A Taste for Excellence: Bojangles' Journey with Checkr for Enhanced Background Checks

BOJ of WNC, the nation's largest Bojangles franchisee with 125 locations across six states, identified an opportunity to enhance their background check process through a valuable learning experience. When their Vice President and CHRO attended a SHRM background check seminar, she gained important insights about background check best practices that their current provider's platform simply wasn't designed to support.

“The biggest issue we had with our past service was they didn’t have a built-in adverse action process," explains Aidan Todd, HR Assistant responsible for their hiring processes. “It also wasn’t a very complete background check. Our previous provider only checked the information that our applicants provided, and didn’t search through all of their past records." This limitation meant that Bojangles wasn't getting the full picture of their candidates, creating both compliance risks and operational inefficiencies for their small HR team managing background checks for over 4,200 employees.

Like many HR teams in the franchise space, BOJ of WNC realized they needed a solution with stronger automated compliance features and more thorough background check capabilities to protect their business while streamlining their hiring process.

Upon discovering their current background check process wasn't meeting their desired standards, Bojangles began evaluating more comprehensive and compliant background check solutions. As they were implementing a new HRIS platform, they discovered Checkr. Not only would Checkr provide a compliant, accurate, and thorough background check solution, but it was also integrated with their HRIS.

"Some of the things that really stood out about Checkr was how complete the background checks are, as well as how customizable we could make our packages," Aidan notes. The ability to run specialized checks for a specific segment of their business, such as driving record (MVR) checks only for their catering segment, was particularly valuable for their diverse operational needs. For a small HR team managing background checks for thousands of employees across multiple states, the integration between their HRIS and Checkr promised significant efficiency improvements.

"Beforehand with our HRIS and background check company, they weren’t integrated, which led to a lot of manual work for me,” says Aidan, “Checkr integrates with our HRIS and we were able to set up nodes for each specific store. So when we run a background check, it easily runs it for that state or that location specifically.” Checkr’s integration into their HRIS allows their store general managers to see who is eligible for hire, whereas before the integration, the stores were required to reach out to Aidan and his team directly for that information on candidates. This streamlined approach has empowered store managers to make hiring decisions directly, reducing bottlenecks in the hiring process.

"One of my favorite features is being able to go into the background check itself and be able to look at each charge," says Aidan. This level of detail provides crucial context for making informed hiring decisions. "Assess has helped us by allowing us to see a lot of the charges and descriptions, which gives us more insight into a candidate’s report. It also allows us to set rulesets that only flag relevant charges. This benefits us by helping cut down on how much time is used on the review process.”

In an industry known for high turnover, Bojangles appreciates how Checkr helps them identify candidates who have worked for them previously, allowing them to streamline rehiring processes. “Checkr keeps a database of all the background checks we have run, allowing us to see who has previously worked for us. Because we have this information readily available we can streamline the process to more quickly bring on board rehires.”

Bojangles also values the analytics Checkr provides. "Checkr provides us with statistics on how many background checks we run in a month, as well as which stores are running the most checks or which package we're running the most,” explains Aidan. “Those metrics are important for us at Bojangles so we can monitor each location, and quickly identify any issues or delays.”

Bojangles' experience with Checkr demonstrates how the right background check partner can transform hiring processes, improve compliance, and ultimately support business growth. Checkr provides Bojangles with the flexibility they need to maintain a safe, compliant, and efficient hiring process across all their locations.