Automate all your repetitive HR tasks and save yourself hours every week to focus on your most important work.
Book a demoIn a small business, every hire changes the shape and dynamics of your team. Your fifth employee isn’t a headcount number like at enterprise businesses; they’re a person you’ll regularly collaborate with and really trust to help grow your business.
Your hiring workflow matters. Not just hiring the right person for your team dynamics but hiring in compliance with UK employment law. Getting both right protects you and your business but also puts everyone at ease – not just your legal advisors but you and your new hire too.
I know from my experience that most small businesses don’t have a proper process for their pre-employment checks. Founders know they should have one, but they’ve never had the time or expertise to build one.
Because when you’re a founder hiring your first handful of people, it's natural to rely on your gut instinct and good conversations to feel confident about your decisions. Checking for red flags or verifying qualifications takes away from the excitement of finding the right person for that role in your small team you’ve been keen to fill.
I’ll walk you through what pre-employment checks are, why they’re important, which ones you’re legally required to carry out in the UK, when they should happen in your hiring process and how long they take. All you need to do is turn my tips into a repeatable step in your onboarding workflow, so you can really focus your efforts on finding the right person.
Pre-employment background checks are the series of screenings, verifications and assessments that need to take place before you officially onboard a new hire as an employee of your organisation.
They make sure that the person you’ve hired is who they say they are, that there are no red flags in their personal or work history and that they’re the right person for the role.
You might think of them as doing your due diligence before you get to welcome the new hire with open arms and say “You’re hired!”
Before running any checks, you must be transparent with the candidate about what you’re doing and why. under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you need a lawful basis for processing their personal data. For most routine checks, this will be either a legal obligation (such as right to work) or legitimate interests. For DBS checks and medical reports, you’ll need the candidate’s explicit consent.
As a general rule, tell candidates upfront which checks you’ll be running, and only collect information that’s relevant to the role.
Pre-employment checks in the UK are important for several reasons, including the following.
In small teams, one wrong hire affects every single person. There’s nowhere for that friction to hide.
Doing thorough pre-employment checks is your first line of defence against risks like legal liabilities and workplace conflicts. A bad hire can do more than cost you thousands of pounds; it can disrupt your team culture and create problems that are much harder to fix at a small business where everyone works closely together.
In many industries, certain pre-employment background checks are a legal requirement, particularly in sectors where employees are working with children and vulnerable adults. And even for roles where other checks aren’t mandatory, the right to work check is a legal requirement for every hire, regardless of your size or sector.
When you don’t have a dedicated recruitment team checking candidates, it’s on you to make sure the qualifications check out.
These pre-employment screenings also act as a quality filter to make sure the new hire is as qualified and experienced as they say they are on their CV.
You don’t want to hire an Oxford graduate, only to examine their CV with a little more scrutiny and find out their degree is from a diploma mill in Oxford, Mississippi.
Doing thorough checks can also lead to higher employee retention rates.
When you make sure there’s a good fit between the new hire and the role, you’ll set them up for future success and make it more likely they’ll stick around. And at a company of 15 people, where recruiting for the right person takes weeks (if not months), retention is critical.
The future of your small business depends on staying on the right side of UK employment law, including doing your pre-employment checks promptly.
It’s important to know that not all checks carry the same legal weight. Some, like the right to work check, are a legal requirement for every single hire. Others, like reference checks or qualification verification, are best practice but not required by law. And some, like DBS checks, are only legally required for specific roles.
Here are the checks you need to know about, broken down by what’s always legally required and what’s best practice.
When you’re hiring without an HR team, it’s easy to assume a friendly interview and a LinkedIn profile are enough. They’re not.
You need to confirm that your candidate is who they say they are. This means checking original documents such as a passport, driving licence or birth certificate. It sounds basic, but this is the check that supports everything else. You can’t meaningfully verify someone’s right to work or run a DBS check if you haven’t first confirmed who they really are.
The Home Office doesn’t distinguish between a 500-person company and a team of six.
Every UK employer is legally required to verify a candidate’s right to work before employment begins. This isn’t optional.
What does that mean? You’ll need to check original documents from the Home Office’s approved lists (such as a UK or Irish passport, or a biometric residence permit) or use the Home Office online checking service where the candidate has digital immigration status, such as an eVisa or settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme.
Getting this wrong is serious. You can be fined up to £20,000 if you cannot show evidence that you checked an employee’s right to work in the UK. It doesn’t matter how large or small your business is. Carrying out the check correctly gives you what’s known as a “statutory excuse,” which protects you from civil penalties if the worker later turns out to have been working illegally.
If your new hire‘s right to work has an expiry date, you’ll also need to run a follow-up check before it lapses, or you lose that protection.
Not every role requires a criminal record check, and you can't simply request the highest level for any position. The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) offers three levels, and which one you can request depends entirely on the nature of the role:
If you’re hiring an office manager, a marketing lead or a developer, a Basic check is almost certainly all you need. A Basic DBS check shows unspent convictions only. Any employer can request one for any role, and the candidate can also apply for one themselves. This is the level most small businesses will need for a standard office or operational hire.
The higher levels exist for regulated roles, not as a “better safe than sorry” option. If you’re not sure which level applies, the gov.uk DBS eligibility tool can help.
In practice, for most small business roles, you won’t need a medical check at all. This is mainly relevant if you’re hiring for physical or safety-critical work. That includes jobs that involve manual labour or specific health and safety requirements.
💡Caution: Under Section 60 of the Equality Act 2010, you’re restricted in what health-related questions you can ask before making a job offer. If you’re unsure about which questions you’re allowed to ask, it’s worth getting legal advice.
While not strictly a legal requirement, I strongly recommend carrying out reference checks when hiring as a small business owner – this is standard practice by most employers.
Contact previous employers to verify your candidate’s work history and qualifications – to confirm their job title and dates of employment.
Other pre-employment background checks you may want to consider are educational qualifications, which may be relevant depending on the role.
If the role within your small team depends on a specific qualification, it’s worth verifying it. In the UK, you can use the HEDD (Higher Education Degree Datacheck) service to verify university degrees.
Credit checks might be relevant to you if the role you’re hiring for involves handling company finances, managing budgets or accessing sensitive financial data.
For most small business hires, this won't apply and you can skip it.
How do you store all this information?
When it’s just you managing hiring, onboarding and day-to-day operations, handling all this candidate paperwork is where things can fall apart from a compliance point of view. But they don’t have to.
After you’ve completed the checks and verified your new hire’s details, the CharlieHR employee database software can take it from there and secure your employee documents like contracts, right to work evidence and DBS certificates. Charlie keeps it all in one place, with customisable permissions so only the right people can access sensitive information. Learn more about storing employee records in our article.
When it comes to employee onboarding, timing is everything. And at a small business, where you’re often the one doing the interviewing, the checking and the onboarding, getting the sequence right saves you from doing things twice.
Ideally, you should start the pre-employment checks on the potential new hire as soon as they’ve finished their initial interview.
After you’ve shortlisted the ideal candidates for the role, that’s your cue to start the pre-employment background checks. That way, you’ll be investing your time and energy in the most promising candidates.
At a larger company, HR handles this in the background. When it’s you, you want to make sure you’re only spending time on checks for candidates you’re genuinely serious about.
Hold off on extending a formal job offer to the new hire until the pre-employment checks are complete. That should help you avoid any legal pitfalls that could happen if you retract an offer.
Retracting a job offer is uncomfortable for any employer, but at a small business where word travels fast, especially in tight-knit industries, it can also affect your reputation as a place to work.
On the other hand, you could also extend a conditional job offer that is contingent on the outcome of their pre-employment checks.
That’s a more flexible approach that allows you to get the ball rolling, but be sure you state the conditions unambiguously. This approach lets you move quickly without waiting weeks for every check to come back, which matters when you’re competing for the same candidates as bigger companies with faster hiring processes.
What happens if a check comes back unsatisfactory?
For a small-business founder who’s never carried out pre-employment screening before, knowing your rights (and limitations) when a check flags something is crucial.
If you're unsure what those are, the practical advice is: always make offers conditional, always put the conditions in writing and if a check flags something unexpected, take a moment to consider whether it’s genuinely relevant to the role before making a decision.
For roles in your small team that require a high-security clearance or more rigorous compliance standards, the checks will be ongoing, even after employment has commenced.
This can also be done through the help of an employee details form – you’ll find more details about these in our guide.
This won’t apply to most small businesses, but if you’re in a regulated sector or your team handles sensitive data, it’s worth knowing that some checks aren’t a one-off.
After you decide what checks you’ll need to take for the role and your small business, putting them into action will take some time. For a small business founder juggling hiring alongside everything else, it helps to know upfront what you’re waiting on and for how long, so you can plan around it rather than chasing things last minute.
How long they’ll take to complete depends on their relative importance, but most pre-employment checks will take within a few days to a week. My best advice for founders is to avoid letting the checks hold up your entire hiring timeline. Start the longer ones (like DBS) as soon as you’ve made a conditional offer, and run the quicker ones in parallel.
Verifying a new hire’s criminal history will likely take the longest. Domestic checks are quicker, but international criminal history can take longer to investigate. You should expect it to take between a few days to a couple of weeks.
If you’re hiring for a role that needs a DBS check, factor this into your timeline before agreeing a start date with the candidate. A couple of weeks feels like nothing until your new hire is ready to go and you’re still waiting on a certificate.
This one can take anywhere from a few days to a week or two, depending on the institution and the type of verification required.
For most small business hires, you may not need this at all. But if the role depends on a specific qualification, such as an accountancy certification or a teaching credential, you’re better safe than sorry. A quick verification now saves a difficult conversation later.
Reference checks are typically pretty straightforward, and last about 1 to 5 business days. They are generally quick but can vary depending on how responsive the references are.
This is one of the most common bottlenecks for small businesses, but don’t be afraid to chase early and to follow up.
Credit checks are usually the quickest and take just 1 to 3 business days.
These are only worth doing if the role involves handling money or financial data.
So that’s the what, how and when of pre-employment checks for small businesses in the UK. Once you’ve got these documents, the next question is: where do they all go? What do you do with them?
At a small business, I’ve seen right to work documents, DBS certificates, references and signed contracts end up scattered across email threads, shared drives and someone’s desktop. This “system” usually stops working the moment you need to find something quickly, such as during an audit or when a team member’s visa needs to be renewed.
“In the past, there was never a single place for us to store employee documents. All of that information was just kept inside someone’s head, or in a shared folder hidden away somewhere.”
– Caitlin Price at Bloom and Wild
Charlie is an HR software built specifically for UK small businesses without a dedicated HR team. CharlieHR connects you to vetted partners through the Charlie Marketplace, including background check providers like PeopleCheck, so you can manage the checks and the onboarding in one joined-up workflow. Every partner is vetted for service quality and experience with small businesses, and Charlie customers get discounted rates.
Once your pre-employment background checks are done, you can store all your new hire’s documents securely in one place, with customisable permissions so only the right people can access sensitive information. Your new starter completes their own onboarding through a self-service flow, uploading documents, reading policies and working through their checklist, without you having to chase every step.
It’s the kind of thing that takes five minutes to set up and saves you hours every time you hire. And because Charlie is designed for teams under 50, there’s no complex implementation, no long sales process and no features you’ll never use (but have to pay for). You can be up and running the same day.
Pre-employment checks are the screenings and verifications you carry out before someone officially starts working for your business in the UK. They typically involve confirming the candidate’s identity, checking their right to work in the UK, verifying their work history and qualifications, and, where relevant, running criminal record checks.
For most UK small businesses, a standard pre-employment check will include identity verification (passport, driving licence or birth certificate), a right to work check (which is a legal requirement for every hire) and reference checks with previous employers. Beyond that, it depends on the role. The key is to tailor your checks to the role rather than running everything by default.
Not all pre-employment checks apply to every hire, but the UK right to work check is a legal requirement for every single employee, regardless of role, sector or business size. Beyond that, it depends on the position. A DBS check is only required for specific roles (such as those involving children or vulnerable adults), and reference or qualification checks are best practice rather than a legal obligation. The key is knowing which checks are mandatory and which are simply smart to do.
You can withdraw a job offer depending on how the offer was made. If you made a conditional job offer (contingent on satisfactory pre-employment checks), you can withdraw it if the checks reveal something that genuinely affects the candidate’s suitability for the role. If the offer was unconditional, withdrawing it becomes much more complicated legally and could expose you to a breach of contract claim.
Most pre-employment checks take between a few days and a couple of weeks. Reference checks are usually the quickest (1 to 5 business days), while DBS criminal record checks can take up to two weeks, especially if international history is involved. The best approach for small businesses is to start the longer checks as soon as you’ve made a conditional offer and run the shorter ones in parallel, so you’re not holding up your entire hiring timeline.
You don’t need the candidate’s consent to run the routine pre-employment checks (like right to work or reference checks). However, you must be transparent with the candidate about what checks you’re running and why. For DBS checks and medical reports, you do need the candidate’s explicit consent. As a general rule, tell candidates upfront which checks you’ll carry out and only collect information that’s relevant to the role.
For most small businesses hiring for standard roles, the cost is very small, since the right to work check is free. The bigger cost is usually the time it takes to manage the paperwork, chase references and store everything securely and compliantly. This is where HR software for small businesses like Charlie helps: once the checks are done, all your new hire’s documents are stored in one place with customisable permissions, so you’re not spending hours organising folders or worrying about compliance.
It depends on what you need. For right to work checks, the Home Office online checking service is free and handles most cases. For background checks, you can use PeopleCheck. For the broader onboarding process that wraps around these checks, Charlie is built specifically for small UK businesses. Once the checks are complete, Charlie gives you a single place to store the documentation securely, manage your new hire’s onboarding flow and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
