff are dismissed every year for criminal dealings. Aside from admin staff, temps include contract staff such as cleaners, interim managers, subcontractors and even consultants, who may have access to extremely sensitive information.

“The biggest danger for firms is the enemy within — amazingly, 80 per cent of fraud suffered by organisations is committed by staff, not outsiders,” says Steve Bailey, the managing director of the candidate-screening service BackgroundChecking.com, which has just launched a fast turnaround service for verifying temporary staff. “The real fear for companies is crooks, often posing as temps, targeting not the firm but the firm’s clients, selling bank and personal details to others who then clean the accounts out.”

Typical examples in the CIFAS research included a bank staff member being overheard on their mobile phone in a lavatory divulging the security details of a customer’s account and call-centre staff overriding “decline” decisions so as to open accounts for family and friends.

The TempCheck service from BackgroundChecking.com offers the first overnight verification of temporary and contract staff, investigating credit ratings, the electoral roll, addresses and checking against death registers and criminal records. “In the past, a reference was two names and a phone number,” says Bailey. “That’s clearly no longer sufficient.”

Firms who use TempCheck pay about £15 a search. “The check is consensual. Typically 15 per cent of candidates refuse, which immediately arouses suspicion about them,” says Bailey.

So where do agencies stand?

“Legally, consultancies must check that staff are entitled to work in the UK, request a Criminal Records Bureau check in appropriate sectors such as teaching and health, plus they’re obliged to see candidates face-to-face,” says Tom Hadley, the director of external relations for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, which has launched a safe recruitment campaign.

CIFAS has produced a guide with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) to raise awareness of the dangers. It is called Tackling Staff Fraud and can be downloaded free from the CIPD website (www.cipd.co.uk).

Using a reputable recruitment consultant is a must, but checking on people’s backgrounds will become increasingly commonplace, says Hadley. “In future, secretarial and admin staff may have to go through rigorous checking as they, typically, have access to wide-ranging and sensitive data.”

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