Global Mobility Dispatches with Ray Rackham
Date: 12 October
The UK’s October immigration reforms extend legal responsibilities into working arrangements that have historically sat outside the traditional employer–employee relationship. Individuals operating within increasingly complex labour supply chains are no longer peripheral participants in the modern economy, they are fundamental to how many businesses now operate, and have entered the right to work framework for good.
The significance of these reforms represent a fundamental reassessment of how immigration authorities understand the modern workforce.
For decades, immigration compliance has largely been constructed around conventional employment relationships, but workforces have evolved considerably faster than the regulatory structures governing them. The distinction between employing someone and benefiting from their labour has become increasingly complicated, and the UK government’s response is telling.
By extending right to work responsibilities to specified non-traditional working arrangements, the authorities are recognising that immigration compliance doesn’t stop at a conventional employment contract. But, who within a multinational organisation actually understands the entirety of its workforce: HR may have visibility of permanent employees; procurement may manage contractors; talent may engage agencies; the business may commission services through third parties.
Who can connect that information? The answer cannot simply be that someone in HR needs to update a right to work checking procedure. Organisations need to understand how their labour supply chains operate, where accountability sits, which working arrangements fall within the expanded framework and whether their existing governance structures provide sufficient oversight.
The reforms do not make every organisation automatically responsible for every individual working somewhere within its supply chain. The precise obligations depend on the nature of the arrangement. But they do challenge the assumption that individuals falling outside traditional employment relationships fall outside an organisation’s immigration compliance responsibilities.
This is where Global Mobility has an opportunity to demonstrate its strategic value. We have spent years developing sophisticated approaches to immigration compliance for internationally mobile employees. Now, the workforce we are supporting is no longer defined exclusively by international assignments, and is increasingly fragmented in its contractual arrangements, but interconnected in its commercial purpose.
Immigration authorities are beginning to respond to that reality. We should seize the opportunity and respond accordingly. If governments are redefining immigration responsibilities to reflect the modern workforce, shouldn’t Global Mobility be redefining its own responsibilities too?
That is how we make mobility matter.
