During a recent compliance audit, I was with a client when the Home Office Compliance Officer put a question to them that I think many sponsors would struggle to answer.
Had they made their sponsored workers aware of their employment rights in the UK? And, more to the point, could they produce the evidence?
It is easy to think of employment rights as something for the HR team, separate from the business of holding a sponsor licence. The sponsor guidance, updated on 6 March 2026, does not see it that way, and the question I heard that day tells me this is now being checked in practice rather than sitting quietly in the background.
The starting point is section L2 of Part 1 of the guidance, which deals with worker rights and welfare. It reminds sponsors that significant trust is placed in them when a licence is granted, and that this comes with a direct responsibility to act in line with UK immigration law, every part of the sponsor guidance and wider UK law.
That wider law expressly includes employment law and worker welfare. The Home Office says it will take compliance action where it reasonably suspects a sponsor is failing, or has failed, to meet these responsibilities, or otherwise poses a risk to immigration control (L2.4). Sponsors are also expected to have read all the relevant parts of the guidance and to keep up with any changes to it (L2.5).
Paragraph L2.6 is where the detail sits. Every sponsor must comply with UK employment law, and that includes promoting the workplace welfare of the people it sponsors and making sure they understand their employment rights. The guidance lists the areas it has in mind, while making clear that the list is not exhaustive:
• entitlement to the National Minimum Wage
• compliance with the Working Time Regulations
• pension auto-enrolment and opt-outs
• entitlement to statutory leave and pay
• health and safety
• trade union membership, participation in union activities and the rights of trade union representatives, so far as this is compatible with the guidance and the sponsored role
• the employer's duties under the Equality Act
• how to raise grievances
For more on each of these, the guidance points to ACAS in England, Scotland and Wales, and to the Labour Relations Agency in Northern Ireland.
What gives this real weight is L2.7. Sponsors must have HR systems or processes in place that demonstrate this information has been given to their sponsored workers, and they must keep that evidence in line with Appendix D. Appendix D, in turn, asks for evidence that sponsored workers have been given information about their UK employment rights.
It gives examples: copies of written information provided to workers, which could be in the contract of employment, or training and awareness courses provided to them.
So paying the minimum wage, or having a grievance policy somewhere in the business, is not enough on its own. If the information was never given, or was given but never recorded, the sponsor has nothing to show the Compliance Officer.
That can be treated as a failure to meet sponsor duties, and in my view it is exactly the kind of gap that can lead to serious compliance action, up to and including revocation of the licence.
From the audits we carry out, the gaps employers may be missing tend to look quite ordinary. Rights may have been explained at induction, but nothing was written down. The contract of employment may cover pay and holidays but say little about pension opt-outs, working time, trade union rights, Equality Act duties or how to raise a grievance.
There may be a policy on the shared drive, but nothing on the individual worker's file to show they actually received it. Sometimes the process lives only in one manager's head, which is hardly the "system or process" L2.7 has in mind. And often the people who look after the sponsor licence do not know where this evidence is kept, or whether it exists at all, until someone asks for it.
None of this is difficult to put right. Go through your contracts, handbook and induction materials against each area in L2.6 and fill whatever is missing. Make sure the information reaches every sponsored worker in writing, whether through the contract, the handbook or a short information pack.
If you run training or awareness sessions, keep the materials and the attendance records. A dated acknowledgement on each worker's file is a simple way of showing what they received and when. Then build it into your onboarding so it happens every time, and revisit it whenever the employment rights are updated or guidance changes.
The test I would suggest is the one the Compliance Officer used. If the Home Office asked you tomorrow to show that each of your sponsored workers has been told about their employment rights, could you do it?
This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. It reflects section L2 of Part 1 of the Workers and Temporary Workers: Guidance for Sponsors (updated 6 March 2026) and Appendix D. Always refer to the latest version of the guidance on.
