Do you know who you’re hiring?

Published on: Wed, 01 Jul 2020
By: Laura, redwigwam

Do you know who you are hiring?

If you’re a UK employer it’s your responsibility to check that all your workers have the right to work in this country. This is a very straightforward process if they have the required paperwork.

All you have to do is:  

• See the applicant’s original documents
• Check that the documents are valid with the applicant present
• Make and keep copies of the documents and record the date you made the check

However, if you don’t do this… you can be penalised for hiring someone who doesn’t have the right to work and who wasn’t checked correctly.

If this happens, you might get a ‘referral notice’ to let you know your case is being considered and that you might have to pay a civil penalty (fine) of up to £20,000 for each illegal worker.

You’ll be sent a ‘civil penalty notice’ if you’re found liable and you’ll have 28 days to respond. In some more serious cases, you could also face up to five years in prison.

Now, this all sounds very scary, but what if there was a way that you could eliminate all this hassle? Remove the stress of having to do right to work checks, even for something like a mystery shopping job?

Here at redwigwam, we have worked with Facebanx to create an innovative new tool. This is a real-time way of doing right to work checks and has streamlined the process considerably.

In most simple terms, the technology means that an applicant’s ‘right to work’ can be proved via live streaming their face and showing documents to the camera. It eliminates the need for a face to face meeting. By combining live streaming with facial biometrics and document image capture, we can securely identify an individual online, meeting banking-level security standards.