A Guide for Employers in the Hospitality Industry
If you’re an employer in the hospitality industry and are sponsoring skilled chefs from overseas, it’s crucial to maintain ongoing compliance with sponsor duties. Failure to do so can lead to severe penalties, including the loss of your sponsorship license.
In this blog post, we outline key steps to ensure you’re meeting your obligations.
Why Compliance Matters
The UK Home Office closely monitors Sponsors to prevent the exploitation of overseas workers and ensure that only skilled individuals are employed under sponsorship licenses.
By complying with regulations, you not only avoid legal repercussions but also uphold ethical standards in your hiring practices of overseas chefs.
Essential Compliance Measures
Here are six areas that require your attention:
1. Worker Monitoring
Maintain accurate records of sponsored workers, including their whereabouts, job roles, and contact details. Promptly report and record any changes or absences.
2. Job Role Alignment
Ensure that sponsored chefs are fulfilling the roles specified in their job descriptions. Avoid assigning tasks outside their designated skill set, as this could breach sponsorship requirements.
For example, a Chef de Partie should be preparing, cooking high quality dishes on their section, not performing Commis Chef supporting duties, such as cleaning and delivering.
3. Working Hours and Pay
Adhere to prescribed working hours and pay rates for sponsored skilled chefs. Any deviations, such as overtime must be fall in line with the sponsor licence guidelines relating to hours worked and remuneration levels.
4. Personnel Records
Maintain comprehensive personnel files for each sponsored skilled chef, containing relevant visa and sponsorship documentation. Regularly review and update these records to reflect any changes. We recommend doing this on a monthly basis.
5. Right to Work Checks
Even though you’ve gone through the sponsorship certification process you still need to carry out the Right To Work (RTW) checks to verify the immigration status of sponsored workers. Keep records of these checks as part of your compliance documentation.
6. Notification Obligations
Keep the Home Office informed of any changes in your company ownership, mergers, or legal proceedings involving. Reporting obligations must be fulfilled in a timely manner to avoid penalties.
Proactive Compliance Strategies
Compliance with sponsor duties is non-negotiable as far as we are concerned. By prioritising adherence to regulations and implementing proactive compliance measures, you can safeguard your sponsorship license and uphold the integrity of your business ethics and workforce.
We recommend conducting an annual audit, by a third party, independent overseas sponsorship expert (of course we’d love to help you there!). This can identify and rectify potential compliance issues in your sponsorship management system and processes before they escalate.
Overseas Sponsorship – How we can support you?
In this blog post we’ve given you top-level guidance on how to comply with sponsor duties. We’ve not delved into specific operational instructions or touched on acquiring the Sponsorship Licence or Sponsorship Certificates.
If you’re planning to employ skilled chefs via sponsorship there are two ways in which we can support you, depending on your needs and in-house resources.
We can work with you throughout the process via one of our Sponsorship Packages.
OR
Overseas Sponsorship is covered in one of the nine modules in Your HR Hub. The lessons within this module cover:
- The Costs Involved in Sponsorship
- How to Apply for a Sponsorship Licence
- How to Obtain Certificates of Sponsorship
- How to comply with Sponsor Duties
Each lesson in Your HR Hub includes 1) a video with Frances Gillespie taking you through the details of this topic 2) a Step Guide you can download and follow and 3) Letter Templates you can brand and amend for your specific situation.
If you’d like to talk to us about Your HR Hub or our Overseas Sponsorship packages, please send us a message or book a call or call us on 020 4534 3456.