Employing immigrant/migrant workers
- What can I do to make sure applicants are able to work legally?
- I am not sure that all of my existing staff are legal to work in the UK. How can I check?
The Home Office has recently published a handy tool enabling you to audit your employees documentation to check that they are legal to work in the UK. You can access this tool through our links page. However, one or two things you MUST be aware of:
- If you carry out an audit, audit ALL of your employees, or a truly random sample if you have to too many to do all. DO NOT single out groups you think may be more likely to be illegally working or you could be vunerable to dsicrimination claims.
- Securely keep all information you gain from the audit where the home office tool tells you to do so. This will form part of your due diligence defence if you are challenged in the future.
- Rigorously check all future new employee's documents prior to employing them to ensure they are eligible to work in the UK.
Getting more advice
The home office provide an Employer's Helpline for general queries about illegal working: 0845 010 6677.
- A job applicant is unable to produce documents to prove eligibility to work in the UK. What do I do?
- It appears one of my employees does not have the right to work in the UK. What do I do?
