Where days get lost (and how top teams won them back)

Speed and rigour aren’t opposites. In the programmes we’ve run and studied, the longest delays in background screening rarely come from regulation or policy; they come from avoidable process friction. Two places account for most of the idle time: the quiet gap between an accepted offer and the moment checks are actually ordered, and the lull between “report ready” and a hiring manager’s decision. Fixing those two moments changes everything.

Ordering friction: the silent days after the offer

After a candidate accepts, many teams lose one to three days before the screening order even goes in. The reasons are mundane but costly: recruiters must pick ad-hoc packages, jump from the ATS to vendor portals and spreadsheets, and debate “which checks for this role and region?” Every extra step pushes ordering to tomorrow, and tomorrow compounds across a hiring plan.

High performers neutralised this by deciding the package once and executing it where work already happens. They created pre-set packages by role and region, surfaced them directly inside the ATS or HR platform, and used light templates so the “which package?” question disappears. The effect is immediate: the order moves from “whenever I get to it” to “while I’m still in the offer flow.”

You can see the pattern in industrial and engineering contexts such as Schneider Electric. After moving off a service-led, manual process to flexible, templated bundles, reference checks settled at roughly ten days, with many sub-checks completing within twenty-four hours; previously, individual elements could take up to three weeks. Their TA team called out a simple but powerful side effect—templates “add consistency” to the process—so ordering is both faster and more predictable.

In a high-volume UK energy environment (OVO Energy), going fully digital and adding a simple weekly operating rhythm produced an even sharper result: some candidates’ checks cleared in minutes at go-live, and overall completion shifted from about thirty days to roughly two weeks while maintaining 100% compliant starts. When checks are initiated inside the HR or EOR platform (for example, via integrations like Helios or Remote), teams also stop re-keying data and stop switching systems; status and results live on the employee profile, which tightens the audit trail and reduces errors.

The lesson is straightforward: pull the order forward by removing choice and tool-switching. Decide once, execute in-flow, and the idle days vanish.

Status and decision lag: when progress is invisible

Even with clean orders and fast checks, programmes stall when people can’t see what’s happening or who owns the next move. TA teams and hiring managers chase updates in email threads, and managers try to make decisions by reading full PDFs. That creates multi-day gaps between “report ready” and “decision made,” while the candidate waits in silence.

The teams that beat this made two changes. First, they put TA and hiring managers on a single live status view with milestone alerts and clear ownership for the next action. Second, they introduced a one-page manager summary—flags and recommended next steps up front, with all the evidence behind it for audit depth—so decisions don’t require a deep read of every page.

Again, the numbers tell the story. At OVO Energy, automatic prompts and a short weekly checkpoint kept momentum high and blockers short-lived. The programme achieved 100% compliant starts and moved overall completion from around thirty days to roughly fourteen. Crucially, this cadence held up under pressure: during hiring peaks, turnaround improved from twelve days to three and a half, then to two and a half. In industrial and engineering settings such as Schneider Electric, templated read-outs gave managers a consistent way to evaluate results, shrinking the report-to-decision interval without compromising diligence.

Why these changes multiply

Most screening journeys hide time in two wide bands: before checks even start (offer to order) and after checks are ready (report to decision). Pulling orders forward inside the ATS and reducing decision latency with live status and a manager summary compress both bands at once. The downstream effects are positive, too: fewer clarification loops, better candidate sentiment, and a cleaner, centralised audit trail.

A simple way to prove it

If you want to see this in your own data, run a two-week pilot on one role in one region. Pre-set the package and enable in-platform ordering; turn on live status with named owners and a manager summary; add a short weekly checkpoint. Track three things: the percentage of orders placed within twenty-four hours of the offer, the median time from report to decision, and your overall offer-to-ready-to-start median and p80. Based on the programmes above, you should expect references around ten days with many elements completing inside a day (as seen at Schneider Electric), alongside a marked reduction in total cycle time when cadence and visibility land cleanly (as seen at OVO Energy).