Why pharmaceutical employers in Japan should consider background checks as a best practice.
Few organizations in Japan are as susceptible to employee-related risk as those in the pharmaceutical industry.
The products manufactured and distributed by these companies and their employees directly impact the nation’s healthcare system and the health of its citizens. From medical research and testing to managing major pharmaceutical contracts with hospitals and healthcare providers, there are countless ways fraudulent employees can pose a physical, legal, financial, and reputational threat to pharmaceutical organizations.
Here, we look at the employee risks and offer Japanese pharmaceutical employers a practical, a simple and easy approach to mitigate risk.
Employee risk in the pharmaceutical industry.
Recently, a medical company executive and former doctor were indicted for bribery charges resulting from an investigation by the Japan Fair Trade Council of the Medical Devices Industry. The indictment relates to the payment of about ¥3.2 million made to the doctor by the medical company for cooperating in medical studies aimed at verifying the safety of the company’s medical devices. The studies were never performed, but the doctor was paid regardless.
Would a background check have identified a hiring risk linked to the medical executive and doctor? Probably not, especially if it was their first incidence of reported misconduct.
However, those individuals of reported misconduct may seek subsequent employment and pose a potential risk to their future employers. Now, zoom out and imagine all the employees who started their careers with a clean background, who later left an employer due to misconduct, sanctions, or criminal infractions and are now seeking a new job within the industry.
This is the power of background checks. They can reveal past issues and infractions, equipping future pharmaceutical employers with important information to consider in their hiring decisions. Background checks identify those records before those candidates with past misconduct join their potential employers and cause possible damage to the brand. This way, employers can make more informed hiring decisions.
In short, background checks can help provide employers with more effective precautions in a forward-looking hiring process.
How can background checks help employers hire better?
An employee background check can reveal if a candidate has a history of incidents involving misconduct, financial sanctions, or even bankruptcy, as well as other offenses resulting in a criminal conviction or professional sanctions.
Essentially, employers can uncover “known risks” and use those insights to make more informed hiring decisions that better protect the company, its employees, the people it serves, and its reputation in the larger pharmaceutical industry.
So, how can pharmaceutical organizations implement background checks in a way that makes sense for their business? One approach is based on the employer’s hiring scope, i.e., whether the business is a multinational enterprise, or a localized firm based in Japan.
- Multinational pharmaceutical companies: an influx of foreign professionals.
Many pharmaceutical organizations—particularly-multinational companies—often hire international medical graduates and other professionals who have lived and obtained their education outside of Japan.
For context, more than 2,500 foreign nationals are residents (working) in Japan with the visa status of “medical services,” according to recent numbers by Japan’s Ministry of Justice. This includes doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals.
Knowing this, multinational pharmaceutical organizations operating in Japan should consider a global approach to background checks. This involves incorporating international database checks from other countries like the U.S, U.K., Australia, and more, based on where a candidate has lived, worked, and attended school.
Another important check for international candidates is an expanded global sanctions check. Different from the individualized international checks mentioned earlier, this is an all-in-one search scanning more than 800 watchlist sources from around the world for candidate infractions related to sanctions, sexual offenses, criminal convictions, terrorism, corruption, financial compliance, and more.
- Local pharmaceutical organizations: implementing global best practices.
In Japan and throughout Asia, the integrity of a business and its individual employees means everything. For this reason, some localized pharmaceutical employers may not perform background checks on their medical professional candidates from Japan for fear that it “questions their integrity.” Others may feel that it’s simply not necessary or a waste of time and money.
However, this approach is a potential vector for risk.
Background checks are now a universal hiring best practice with more than 90% of worldwide employers performing background checks. Skipping this crucial step in the hiring process can put pharmaceutical employers at direct odds with global hiring standards. The lack of a background screening framework may place pharmaceutical companies at a higher risk of hiring a candidate who might not have the necessary qualification for their role. Hiring a workforce of medical professionals who are not fully and appropriately screened could potentially jeopardize an organization’s reputation within the global pharmaceutical community.
- All vendor employees and related parties should be screened.
Pharmaceutical organizations often rely on a global network of vendors for everything from raw materials and equipment to third-party research services and logistics. As part of the vendor relationship, vendor employees can gain direct access to sensitive internal data.
Knowing this, pharmaceutical organizations operating in Japan should consider a more holistic approach to background checks—one that extends beyond their employees to also include vendors.
Before making contract decisions, it is to require pharmaceutical vendors to perform background checks on all their employees via a trusted background screening provider.
These background checks can vary from basic to comprehensive screens, depending on the employee’s position and level of access and responsibility within the company. However, it’s important to ensure alignment between the vendor’s background screening policy and the pharmaceutical firm. Uneven or inconsistent background check coverage can inadvertently increase the organization’s risk exposure.
Final Thoughts.
Employee-related risk is endemic in the pharmaceutical industry. To create a more risk-averse environment positioning organizations for long-term success, pharmaceutical employers — and the vendors serving them — should perform background checks on all potential employees.
Pharmaceutical background check programs can be tailored by hiring scope, with multinational organizations incorporating global background screening components and localized employers starting with a basic background check aligning with international screening standards.
For details on how to build the best pharmaceutical background checks in Japan, contact First Advantage today. We can help you hire smarter and onboard faster.
