Dive Brief:

• Nearly half of employers in a recent HireRight survey (42%) said they're worried about negligent hiring in 2018. Almost 6,000 hiring professionals contributed to HireRight’s 11th annual Employment Screening Benchmark Survey.
• Other areas of concern included the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (40%) the Fair Credit Reporting Act (24%) and medical marijuana (22%).
• Employers also reported concerns in lesser numbers about ban-the-box laws, immigration enforcement and negligent retention.

Dive Insight:

The report echos what others have said: Employers are under intense pressure to reduce their "time-to-hire," but are finding it difficult to do so without risking a bad hire. Some suggest that technology and other efforts can help HR maintain quality while speeding up processes.

Employers' concerns about EEOC and other enforcement efforts are no surprise, either. Federal regulatory enforcement efforts haven't slowed as quickly as some expected following the administration change, and state and local governments are picking up the legislative slack. For companies with remote workers or multiple locations, this patchwork of laws has proved particularly tricky.

For some, the solution has been to comply with the most generous applicable law, with some employers opting to ban salary history questions company-wide, or to scrap marijuana testing, for example. But that won't always work, some experts have pointed out. Many of these state and local laws have notice requirements, for example, and merely complying with one doesn't guarantee compliance with another.

Congress is considering pre-emptive action on at least one of these patchwork areas — paid leave — but for now, the others promise to remain a thorn in employers' sides.