Practicing Due Diligence can help save your company from hefty fines durring a Form I-9 Audit.
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
Minimizing Form I-9 Liability
Here are some examples of using Due Diligence when it comes to the Form I-9:
1. Don’t discriminate. The Form I-9 may NOT be used to pre-screen employees for hiring, and may not be considered for terminating employment, other than in cases where an individual’s work authorization has expired and the individual is not able to provide evidence of work authorization.
2. Choose an individual within your organization to be responsible for I-9 compliance.
3. Establish rules in your company when it comes to proper Form I-9 completion and retention.
4. Conduct unannounced internal audits.
5. Don’t hide or cover up potentially harmful or illegal activity.
o If you know of an illegally hired employee, you must report them to your superior or a compliance hotline if one exists. If even one person is aware of noncompliance, the entire company can suffer penalties.
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Conducting an Internal Form I-9 Audit
You may only think of audits when the government comes knocking, but there’s another type of audit: the internal audit.
An internal audit will not only prepare your company for the real thing, but also keep your Form I-9 completion practices up to high standards.
Audits tend to be quite hectic and expensive, but, if you plan ahead and make them a yearly or quarterly routine, you can find ways to minimize their impact. The following are some guidelines to managing audits.
Appointing an individual or committee to be responsible for Form I-9 compliance will allow consistent standards and management practices to be set company wide.
Make sure that a Form I-9 exists for all employees hired after November 6th, 1986, by matching each form to a payroll file.
Randomly select a set number of forms, then error and fact check them for consistency.
Based on the results of your audit, create an action list of issues your company needs to resolve when completing future I-9 Forms.
I recommend: www.i9advantage.com - i9 Advantage offers complete electronic Form I-9 Verification, Completion, Storage and multiple location management solutions to Employment Verification.
http://www.legal-workforce.org/ - Legal Workforce is a great site covering state mandates, and a push for better Employment Verification standards in the U.S.