Carriers are facing two urgent challenges: the need to onboard drivers fast to meet shipping demand, and the growing threat of driver identity fraud in the trucking industry. Integrated digital workflows enhanced with biometric and automated identity verification can help carriers streamline hiring, maintain compliance, and prevent unsafe or unqualified drivers from entering their fleets.
Defining the Challenges
Carriers need fast and accurate screening with driver-specific workflows to secure top talent.
Not only this, but carriers need confidence that the drivers they’re hiring are who they say they are. Identity fraud continues to rapidly rise in the trucking industry, with applicants using another’s identity sometimes in attempts to circumvent the rigorous screening requirements for commercial drivers.
Without addressing these challenges, organizations are at risk of revenue loss, increasing recruitment costs, growing risk of regulatory action and civil litigation, and potential DOT fines and penalties.
Manual Processes vs. Digital Workflows
Once a candidate is selected, they typically begin pre-onboarding in several concurrent workstreams, in various platforms, and with multiple vendors. These background checks and driver compliance processes are often manually tracked, causing a critical bottle neck, inconsistent data, and limited stakeholder visibility, which can lead to increased time-to-hire, compliance risks, and candidate frustration.
Significant changes happen when carriers adopt integrated digital workflows. Teams are efficient, consistent, candidate drop-out decreases, revenue generating roles are filled faster, and the stakeholder and candidate experience is smoother.
Identity-Fraud Patterns and Risk Signals
With optimized processes and workflows, organizations can also address the challenge of rising identity-fraud in employment. In the trucking industry, we have seen an increase in identity fraud where employers have a touchless onboarding process. While self-onboarding may expedite time-to-hire, there is an increased risk of identity fraud when that is the method that is used.
Identity-fraud in employment may also occur post-onboarding. Unsupervised responsibilities such as package delivery or transfer points make it easier to exploit vulnerabilities.
Integration and Change Management
Most employers leverage an applicant tracking system that is integrated with multiple platforms to help automate hiring processes and increase efficiency. This includes running background checks, completing drug screenings and medical exams, performing assessments, scheduling orientation, and completing tax credit questionnaires and I9/E-Verify. Payroll/HRIS systems are also interconnected on the backend as the source of truth.
A common implementation hurdle is the need for custom configurations or program requirements based on specific requirements. Examples include customizations based on customer feedback, proactively build solutions that help all parties stay ahead of trends, such as identity fraud, and increasing the speed of implementations. For a successful implementation, internal alignment across teams such as Safety and HR is critical to help design processes that improve experiences and drive better results.
Candidate/Driver Experience
The overall onboarding experience must be fast, intuitive and easy for candidates to navigate, otherwise organizations risk losing talent to competitors. Mobile-friendly solutions are ideal to allow candidates to access what they need anytime, anywhere, on any device. To indicate a smooth experience, look at high-level metrics such as how long it takes you to hire a new driver and what your fall-out percentage is.
What’s Next for Identity Verification in the Trucking Industry?
Persistent or repeated identity checks are critical, especially for roles that engage with the public. Many roles today do not require drivers to show up regularly at a company-owned facility, so there may be challenges to confirm that the person driving is who you originally screened and hired.
Regularly screening all roles, including contract and temporary employees, is also crucial to your organization and the general public. Having a line of sight into all who represent your brand can help to mitigate unnecessary risk.
The solution? By having drivers submit to identity check every time they drive, you can better manage risk and increase trust in your fleet. In addition, identity checks are becoming the new baseline. Employers can no longer rely solely on standard screening practices, especially with the increasing rise of AI and deepfakes.
Outlook
Strengthening onboarding practices within the transportation industry, such as implementing pre- and post-hire identity verification, has become increasingly vital to a comprehensive understanding of candidates and employees. This approach not only improves the onboarding process but also supports effective management throughout the entire employee lifecycle.
This originally appeared on FleetOwner: https://www.fleetowner.com/perspectives/ideaxchange/blog/55372768/driver-identity-fraud-rises-as-carriers-shift-to-digital-hiring-and-onboarding-workflows
