British IT businesses use a workforce that features between 20% and 25% foreign workers. These individuals help fill in gaps in the domestic talent pool and bring unique skills, such as language capabilities, making them essential for the SaaS industry.
Following the legal route to hiring international talent is essential to ensure that your business maintains constant compliance. Obtaining the right sponsor licence is an essential first step.
What a Sponsor Licence Can Do For Your SaaS Business
A sponsor licence allows your SaaS business to assign certificates of sponsorship (CoS) to prospective foreign workers. A CoS number is necessary to apply for many types of UK worker visa. Your SaaS business will need to obtain a Worker licence or a Temporary Worker licence depending on the visas that your prospective international hires will be applying for.
Your business will need to fulfill the following criteria:
- Be a genuine UK SaaS business that operates and trades lawfully.
- Have an HR system led by senior staff members.
- Not have a history of breaking immigration or sponsor licence rules.
- Not have key business personnel with unspent convictions, particularly for tax evasion, money laundering or fraud.
Also make sure that your business’s senior personnel will not be considered a threat to UK immigration control. An example is if your staff have a history of breaking immigration rules. This applies to both your company’s SaaS experts, and those in charge of its administrative processes.
How Your SaaS Business Can Obtain a Sponsor Licence
Before your SaaS business can start sponsoring foreign workers, it will need to successfully apply for a sponsor licence. Follow the steps detailed below:
- Achieve the sponsor licence’s eligibility requirements and decide which your business needs. SaaS businesses may also apply for both.
- Appoint the key personnel needed to manage the online sponsor management system (SMS). They are led by your authorising officer.
- Prepare documentation that serves as evidence that your business meets the requirements.
- Complete the application form.
- Submit the application and pay the fee, which will be from £611 to £1,682 depending on your business’ characteristics.
With the application submitted, you will need to wait for the application to be processed. This will take up to eight weeks. It may be worth paying for priority processing if there are foreign workers that your SaaS business urgently needs to onboard. If your application is successful, you can start assigning certificates of sponsorship to bring foreign workers to the UK.
Protecting Your SaaS Business’ Sponsor Licence
Successfully obtaining a sponsor licence is not a guarantee that your business will be allowed to sponsor foreign workers forever. It will need to maintain an A-rating. Compliance failings can lead to SaaS businesses having their sponsor licence demoted, meaning that they won’t be able to sponsor any more foreign workers until the A-rating is returned. Repeated failings could lead to your sponsor licence being taken away, which will threaten the legal status of the workers that your business already hires.
The Home Office conducts extensive activity to check on the compliance of sponsor licence holders within the SaaS industry. This includes data-led monitoring that can help them to identify where compliance risks exist. Your business will also have to facilitate both scheduled and surprise spot checks. Cooperation with the Home Office on these measures is vital to protect your A-rating.
Demotion to a B-rating does not mean revocation of your licence, but it does put it at risk. SaaS businesses have ten days to respond, and three months to address non-compliance issues. The Home Office will provide an action plan detailing the steps your business needs to carry out.
Help Your International Talent With Their Visa Applications
A CoS is not the only way that you can assist international talent in getting the visas that they need to come to the UK and work in your business. Firstly, many UK worker visas are only eligible for those with job offers for roles of a certain level of expertise. A salary that matches or exceeds a minimum, along with the norm for similar roles in your industry, is also often required. Make sure that your business is offering SaaS roles to foreign workers that match the requirements of the visa they are applying for.
Moving to the UK comes with high costs. This includes visa application fees, relocation, and more. Your SaaS business has the option to help cover these costs, or provide an interest-free loan. You may also choose to arrange accommodation for the worker’s initial stay in the UK.
It is also common for visa applicants to work with an immigration lawyer or advisor to increase their chances of a successful application. Your business can help cover the costs of this. If your business is hiring a large number of international workers, it’s worth building a relationship with a reputable immigration lawyer who can handle a large number of visa applications. Alternatively, you can point the foreign hire in the direction of a great immigration advisor.
Perform Right to Work Checks
Hiring individuals who would be working illegally in the UK puts any business in the IT sector at extreme financial risk. Civil penalties for doing so are up to a £45,000 fine for the first offence, and £60,000 for each subsequent offence.
Avoiding these huge fines, which can also make it difficult to get a sponsor licence, requires HR teams to perform robust right to work checks. These checks usually involve using an online checking service or asking for your worker’s passport or visa to ensure that they are allowed to work in the UK. The exact process will depend on the international worker’s nationality and their status in the UK.
Right to work checks are not just something that your business should do when it first hires a worker. The right for someone to work in the UK can change, such as if they allow their visa to expire. It is your business’s responsibility to ensure the right to work in the UK does not lapse for any international workers you hire to help you up your SaaS output. Any workers who lose the right to work for your business need to be dismissed.
