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Australia prides itself on welcoming both temporary and permanent residents from many countries around the world. However, many of these individuals enter Australia on visas with different conditions associated with their ability to work. 

Therefore, a visa check allows you, the employer, to check either:

  • Your staff member’s Australian Citizenship details OR
  • Your staff member’s Australian Employment visa and any conditions associated with it

Since 2013, both employers and employees can be penalized for not complying with the conditions of their work visa. Therefore it is important to check all employees’ work visas during the hiring process and on an ongoing basis to ensure that their work entitlements have not changed or ended.

CheckWorkRights is a business that uses technology to simplify the process of applying for and validating a number of employment-related compliance checks including visa checks, ‘Working with Children’ Checks and Police Checks.

Our pricing model is based on a subscription service for organisations.
Pricing depends on the number of visa holders you have within your organisation.
Please contact us at hello@checkworkrights.com.au to discuss specific pricing for your organisation.

Once you join us, we will work to ensure the product is set up and optimised for your unique business. Depending on what type of data you have already collected, the onboarding process can take anywhere between a couple of days to a couple of weeks.

You will receive a monthly report with a list of all of your employees and information about when their visas need to be renewed. This should replace the manual checking that is done directly through the Department of Home Affairs website.

Through CheckWorkRights, the frequency of visa checks depends on the visa subclass, visa expiry date, and the result of the most recent check for each individual. Here is a breakdown of what we consider in each of these situations.
  • Subclass. The visa subclass and whether the visa is temporary or permanent determines how often visas are checked.  This can range from monthly to yearly. For example, temporary visas such as student visas are checked monthly, permanent residency visas are checked every 6 months, and New Zealand citizens on a subclass 444 visa are checked yearly.
  • Expiry Date. In addition to the ongoing checking, each individual’s visa is checked again on the day after it expires. The result of the check will appear on the “visa change report” if the employee has a new valid visa. Or, the result will appear on the “no valid visa report” with an alert that the employee needs to be contacted because their visa has expired.
  • Current Status of Employee. If the check returns an “Unable to Check” or “No Valid Visa” result, the employee’s visa status will be checked every 48 hours until their visa can be verified.

This schedule has been created based on best practices in the immigration industry and advice from migration professionals. It is designed to ensure that you get accurate and timely advice about your employees’ visa statuses and can quickly take the appropriate course of action when required.

If you are employing staff that are not legally allowed to work, both you and the employee are in breach of government regulation and can be penalised for this breach. 

It is important to action this knowledge as soon as possible to ensure that you remain compliant.

Many of our clients have already been conducting work rights checks and finding our platform helps significantly with their process and operations.

There are a few ways that we can assist your organisation to effectively do their checks:

  • CheckWorkRights allows you to email your employees and help them through the process of providing their documentation digitally to run their work rights checks
  • There are email reminders sent to employees who do not provide documentation
  • Managers or team leaders can verify the employee details and follow up if required
  • Managers or team leaders receive reports and can track the numbers and percentages of employees that have completed the process
  • Visas will be checked on a regular and ongoing basis which removes the workload of checking manually through the VEVO website

If you have other questions about how we can help your organisation, feel free to contact us at hello@checkworkrights.com.au.

The response “Unable to Check” appears if the Department of Home Affairs cannot find a passport that matches the details you submitted. 

If this is what happened, try these steps:

  • Double-check the visa details with the individual to ensure that their Date of Birth and Passport Numbers are correct and there are no typos or errors.
  • If you are confident that there are no mistakes then the person probably renewed or replaced their (non-Australian) passport and has not notified the Department of Home Affairs of this change. 
  • If this is the case, you can:
    • Ask the individual to contact the Department of Home Affairs through their Immi-Account and update their passport details to reflect this change
    • Ask the individual for their old or expired passport which should still have their visa linked. This can be used to check their work rights

For New Zealand citizens, their 444 visas are cancelled when they leave Australia and re-issued when they arrive back in the country. Most likely, the person is currently out of the country which is causing a “No Visa” result.

You have to find out when the person will be back in Australia and re-do the check.

If the individual is not an Australian citizen, the only document you can use to check their work rights is a passport or a photocopy of it. In this case, you will have to ask the candidate to apply for a new passport.

If your employee can’t find their birth certificate, other acceptable forms of identification are:

  • Australian or New Zealand Passport
  • Australian Citizenship Certificate
  • Certificate of Status of being a New Zealand Citizen in Australia with photo identification such as a driver’s license
  • Australian Birth Certificate with photo identification such as a driver’s license 

In summary, a drivers licence on its own cannot be used for identity verification. It has to be accompanied by a birth certificate. 

If this is not possible, your employee needs another document from the list above to verify their identity. 

For more information, you can visit the Department of Home Affairs Website

Many individuals came to Australia as children, have never left the country, but also never became citizens. 

If this is the case, your employee cannot currently show that they can legally work in Australia because they do not have a document to run an employment check.  

In the past, the government would issue Immicards in these circumstances. However, since July 1, 2017, the Department of Home Affairs has stopped issuing Immicards for people who can apply for a passport from their birth country. 

Therefore, the employee needs to apply for a passport from their birth country and ensure that it is digitally linked to their Permanent Residency documents in Australia.

Yes. Your employee’s expired passport can still be linked to a valid visa and can be used for a work rights check.