Resilience sector insights - Immigration

The biggest challenge for clients is having sufficient oversight of their workforce’s mobility and immigration status. Many organisations don’t know and aren’t keeping track of where their mobile workforce is at any given time. This makes it difficult to ensure that employees have the correct immigration authorization in place. This lack of clarity can mean that many employees are not maintaining compliance with their visa categories.

Another challenge is for companies to keep up to date with the requirements and boundaries associated with employee travel. Many of our clients don’t have specific teams in place to manage these issues, which results in a lot of problems further down the line. From our experience, we’ve noticed a lack of understanding of the consequential outcomes of not being structured and organized in managing employee travel requirements. For example, the incorrect filing for sponsorship can lead to travel bans for those specific individuals, but also for the company. Many consequences like these aren’t always realised and so, often, not enough time or resource is placed into handling immigration-related activities.

What would benefit our clients, and where the opportunities start from is through building out processes and ways of documenting employee travel. This would be needed for past travel history, and for employees who are expected to travel for work over the next year.

From having clarity over previous travel, our clients can see what restrictions or additional requirements may be needed for future travel plans. It will also allow them to see if any employees are currently travelling without the necessary visa requirements in place and provide them the opportunity to manage this in a timely fashion.

Organisations who accept employees on a visa-basis need to have a strong understanding of where these long-term applications sit. Especially, in relation to settlement and the requirements and restrictions around this.

As employees start to shift from work visas to personal visas, it is possible for organisations to see a rise in attrition rates for this period. This is dependent on how they are managing this as part of their workforce planning. If an organisation decides they have a higher risk appetite for employing their employees on this basis it could result in a loss of skilled workforce during this period of visa exchange.

Another consideration for the next three to five years is ensuring the correct actions are taken when visas end to ensure that organisations are subject to non-compliance fines. This comes back to having the necessary understanding of where each employee stands to know what actions are required and will be required to stay in line with regulations.

they are managing this as part of their workforce planning. If an organisation decides they have a higher risk appetite for employing their employees on this basis it could result in a loss of skilled workforce during this period of visa exchange.

Another consideration for the next three to five years is ensuring the correct actions are taken when visas end to ensure that organisations are subject to non-compliance fines. This comes back to having the necessary understanding of where each employee stands to know what actions are required and will be required to stay in line with regulations.

How organisations are being audited for UK immigration has changed. Previously, there would be a written warning to advise organisations when they could expect a visit. However, now little or no notice can be provided before authorities turn up to conduct audits. Currently, when organisations immigration processes are audited, they will be rated into either an ‘A’ or ‘B’ category. If rated at a B, it means changes are needed to be made to be in line with Home Office requirements.

If the necessary changes aren’t made in time, then organisations can have their licenses revoked. Not only are these results made public, and therefore can affect the reputation of the organisation, but it has large implications on the mobility opportunities of the workforce. Organisations will find themselves a lot more restricted in how employees are able to travel for work, and who they are able to accept to work for them if located overseas.

The Home Office recently announced that, since Brexit, there has been a 60% increase in sponsor applications, whereby almost 20% of these were not considered legitimate applications. People from the EU are needing sponsorship to work in the UK, and due to shortages, such as in hospitality sector, more and more people are being sponsored outside of the EU.

This has an impact on the way the government are monitoring such applications and immigrations requirements in general. The monitoring around this has become more vigorous and diligent.

Incorrectly filling out immigration details can lead to future bans of workforce travel (both for the individual, and within the organisation). Therefore, it is essential that organisations are taking careful considerations when managing their mobile workforce.

There are no current ISO standards for clients to aim toward or use as a guidance for best practice. Utilising our immigration team allows you to undergo a friendly audit which helps to understand your gaps. We can then facilitate the development of necessary processes and systems to better record, monitor and mitigate potential risks found.

In parallel we can also support you to reflect on the broader risk exposure a modern workforce introduces to ensure it is understood and managed.

If you would like to understand more about managing your immigration associated risk exposures, please contact us for an initial conversation.