Professional licenses aren’t just a perk some employees feature in their resume. Numerous fields require licensing for workers to be accepted within the organization and for the company to meet all compliance requirements.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, many younger workers lack licensing, often because of the steps involved in completing the process. This fact creates hiring difficulties for companies looking for skilled professionals to add to their teams. These enterprises always have to perform license verification to make sure applicants meet all hiring criteria.
License verification can be a cumbersome process. Some of the main challenges linked to it include:
- Applicants misrepresenting their education and licensing during the sanction screening process
- Missing information about past employment and licensing history
- Lack of standardization within the industry (it can impact even large fields like healthcare)
- Having to keep track of vast amounts of data
- Identifying fraud attempts
- Handling the amount of time and human resources required
Luckily, new technological solutions are simplifying license verification and background screening. Depending on the industry and the size of the organization, various tech solutions can be employed to streamline the verification of data and significantly reduce the risk of error.
License Verification 101: What the Process Entails
Employment or license verification is the process of checking credentials, past employment history, certificates, and licenses.
Through verifications, companies can make informed choices about hiring new employees and ensuring regulatory compliance. Effective license verification processes play a role in all of the following:
Regulation Compliance
Organizations within various industries (healthcare, governmental, finance) have to make sure their license verification process complies with national, local, and industry-relevant regulations and laws. In some fields, there could be mandated background checks, educational verification, training verification, and professional license checking as a part of the process.
Risk Management
Through an effective license verification process, multiple workplace risks can be mitigated. It’s an important part of reducing the risk of having to deal with all of the liabilities stemming from negligence and malpractice.
Reputation Management
The credibility of a business is heavily dependent on the credibility of the people it employs. An effective verification process that reduces the risk of misrepresentation or fraud is one of the reputation establishment pillars that businesses operating in heavily regulated fields can count on.
Benefits of Using Technology to Streamline License Verification
Sanction screening, background checks, making sure someone has completed all necessary training – all these processes can benefit from the use of the right technology to reveal relevant, timely, and accurate licensing data.
The benefits of using technology in license verification are numerous:
- Opportunities for automation, especially when it comes to dealing with large volumes of data
- Faster license verification process and improved accuracy
- The provision of alerts pertaining to license expiration, reducing the risk of compliance problems
- Effortless personalization, real-time reporting
- Excellent scalability – the capabilities of license verification tech can expand as a business grows
These advantages are only the beginning.
Technology is evolving rapidly. New developments like artificial intelligence (AI) could be employed in the future to ensure the full automation of license verification processes and an even higher level of efficiency.
AI-powered identity verification is already a thing. It’s even being implanted on state and national level to verify ID or driver’s license information, for example. It’s only a matter of time for the same technology to be expanded for the purpose of professional license screening and verification. AI can comb through massive databases, extracting relevant information quickly and accurately. When such capabilities become widely accessible, license verification processes will start requiring only a fraction of the time needed to check information right now.
Technology Makes Enhanced Capabilities Readily Available
Some license verification tools offer advanced capabilities businesses in multiple industries are already experimenting with.
These features allow for easy personalization of the verification process, getting it to match the needs of the organization to a tee.
Real-time verification is a thing. Real-time tracking of license, education, and credentials information is possible with the software products companies employ today. When such analytical capabilities are available, compliance teams find it much easier to keep track of certification, expiration, and renewal dates. Obviously, having access to such technology guarantees continuity and eliminates the risk of compliance issues because of reliance on outdated information.
Automation is another cool aspect of using license verification technology that we’ve already touched upon. Many repetitive tasks can be completely automated through the creation of tailored workflows. License verification software can automate the retrieval of data from centralized databases, the sending of alerts whenever a license is about to expire, and even regulatory compliance tracking.
Modern credentials and license verification solutions could also empower users through access to features like cloud-based use to maximize the portability of the solution (especially beneficial for organizations that have multiple locations to manage), document expiration management, as well as the availability of electronic forms and e-document signing.
License Auditing and New Tech Solutions
Internal compliance audits are imperative in many fields because they reduce the risk of sanctions and even legal action against the organization.
Whenever a company employs hundreds or even thousands of people, however, completing such internal licensing audits can become an overwhelming task. As a result, information review may occur less frequently or the finalized reports may feature errors that will cost the organization a lot in the long run.
Credentials licensing tools have extensive auditing capabilities. They can comb through massive databases in a matter of minutes, identifying threats, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for improvement.
Performing such internal compliance audits ensures ongoing adherence to regulatory frameworks and the adoption of industry best practices.
When a company audit occurs manually, you’ll have to define the measurement criteria, figure out which aspects of licensing you’re going to review, pinpoint the databases that contain relevant information, comb through all of the data, check for errors, and issue the finalized report.
If you employ specialized technology, you can eliminate many of these steps. Your goal will be to determine the parameters and goals of the audit. The license verification technology you choose will handle everything else, presenting you with a comprehensive and accurate report at the end of the audit.
New tools are becoming more readily available and more affordable than ever before. Investing in license verification technology makes sense, especially if your organization operates within a highly regulated industry. Picking the right platform and making sure it offers customization/scaling capabilities will yield the kind of ROI that can help your business maintain stability and growth in the long run.
