This guide is designed to help Victorian public sector organisations implement our misconduct policies for all:
The policies:
- address integrity vulnerabilities in recruitment practices
- set a minimum standard for misconduct screening
- seek to stop an employee from moving to a role without disclosing their misconduct history
- help you assess misconduct declarations against a role’s inherent requirements.
This policy is only one part of a comprehensive role-based risk assessment process for pre-employment screening.
How we define misconduct
We define misconduct as per the Public Administration Act 2004 (PAA). This includes:
- contravening the PAA, the binding codes of conducts issued by the VPSC or any regulations issued under the Act
- engaging in improper conduct (e.g. bullying, harassment, discrimination or engaging in conduct that could compromise the organisation’s reputation)
- not following reasonable and lawful directions issued by one’s employer
- refusing to perform duties reasonably assigned by one’s employer
- using one’s employment to improperly benefit oneself
- improperly using official information.
Other forms of misconduct can include:
- wilful or deliberate behaviour inconsistent with the relevant employment contract or Enterprise Bargaining Agreement
- behaviour that causes serious and imminent risk to the health or safety of other staff.
How to use the policies
As part of their recruitment, candidates must complete a declaration and consent form about their misconduct history.
If misconduct is disclosed, the organisation may do further checks. In some cases, such as Victorian public service executives, the VPSC strongly recommends that the organisation do further checks, even if no misconduct was disclosed.
The screening process must be fair and reasonable and protect candidates from unlawful discrimination.
In practice, this means if screening finds a candidate has a history of misconduct, the candidate should have the opportunity to discuss the declared conduct and respond to any information provided about them.
Before a candidate is ruled out, an organisation needs to confirm their misconduct is of high risk or would mean they’d be unable to do the role.
Hiring managers
As a hiring manager, you should:
- put a statement in your job ad or position description that advises candidates they will likely undergo pre-employment screening as part of the recruitment process
- make it clear for executive roles that preferred candidates will have:
- their misconduct declarations validated irrespective of whether misconduct has been declared or not, and
- to provide at least one referee from their current or where they are not employed most recent employer in accordance with the requirements set out in executive reference checks.
- gives candidates a link to this page so they can read more.
As a hiring manager, you won’t need to deal with declarations at all.
Your Human Resources team will take care of candidate declarations including if they need to be reviewed or validated.
Human Resources
If you work in human resources, your organisation must include the misconduct declaration and consent form in your recruitment process.
You must have all preferred candidates complete the misconduct declaration and consent form.
You should ensure any offers made are subject to the successful outcome of screening.
Select an independent consideration panel
You need to set up a ‘consideration panel’ that’s independent from the hiring panel to manage, review and verify completed declarations. Independent consideration panels make a ‘yes or no’ recommendation to the hiring panel about whether a candidate is suitable. Independent consideration panels never share any other information with the hiring panel.
The panel must have the authority to represent your organisation and make decisions. Further information on the composition of the independent consideration panel can be accessed at Pre-employment screening and recruitment.
When to verify a completed declaration
Executive roles
If the candidate is applying for an executive role in the Victorian public service, always verify their declaration, at a minimum with their current or most recent employer, even if they didn’t declare any misconduct.
Non-executive roles
Validation of misconduct forms for non-executive candidates remains optional but are strongly encouraged based on a risk assessment.
If a non-executive candidate is applying for a role judged to be higher risk, we strongly advise you verify their declaration with their previous employers. You may need to verify it even if they didn’t declare any misconduct. Further information about assessing risk (e.g. decision-making authority, financial delegation and access to significant assets) can be found at role-based risk assessment.
If a non-executive candidate is applying for a low risk role, it’s up to you if you want to verify their information.
Pre-employment screening and internal transfers
You don’t need to do pre-employment screening for Victorian Public Service employees who move between departments on a short-term basis.
If they’re moving to a role with a higher level of risk, use your judgement on whether to do pre-employment screening. This includes roles on the Jobs and Skills Exchange.
If an employee is moving to an ongoing role, you must do pre-employment screening.
Even if an employee already works in your organisation, at the VPS or executive level, you still need to do pre-employment screening.
Other times you may want to do screening
Temporary roles
For non-executive roles, you may choose not to use the misconduct forms if you have:
- temporary backfills
- short-term acting up arrangements
- short-term secondments within or between organisations
- asking staff to undertake a short-term task
But still apply some level of screening based on the role’s level of risk.
If you decide to offer a temporary employee an ongoing role, you must have them fill out the misconduct declaration form.
Secondments and short-term roles
The organisation hiring the candidate is responsible for pre-employment screening.
This even includes temporary placements.
For non-executive roles, decide if you want to use the misconduct declaration form, based on the:
- level of risk inherent to the role the employee is moving to
- length of time they’ll be in the role
Base short-term offers on the outcome of any relevant screening you do.
Multiple appointments and bulk recruitment for non-executive roles
If you select more than one preferred candidate for a role, each candidate must:
- fill out the misconduct declaration and consent forms
- go through pre-employment screening
Candidates with a history of self-employment
If a preferred candidate has been self-employed, you can customise the misconduct declaration form and consent templates to seek information from previous clients.
Seek legal advice if you want to do this.
Executive roles
For executive roles, regardless of whether the role is temporary or via secondment, you should require preferred candidates to complete and then you should verify the accuracy of their misconduct declaration form.
Where a candidate has not declared any form of misconduct, employers should validate with:
- their current employer (or most recent previous employer if they are not still employed).
Where a candidate has declared some form of misconduct, employers should validate an applicant’s declaration with:
- the relevant employer and if different, also their current employer (or previous employer if they are not still employed). This second check where the declaration did not relate to the most recent employer will help to determine if there have been any further matters that were not declared.
You should also advise preferred candidates that they should provide at least one referee from their current or where relevant (i.e. because they are not employed) most recent employer in accordance with the requirements set out in executive reference checks.