Hiring a remote employee opens the door to talent far beyond your office walls, but it also comes with unique risks. Without face-to-face interactions, it’s easier for double employment, identity fraud, or inflated references to slip under the radar. For businesses, that means wasted resources, lost productivity, and potential compliance headaches.
The good news? With the right background checks and digital verification tools, you can confidently assess every candidate and ensure your next remote hire is exactly who they say they are.
The 3 Biggest Risks in Remote Recruitment
Remote hiring has its perks, but it also leaves space for a few clever tricks. Some candidates bend the truth; others break it entirely. Before you sign the contract, here are three of the biggest risks that can trip you up when hiring remote employees.
- Double Employment
Double employment happens when a remote employee secretly takes on multiple full-time jobs at the same time, usually without informing their employers. The problem is obvious: divided attention leads to lower productivity, delayed projects, and potential conflicts of interest if sensitive information is shared between roles.
It also amplifies what’s known as “quiet quitting”, when employees put in the minimum effort required to collect a paycheck. Double employment intensifies quiet quitting: employees spread thin across multiple roles deliver the minimum effort in each, leaving various businesses paying for work that never gets done properly.
To prevent double employment: Employment verification checks help confirm work history and flag overlapping roles before they become a problem.
- Identity Fraud
Identity fraud in recruitment occurs when an applicant uses stolen or falsified identification or applies for a role using someone else’s credentials. Identity fraud can slip through more easily with remote employees, since there are fewer face-to-face interactions to confirm who you’re really dealing with.
Without proper verification, businesses may end up employing individuals who are not who they claim to be, exposing the company to serious security risks. Beyond the threat of data breaches or financial loss, hiring under false pretences can also create POPIA compliance issues and damage trust with clients and staff.
To safeguard against identity fraud: Digital identity verification ensures a remote employee’s personal details are authentic and compliant.
- Reference Inflation
Reference inflation happens when candidates exaggerate their job titles, stretch their responsibilities, or provide fabricated references to back up their claims. On the surface, this can make a CV look more impressive than it really is, but the consequences are costly. Businesses end up hiring underqualified people who struggle to meet expectations, wasting time, money, and training resources.
In remote hiring, spotting these red flags is even harder since there are fewer opportunities to validate stories in person.
To address reference inflation: Structured reference checks help confirm the facts and give confidence that a remote employee’s background matches their claims.
How to Verify Remote Employees with Confidence
When you can’t meet candidates in person, the safest way to hire is by running the right background checks. This gives you a complete, accurate picture of your next hire. Here are the checks we recommend for remote employees:
- Employment Verification: Confirms job titles, dates, and responsibilities directly with past employers. This helps flag overlapping roles and protects against double employment.
- Identity Checks: Uses digital verification and biometric tools to validate identity documents, ensuring candidates are who they say they are and helping protect against identity fraud.
- Qualification Verification: Confirms the authenticity of local and international degrees or certifications with issuing institutions, reducing the risk of exaggerated or fabricated qualifications.
- Reference Verification: Confirms that referees are genuine and that feedback is accurate. With Dots360’s automated tool, RefEasy, you can detect inconsistencies that point to reference inflation.
Each of these checks can be completed quickly, securely, and 100% remotely with Dots360, all on a single platform that keeps your process POPIA-compliant.
Laying the Groundwork for Safe Remote Hiring
When hiring remotely, it helps to work from a clear, standardised policy. This policy should outline which background checks are required for every remote employee, how results are stored, and when data must be deleted. It should also specify how compliance with POPIA is maintained, along with any international data protection requirements if you’re recruiting across borders.
Having these guidelines in place removes uncertainty for HR teams, ensures consistency across all hires, and makes verification an integrated part of the recruitment process.
Remote hiring is here to stay, but so are the risks that come with it – and the cost of skipping proper checks can be far greater than a delayed start date. Building fraud prevention and verification into your process strengthens teams, protects your reputation, and ensures every remote employee you bring on is the right fit. Dots360 makes that process easier with faster checks, smarter insights, and fully remote verification you can trust. Ready to simplify remote hiring? Get started with Dots360 today, and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or X for more tips.
