Workplace Compliance Services and Support
Why is compliance important?
Undertaking a compliance review will help address your immediate, medium term and long-term risk exposure. This is a great place for us to start working together.
The immigration landscape is constantly shifting, and this means that businesses must keep up. In our experience, even businesses with sophisticated systems can make mistakes and are at risk of incurring significant penalties for compliance breaches associated with unlawful employment.
If you are a small or large business that employs migrant workers, we can step in to ensure that you are best placed to remain compliant with New Zealand workplace (immigration and employment) law. We have identified multiple instances of unlawful employment or potential non-compliance in a range of employers under a review process, in some instances unlawful employment for in excess of 10 years. Issues of non-compliance often touch on both immigration and employment issues. Here at Lane Neave we have expertise on and can support you through both.
To learn more about our Workplace Compliance Services, click here.
Penalties
Non-compliance can have big consequences for your business’s operations and reputation. Penalties include:
- Up to 7 years in prison or a $100,000 fine for the most serious of breaches.
- $3,000 fine per relevant employee if a low-level immigration or employment breach is found (eg, if one of your employees is temporarily working in a location or role that is different from what is on their visa).
- Your company’s name on a published register of ‘non-compliant employers’.
- Stand-down period from hiring migrants.
- Loss of your Employer Accreditation status.
Compliance Services
- FREE Site Visit briefing note: easy-to-read guide for non-legal staff, available here with useful tips to be aware of if your organization is subjected to a compliance visit from INZ.
- Review and feedback on Employer Accreditation compliance.
- Guidance on what to do if you identify an immigration compliance issue, including liaising with INZ on your behalf if necessary.
- Compliance Training for key personnel (including HR, team leaders and management) and C-suite/Board specific training.
- Comprehensive workplace compliance review and report, looking at immigration and/or employment compliance.
- On the ground support and representation during a site visit.
- Post-site visit support and representation to the regulator.
- Ad hoc commercial support when drafting contracts for service.
What is an immigration compliance audit and what does it involve?
Our immigration audit includes a comprehensive review of your procedures, policies and documentation to ensure that it is compliant with best practice under New Zealand’s immigration legislation. Our audit also focuses on the following:
- Recruitment processes
- Checking for and maintaining right to work (due diligence)
- Providing immigration advice
- Storage of information
- Tracking changes to terms and conditions of employment
- Tracking expiry dates (visas and passports)
- Review for employment law compliance, including compliance with minimum entitlements and record-keeping requirements, is also available if required.
Overall, we work with you to understand your migrant workforce and ensure that your employees have the legal right to work in New Zealand. The intention is to identify your exposure to risk and help you mitigate and resolve the risk, before Immigration New Zealand do. We are nicer to deal with.
Even healthy companies can benefit from a check-up. Our approach is to help you identify and implement best practice for your business – to ensure you minimise the risks of non-compliance and the accompanying challenges that these issues can present.
