A bellwether bus driver backgrounder.
By Todd Owens
National Express Corporation (NEC) is the the North American subsidiary of National Express Group, PLC, one of the premier transportation firms in the United Kingdom. NEC is made up of Durham School Services in the United States and Stock Transportation in Canada. Together, Durham School Services and Stock Transportation operate more than 15,000 school buses and serve more than 300 school districts in 29 states and two provinces. NEC’s U.S. headquarters houses the administrative and support functions for the company, while customer service centers are supported by regional operations teams located throughout North America.
Business Challenges
Deanna Jenca, director of recruiting for NEC, oversees the corporate and operations employee recruitment for the U.S. and Canada. Because NEC provides transportation for school children, Jenca needed a reliable pre-employment background check provider to deliver the highest quality results and service to ensure that NEC upheld its rigorous standard for the highest level of safety in its industry.
Before connecting with Intelius Screening Solutions, Jenca was frustrated by NEC’s prior employment screening provider because their results were often inaccurate, and their customer service was unresponsive. Jenca needed an employment screening provider that could provide fast results without sacrificing quality, and one that would be swift and proactive with its customer support when bumps in the road arose.
Given the expansiveness of NEC’s locations, Jenca also needed her employment screening provider to be an innovative, technology-driven company that could seamlessly integrate its background screening services with the information housed in their applicant tracking system, Taleo Business Edition Recruit. After a full evaluation of vendors, it became obvious to Jenca that Intelius and its turnkey integration with Taleo was the right choice for NEC.
Immediately after taking the wheel, Intelius Screening Solutions, together with Taleo Business Edition, automated and streamlined NEC’s recruiting and screening processes, transcending the way NEC attracted, vetted, and hired its employees. NEC no longer had to drive two separate solutions to manage and screen applicants. Instead, employment screening was initiated directly from their applicant tracking system. The pre-integrated solution from Intelius and Taleo eliminated time-intensive duplicate data entry for Jenca and her team, and helped ensure that fewer errors existed from manually entering the data. Additionally, all candidate screening results returned from Intelius could be viewed directly from within Taleo.
Intelius Screening Solutions also created a fully compliant solution for NEC’s industry by implementing customized screening packages, including pre-integrated electronic drug screening, to meet NEC’s stringent safety requirements. Intelius identified additional opportunities for NEC to further improve its screening standards. For example, by consulting with Intelius, NEC instituted processes affecting fingerprinting sources, Canadian employment legal counsel, and state-by-state compliance updates—further driving automation and best practices throughout their hiring and screening processes.
Intelius Screening Solutions made it easy for NEC to get up and running quickly. Intelius’ account management team configured NEC’s solution and delivered tailored training to educate NEC users and answer Jenca and her team’s questions. Once they were steering their new solution from Intelius independently, Intelius Account Management was available to help NEC finetune the system and roll it out across their organization to ensure NEC’s success.
The company is enjoying the following results:
• An end-to-end, paperless solution to support hiring and screening needs;
• Improved, more efficient hiring and screening processes;
• Screening results received nine times faster than previous solution;
• Time, resources, and energy savings;
• Reduced turnaround time on drug testing results from more than two weeks to one-to-two days; and
• Improved hiring policy compliance.
Intelius Screening Solutions stays on the forefront of ever-changing state-by-state employment regulations so that Jenca does not have to worry about regulation changes. The most beneficial effect is that she is freed up to focus on more strategic HR activities. For example, by embracing technology-driven solutions—such as the one from Intelius and Taleo—Jenca has been able to more vigorously support NEC’s initiative to “go green.” And that has further accelerated NEC’s efforts to practice business more sustainably by driving out paper from a historically paper-intensive process. HRO
Todd Owens is the general manager of Intelius Screening Solutions.