About...
One of the UK’s fastest-growing insurance brokers, Jensten works with corporate, commercial and personal clients to advise and support them with insurance solutions that meet evolving client needs.
per employee
not weeks
Jensten
Background check experience
When your company doubles in size, how does your background checking process keep up — especially when you’re FCA-regulated?
After acquisitions and new growth, the small HR operations team at Jensten was busy. Like, really busy.
With 15 to 30 employees onboarding at any given time, and around 400 queries per month from current employees, they had lots on their plate. But their background checking process wasn’t working for them.
“A year and a half ago we had an acquisition of 120 employees,” said Becca Covill, HR Operations Specialist. “Obviously, we’re running all the checks for them alongside all our new joiner checks. And we’re FCA-regulated, so there’s probably about 50 to 60 employees in our business that we need to run regulated checks on every year. That number keeps increasing as we make more acquisitions.”
All that would be fine, if their old background checking provider had been fit for purpose. But it required so much manual intervention from the team that it was more of a blocker than an assist.
If something was wrong with a check — incorrect documents, wrong email, employer didn’t fill out the reference — the checks would just…stop. The team would have to go in and put it through again, or just give up and do it themselves.
Rosie Shepherd, HR Operations Coordinator, spent most of her week on checks, with an hour or two blocked out each day for onboarding. To run the checks, she had to get evidence and documents from employees first, then manually check and scan them in before anything could run.
If they needed support, it took a minimum of three days to get a response. Their process was split across two providers, with one doing DBS and right to work (RTW) checks and the other running references, so chasing for information took twice as long.
Even doing the work wasn’t easy. Their old provider had to build check packages for them, so they couldn’t customise what they needed. Bulk uploads for re-checks or acquisitions had to be scheduled at least a month in advance and frequently had delays.
Eventually, their provider took away their account manager because Jensten wasn't a big enough company, and they couldn’t get the support they needed. If prices or processes changed, they had to figure out what was going on themselves.
All this meant that the team couldn’t help current employees or work on improving processes — it was just all checks, all the time.
The team at Jensten had initially looked at Zinc a year and a half earlier, but went with a different provider that someone on the team had used before. When that didn’t work out, they came back thanks to a good first impression.
It was clear that things needed to change for the team. With such limited time and so many new employees, their current providers weren’t fit for purpose.
Their wishlist:
- A great employee experience: Becca and Rosie didn’t have time to field questions from new starters or employees on what to do. It just needed to work.
- Seamless HiBob integration: Going back and forth from their checking providers to HiBob was too much work. Finding a provider that integrated with their existing systems would free up a lot of time.
- Checks had to be easy: No more waiting on replies from support, or needing someone else to build packages. And definitely no more manual intervention to keep checks moving.
- FCA compliance was a must-have: With 50+ SMCR roles, annual RTW re-checks, and required references, they needed to be confident that they were doing their due diligence.
Solid customer support: Becca and Rosie wanted to be able to quickly get in touch with a human, and get advice when they needed it — not in three business days.
Results
The big test: the bulk upload.
After onboarding with Zinc, the team ran 500 RTW re-checks, in addition to about 50 SMCR annual re-checks. They didn’t have to get in touch with Zinc to build packages, or schedule it ages in advance. All they had to do was upload the emails, select the check package they wanted to run, and let Zinc get to work.
“I was quite nervous to do the bulk check,” said Rosie, “and it had been hanging over me for a while. But it ran through excellently.”
Once employees filled their part in, checks were done in a day or two. “The ones with ‘consider’ or ‘action required’ were really clear,” said Rosie, “and it had links to what we needed to do and why.
“We put through about 500 RTW re-checks,” said Rosie. Once employees filled them in, they were finalised in a day or two. “The ones with ‘consider’ or ‘action required’ were really clear, and it had links to what we needed to do and why.”
Full compliance = peace of mind
With Zinc, everything ran smoothly. The team didn’t have to manually upload documents or spend hours manually making sure checks were going through — it just worked.
“We have confidence in what we’re doing,” said Rosie. Instead of worrying about a new employee whose start date was coming up fast with no completed checks, or running 30 checks at once after an acquisition, the team had confidence it would be done by the deadline. “With Zinc it’s literally two seconds,” said Rosie. “And I know if anything does crop up, Zinc support is immediately there giving me all the information.”
If references get stuck with an employer or don’t come through, Zinc’s HMRC integration can verify employment in minutes. Before Zinc, turning around references in a month felt like a stretch because if an employer didn’t complete their part, the check would just stop. “The HMRC check is such a lifesaver, because even if you’ve not got an employer response yet, I can see HMRC says they worked there,” said Rosie.
While customisation is an essential part of the Zinc platform, the team also had access to pre-built check packages designed to be FCA compliant. “A lot of our SMCR checks have been completed quicker,” said Becca, who heard from employees that Zinc was much more user-friendly than their previous providers. “These checks go out to a lot of the more senior people in the business, and it was really nice to get feedback from them that it took less of their time up to get those checks done.”
Even outside of the platform, Zinc offers support for understanding FCA requirements and what the team needs to do. “There’s always loads of information on the site about what changes we can make, because the FCA do tend to change what they want us to carry out quite often,” said Becca.
Employees can see the difference — and it motivated them to get checks done faster. “They’re actually going and completing checks a lot sooner than what they would with our previous providers,” said Becca. “We’re definitely remaining compliant a lot sooner as well with those checks.”
Time for big-picture thinking
Most importantly, Zinc enables the team to get on with their work, beyond just background checks.
“It’s really changed my job completely,” said Rosie. “Since I’m spending less time reviewing background checks — I’m literally just sending them off and then double-checking they’re saved and whether I need to do anything — I’ve actually been able to work on projects the past couple months.”
One of the projects? Reviewing the entire onboarding cycle from start to finish. “The one thing we didn’t need to review was the background check part of the process,” said Rosie, thanks to Zinc.
Actions on checks are down from 50% to 10%, freeing up almost a full week of Rosie’s time. She’s also been able to implement a ticketing system to help serve current employees better.
When it comes to background checks, they can build packages directly in Zinc. When they onboarded, they were able to build custom solutions for new joiners stuck in limbo with their old provider, and get them started faster.
They’ve added other people in the business as users and can control what checks and employees they have access to, in order to help them support franchise locations of their business. They’ve also been able to link Zinc to a shared inbox so issues don’t get lost in personal inboxes when the rest of the team is off.
“We can be more proactive than reactive all the time,” said Becca.
Seamless HiBob integration
Zinc works fast, and it’s also reduced the amount of back-and-forth between platforms. With a direct HiBob integration, the team can track results directly in an employee’s profile and download a report.
“The [integration with HiBob] is such a help,” said Becca. “We were given all the integration documents and stuff from the team, and the actual setting up of the integration didn’t even take 10 minutes. It was so quick. I went back and looked at it because I thought surely it can’t be that simple — but it’s all just there in the system.”
Whether it’s at a glance or an in-depth look at a documents file, it’s all right where they need it. “All of it happens automatically, which is brilliant,” said Becca.
Trusted support, exactly when they need it
If something gets flagged on a check that they don’t understand, they can use the live chat to get in touch with a human immediately.
Whether it’s regulation changes, check results, or questions about their account, Zinc is there to help.
And the same goes for candidates. “I’ve not had a single query about Zinc and how to use it,” said Rosie. If employees or candidates have questions, they can go directly to Zinc without using up the HR team’s limited time.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had experience of such a good customer service team,” said Becca. “The support we had from our account managers, all the info we needed, was given to us straight away. It felt like we actually mattered to Zinc.”
So what would they say to someone trying to decide whether or not to use Zinc for their team? “Do it,” said Rosie. “It’s all about confidence and time-saving, really — I don’t think they should hesitate.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
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