What identification do I need new employees to provide me with?

It's only fair to share...

Companies in the UK have a legal obligation to ensure that the employees that they hire are eligible to work in the UK. Any company that doesn’t perform the necessary checks could face a fine, so it’s important to get this right – especially as the fine is up to £10,000 per illegal worker!

So, assuming you’re already registered with HMRC to employ staff, what counts as enough evidence in order to ensure that your awesome new hire is a legal worker? Well, it used to be the case that a National Insurance number would suffice but those days are gone. This is primarily because a huge number of workers in the UK are now from the EU, and so different forms of identity are required.

If your employee is from the UK, and has a British passport, they’re eligible to work for you…simple.

If your employee is from the EU, and they have an EU passport or National Identity card they’re also eligible to work for you.

On from this it gets a bit more complicated but the government has created this handy tool to check to see if your employee’s documentation is sufficient: https://www.gov.uk/legal-right-work-uk.

Regardless of how you check the identity of your new hire, you should always keep a copy of the records that you’re given on file. In Staff Squared you’re able to attach files to your staff records, and this is handy for taking a scan of passports or any other ID so it’s safe and sound in the event you need to prove you performed all the checks!

It's only fair to share...