About...
With more than 70 years of experience in the travel, insurance, and finance space, Saga delivers exceptional and award-winning experiences for people over 50. They’ve grown by truly understanding what their core audience wants, and delivering it with care and quality — whether that’s trusted insurance services or tailored holidays.
per employee
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Saga
Background check experience
When your company is spread across several business units, your HR team can’t afford to waste time — or not be on the same page.
Before switching to Zinc, the HR team at Saga found themselves working with two different providers on their background checking process: one for right to work, and another for the rest of the checks. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most efficient.
Amy Daniels, Talent Acquisition Coordinator, worked directly with candidates and felt firsthand the pain of manual document uploads and chasing references. “It was creating more work,” said Amy.
Anyone who’s worked in background checking knows the painful process: Ask the candidate for their details, wait for the documents, upload the documents, realise something was wrong, go back to the candidates for the right documents, rinse and repeat.
“It was just very time consuming,” said Amy, “and a lot of the time it would come back with an error.” She estimated that, before Zinc, 60 to 70% of uploads would have a problem.
Once they were in the system, they still had to wait for the checks, including DBS checks, to come back, which could take weeks. In some cases, they had to delay start dates, especially if a candidate had overseas work history.
References, too, were difficult, because they had to chase candidates for details, then follow up endlessly with companies. Their provider didn’t follow up on references for them, and it wasn’t clear what the status was on checks or if the team needed to move them forward themselves. Often, the process took weeks, especially because company policy was to collect five years worth of references.
When the time came to switch, the team looked at three potential providers. But Zinc fit their needs the best.
The thing that sold them? “You do most of the work for us,” said Ellie Marsh, People Coordinator.
Faster turnaround times, particularly for credit checks, DBS checks, and directorship checks, were also a plus for the team. The Zinc platform automatically chased references, too, so they could take that off their to-do list.
After speaking to a contact at a different company that had already used Zinc, they were sold.
Results
Since starting with Zinc, the Saga team has used the platform to run background checks on over 650 new employees.
From the start, they noticed a difference. “What takes Zinc a day or two would take two, three, or four weeks with the old companies,” said Ellie. They’ve been able to set start dates quicker, instead of waiting to see how long it takes background checks to come through.
Faster, better, confident
The team feel confident that they can run more candidates through Zinc at the same time without seeing delays — usually around 10 candidates, but sometimes up to 70 in one go. And if a candidate does decide to withdraw from the process, it’s easy to delete their checks.
“In terms of productivity and efficiency, it’s a lot quicker for us and a lot easier,” said Amy.
Once a candidate has uploaded their documents to start their Zinc checks, the team can add it straight to the employee file, without having to go back and forth with the candidate.
If there are any issues, they have lots of options to get in touch with the team. “It’s nice that we can actually communicate and resolve any issues,” said Amy. “We’ve never had that previously.” Instead of reaching out and never getting a response — the case with their old provider — they can hop on the live chat, email support, or get in touch with Bernardine, their account manager.
“You get very friendly with the people on the chat,” said Ellie. “I swear I spoke to Quincy every day. It’s nice that you know the people you’re talking to, and it’s not just AI.”
Transparent hiring across the business
Even with different HR teams across Saga all using Zinc, they haven’t had any issues. And when Amy went on maternity leave last year, Ellie was able to easily take over the Zinc process.
“We trust Zinc. We know it’s efficient,” said Ellie. If a check does turn up a problem, like an unexpected county court judgement (CCJ) or a conflict of interest, the details on Zinc help them have difficult conversations with candidates. “It helps that the candidates can also see where they stand,” said Amy.
They evaluate any flags on a case by case scenario, and can usually resolve issues quickly thanks to the speed with which checks come back. Often, candidates don’t realise they have outstanding CCJs, and the team can work with them to find a solution.
Better for employees
Background checks are just one part of a good onboarding process, but they’re essential. Since implementing Zinc, they’ve had feedback letting them know that the entire journey was smooth and calm, and using Zinc was simple. They haven’t had any bad feedback about Zinc.
Even older employees, who might not be as tech literate, find it simple to use — an essential benefit for their team, since they tend to hire older employees in certain business areas.
And if candidates do have questions, they can go straight to the live chat instead of Amy and Ellie. “It’s nice for us to have someone for them to ask,” said Amy.
Ellie contrasted the Zinc experience with her own onboarding five and a half years ago. With an onboarding group of 10 people, she interviewed in October and had a start date set in late November because of the time background checks would take. With no communication on the progress of checks, she turned up on the day hoping that she still had a job.
Today, that’s certainly not the case. Now, employees stay informed, the team has time to work on other projects like updated induction packs, and its seamless communication all around.
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