Reimagining Trust by Creating it at Scale

Winning Best Background Screening & Compliance Platform 2026 – USA is the kind of recognition that tells half the story for Yardstik. The other half of their story is everything that happens after the check. In a world where AI-driven fraud and synthetic identities are outpacing the tools built to stop them, a background check is no longer enough – trust has to be built continuously. Yardstik built the infrastructure to do exactly that. We caught up with CEO Andrew Johnson on how their Human Trust Platform is redefining workforce trust for an era where the old way of screening simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, Yardstik exists to build real technological solutions that make trust measurable, accessible, and universal for organizations and their people alike. It does this by offering solutions that go beyond point-in-time screening and instead help clients to detect fraud, continuously monitor their workforces, verify credentials, and fight risk –allowing them to iron out any issues before they become real liabilities.

Andrew explained: “With bad actors on the rise and AI actively being used to deceive (synthetic identities, AI-generated credentials, and digital impersonation) we believe technology should be the antidote, not the enabler.” This guiding ethos is reflected through the core of values of innovation, courage, integrity, and a genuine commitment to people, with these being the cornerstones of a start-up truly dedicated to challenging outdated screening systems – not merely for disruption’s sake, but simply because the old way no longer works.  

Setting the scene, Andrew told us how, despite trust being something foundational to the human experience, workforce screening was, for decades, treated like a tick-box exercise. It was very much a case of run a quick background check at hire, file it away, and then move on. Yardstik set about bridging the gap between what trust actually necessitates and what the industry was delivering before it came along more than five years ago. 

The world has moved on considerably since traditional screening was built, and these one-time checks, point-in-time decisions, and abundance of blind spots are hallmarks of a much slower time. Today’s hiring landscape is much more demanding, making this approach not only outdated but downright dangerous. By going beyond background checks to include continuous monitoring both before and after a hire, Yardstik combines key areas such as fraud detection and credential monitoring to make trust ongoing.  

 “Most background check companies give you a photograph – a single snapshot of a person at the moment of hire. We give you a live feed.” 

As the Human Trust Platform, Yardstik offers its clients a system that covers the full lifecycle of their workforce, detecting identity fraud, screening candidates, verifying credentials, and continuously monitoring their workforces in real time. Thus, whereas most of the legacy providers carrying out these kinds of services stop at hire, Yardstik keeps going to make trust real and measurable. More than just a distinctive feature, this shows that the way the company thinks about trust is fundamentally different.  

Moreover, given it is a licensed Consumer Reporting Agency and a PBSA-accredited company, it is clear that compliance is something Yardstik takes very seriously. These certifications demonstrate that the compliance underpinning its platform is real, regulated, and built to last, which is not something others can replicate overnight.  

But what really makes Yardstik different is that, once its clients make the switch to its platform for all of their background screening, they realise that they were previously trying to solve the wrong problem. One background check was never enough, and no matter how much they invested in getting it right, it was always going to fall short compared to the ongoing protection Yardstik offers through its organisation-protecting solutions.  

Diving deeper into the motivation behind this platform, Andrew commented that Yardstik’s foundational belief is that the best teams need the best people. Getting the best people to make up the best teams is something they play an integral role in, keeping the bad actors out of schools, hospitals, homes, and workplaces and protecting the credible workers from being undercut by dishonest people harbouring bad intentions. “There’s a real human story on the other side of that data”, Andrew shared. “That’s what keeps us motivated.” 

Recently, this motivation has been channelled by the team into solving one of the most pressing issues their clients continue to face across their organisations: AI-driven identity fraud. When Liveops, a leading business process outsourcing provider, came to Yardstik seeking a solution for this challenge (they had become a target for sophisticated fraud applications using falsified identities as a result of theirs being a company that attracts a high volume of remote workers) the team were happy to help. 

The crafty individuals partaking in this AI-driven identity fraud were not random people trying to sneak through the gate, they had been trained on how to game the vetting process. With there even being services out there to help these shady characters as they rinse the system, it was abundant from the beginning that this challenge was a very sophisticated one. Liveops did have measures in place to combat this, but since its setup relied solely on disconnected single-point solutions, there were plenty of gaps.  

Following extensive research, Yardstik was chosen by Liveops because the company could offer something that no other vendor could – an integrated flow where identity verification feeds directly into the background check, meaning the verified identity is always the one that is screened, as there is no opportunity to swap it out or manipulate it in between. As Tom Glaser, Liveops’ Information Security Officer, reported back, the results were immediate, with fewer fraud attempts made and candidate conversion improving.  

It was on the back of this successful partnership with Liveops that Yardstik made the decision to officially announce its Human Trust Platform in February just gone, ushering in a new era of workforce technology that brings together its Detect AI™, Identity Verification, and Continuous Criminal Monitoring solutions into one connected system. 

Given that only 19% of businesses currently use verification solutions beyond that initial point-of-hire screen, they are potentially risking lives, especially with the advent of AI, which has introduced new threats the industry has not yet caught up with. However, given this team have spent several years building the technology infrastructure to fight back, catching the invisible signals that legacy systems often miss, they are in a position where the industry’s biggest problem is the very problem they actively solve.  

“Take AI-driven fraud seriously before it becomes your problem. Synthetic identities and AI-generated documents are no longer edge cases. They’re increasingly common, particularly for remote and gig roles. If your current screening process relies entirely on self-reported information with no identity verification layer, you have a gap worth closing now rather than after an incident.” 

With its Human Trust Platform making real-time monitoring, fraud prevention, enhanced candidate screening, credential verification, and more within reach for its clients, it is clear that Yardstik has carved out a reputation for itself as going beyond background screening to instead serve as a security partner for its clients’ operations and teams.  

As it continues to build a world where trust is not something that is conducted at a single point in time, but rather a tangible infrastructure that is continuously monitoring and working underneath every workforce, the future plans for the company involve expanding its real-time monitoring capabilities, deepening its AI-fraud detection capacity, and ultimately becoming the first platform of its kind to integrate natively with AI agent and agentic onboarding workflows, so that a layer of trust can be added into AI-led onboarding. 

In the longer term, Andrew detailed: “We believe Yardstik becomes the go-to trust infrastructure for the modern economy, not just concerning employment, but also across every platform where humans connect and where the cost of misplaced trust is real. We named this new category we have created ‘Human Trust Platform’ because we believe it describes not just what we are today, but also where the world is going.” 

Recognised as having the Best Background Screening & Compliance Platform 2026 – USA, Yardstik’s distinction can be seen further through it having been named a Best Place to Work for five consecutive years (2021–2025), as well as a Newsweek America’s Greatest Startup Workplaces 2025 – placing it in the top 1% of over 20,000 evaluated start-ups nationally. All of this comes from the people building this platform believing in what it does and that they are building toward a future where trust isn’t a moment – it’s a layer. Underneath every hire, every credential, every workforce. That infrastructure doesn’t exist yet at scale yet, they’re building it.

Contact Details

[email protected]

Contact: Andrew Johnson 

Company: Yardstik 

Web Address: https://yardstik.com/