Checking the Right to Work of an individual is not only a legal requirement before hiring them, but also a very manual and time-consuming task.

Failure to check or record a Right to Work (formally referred to as a “Statutory Excuse”) can result in legal action against the company, with fines of up to £60,000 per illegal employee in place.  To read more about how employers establish or continue to retain their statutory excuse from a penalty for not following guidance, see the official Gov UK document "Employer's guide to right to work checks: 23 September 2024".  (current at time of publishing)

You can now use Personnel Checks to obtain, check & store evidence of your Right to Work checks, assisting you to meet the needs of audits. Working with our Online Identity Verification (OIDV) partner, Yoti, we can now verify the Right to Work status of any individual with a British or Irish Passport. For non-British or Irish passport holders, you can record a manual result.

Get Started with RTW

To add Right to Work to your Processes, just contact our team on [number] and they will handle this for you. Any Cases started after the Activity Type is added will include Right to Work. It will not be possible to backdate this for any Cases in flight.

If you are an existing Customer who already uses Online Identity Verification (OIDV), you can add Right to Work to your existing Processes. If you currently manually verify documents for DBS applications, why not learn more about how our Online Identity Verification service can save you time with this as well as for RTW https://www.personnelchecks.co.uk/online-identity-verification

Routes to establish RTW

Our new Right to Work Case Activity can work through one of three routes, ensuring that you are able to record your Right to Work documentation for any of your staff. These routes are:

• Online Identity Verification Route – For Subjects with a British or Irish Passport
• Share code – For Subjects who are not UK Nationals but possess a RTW share code
• Manual verification – For all other Subjects

Note – for all three routes, there is a requirement for the hirer to view the results and record a decision, as the Right to Work needs to be validated either in person or on a video call. (in person with Right to Work documentation provided for manual verification).

Online Identity Verification Route

The first route is the Online Identity Verification Route, where the Subject’s Right to Work is confirmed by our IDSP provider through online verification. This is only possible for British and Irish residents who hold a valid passport (including Irish passport cards issued on or after 09/2015)

Subject

If the Subject is a UK national and can provide a valid British/Irish passport, our third-party IDSP provider will be able to digitally verify their Right to Work Status. This is done seamlessly through our portal, and upon completion, this will show this as a key result on the OIDV Case Activity.

This will then proceed to Outstanding Activities for the employer to verify true likeness.

If the Subject is not a UK national with a valid British/Irish passport, or they fail the Online verification, they will be redirected to the manual Right to Work process.

Important - A failed Online Right to Work Check is NOT a negative result, it just requires manual verification.

If the OIDV fails, they will then be asked for their nationality and will then move on to the next method of verification.

Customer

If an individual passes the Online Right to Work check, the Employer will need to visually verify that the person they are employing is the same as the person on the document. This can be done in person or in a video call.

The Case will appear in Outstanding Activities, and from there you will be able to view the documents, record the decision, and verify that the person in the image is the Subject that you are looking to hire. 

It is a legal requirement that you see the Subject in person or on a video call before verifying their Right to Work.

Share Code

Subject

If the Subject is not a UK national, they are prompted to enter their Right to Work Share Code. This is handled in the Case Portal as part of the form they complete.

Subjects will be able to obtain this share code from the Government website if they are eligible.  This share code needs to be entered into their form.

Customer

Once submitted, this will appear in your Outstanding Activities List View. Simply follow the instructions on the page to obtain and upload the Right to Work PDF and record your result.

If they are not able to provide a Right to Work Share Code, they will need to complete a Manual Right to Work verification.

Manual Verification

Subject

If they are unable to provide a Share Code or a verified Online ID Verification, the Subject is informed that their employer will contact them to verify their Right to Work.

Customer

UK Nationals who did not pass Online ID Verification and Non-UK Nationals without a Share Code will need to be manually verified. You can read more here - https://www.gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to-work.

As it is a legal requirement for you to view the original Right to Work documents and obtain a copy of these documents, you are able to upload images or scans directly onto the Case Activity when recording your decision.

The Key Result can still be recorded against the Case Activity for Auditing and Compliance Processes, enabling you to manage your whole onboarding process and ongoing compliance processes through Personnel Checks.

Viewing Results

To view results, navigate to the relevant Case (through the Subject, Activity Results, or the Case List View) and view the key results.

If there is a flag on the Case Activity (ie Right to Work has not been verified), this will show on the top right of the page, and also against the Case Activity.

Combined RTW & DBS OIDV

A Right to Work check can be conducted at the same time as a DBS Online Identity Verification application.

The route that is taken in a combined DBS & RTW process will be determined by the documents provided by the Subject.

For current British or Irish passport (or passport cards issued on or after 09/2015) holders both identity verifications are completed via OIDV seamlessly without any additional steps.

For everyone else the OIDV journey will continue to complete the DBS identity verification as normal, and the Right to Work workflows described above will be automatically initiated to establish your Statutory Excuse.

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