We needed someone to start on Monday. The candidate was strong, everyone who'd interviewed her agreed, and she was keen to start immediately. The only thing standing between an offer and a start date was the right-to-work check — collecting and verifying the document that proves someone is legally allowed to work in the UK. It felt, in the moment, like the kind of box-ticking that could reasonably happen 'in the first week', once she was already in and useful. I nearly let it slide. I didn't, and looking back, that was one of the better small decisions I've made as an employer.
Why it felt skippable at the time
The temptation wasn't laziness so much as momentum. Everything else about the hire felt decided — the interview had gone well, the offer had effectively been made verbally, and asking for passport checks and paperwork at that point felt like an odd, slightly awkward formality to insert into what had otherwise been a warm, fast-moving process. It's the same instinct that makes people skip reading a contract they're keen to sign: the decision feels already made, so the remaining steps feel like friction rather than substance.
What actually made me stop
What stopped me wasn't a compliance course or a poster in an HR handbook — it was realising I genuinely didn't know what the consequences were if I got it wrong, and that not knowing was itself the problem. A quick check confirmed what I'd vaguely assumed but never actually verified: employing someone without the right to work, without having carried out a proper check first, carries a civil penalty that runs into the thousands per illegal worker, and in more serious cases can be a criminal matter. And carrying out the check properly, before employment starts, is also what protects you if it later turns out a document was fraudulent — the 'statutory excuse' only applies if the check was done correctly and on time. Do it right before day one, and you're protected even if something later proves not to be genuine. Skip it, or do it loosely after the fact, and you're not.
The check isn't there to catch dishonest employers. It's there to protect honest ones — but only if it's actually done, properly, before someone starts work, not squeezed in afterwards as an afterthought.
What the check actually involves
In the end it took perhaps twenty minutes: checking original documents in the candidate's physical presence (or using the Home Office's online right-to-work checking service, which covers many but not all cases), confirming the documents were genuine and belonged to her, and keeping a dated copy on file. It wasn't the bureaucratic ordeal I'd built it up to be in my head. The delay it added to her start date was measured in hours, not days — and she didn't think it was strange in the slightest. If anything, doing it properly read as more professional, not less.
The lesson that generalised beyond this one hire
The real lesson wasn't really about right-to-work checks specifically — it was noticing how easily 'we've basically already decided' turns into skipping a formal step that exists precisely for the moments when a decision has already been made and momentum is doing the thinking. Do you need a written employment contract for your first hire sits in the same category: the paperwork that feels most skippable when you're excited about a hire is often exactly the paperwork that matters most, because it's designed for the good hires, the fast-moving ones, not the ones you'd naturally slow down for anyway.
How I explain it to candidates now
One small thing changed alongside the process itself: how the request gets framed to the candidate. Early on, asking for documents felt like it needed an apology, as if it implied some suspicion about them personally. It doesn't, and saying so plainly — 'this is something we do for every single person we hire, it's not about you' — turns out to matter. Nobody has ever pushed back on that framing. If anything, candidates who've worked for larger, more established employers before often expect it as standard, and a small business skipping it can read, oddly, as the less professional option rather than the more relaxed one.
The nuance the checklist can't cover on its own
There's a wrinkle worth knowing about too: right-to-work status isn't always a one-off check that's done and forgotten. Some employees hold time-limited permission to work — a visa with an expiry date, for example — and in those cases the statutory excuse only keeps protecting you if you carry out a follow-up check before that permission runs out. It's easy to do the check properly on day one and then never think about it again, only to find months or years later that someone's status quietly lapsed without anyone noticing. Diarising expiry dates alongside the initial check, not just doing the check itself, is the part that actually closes the gap.
What I do differently now
Right-to-work checks now happen as a fixed step before any offer is confirmed as final, not after, and it's written into our own basic hiring checklist so it never depends on how busy or excited anyone is on the day, with any time-limited permissions diarised for a follow-up check well before they expire. It costs almost nothing in time. What it buys is genuine protection if anything about a document later turns out not to be what it seemed — and, just as importantly, one less thing to worry about while trying to focus on actually getting a new hire settled in and useful.
Common questions
What is the actual fine if I get it wrong?
Up to £45,000 per illegal worker for a first breach in a three-year period, and up to £60,000 per worker for a second or subsequent breach. Those levels apply to breaches identified on or after 13 February 2024 and replaced substantially lower figures — the increase was roughly threefold. Note that it is per worker, not per business, so a firm that hired four people through the same loose process is looking at four penalties rather than one. And where an employer knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, that someone doesn't have the right to work, it stops being civil: employing an illegal worker is a criminal offence carrying up to five years' imprisonment and an unlimited fine, and it reaches directors and managers personally.
Can I do the check after they've started?
Not if you want the protection. The statutory excuse — the defence that removes your liability for a civil penalty even where a document later turns out to be false — only exists if a compliant check was carried out before the employment began. A check done in week two is better than no check, because it may evidence good faith, but it gives you no excuse for the period before it. The same logic applies to follow-up checks: where someone holds time-limited permission to work, the excuse continues only if you re-check before that permission expires. Diarise the expiry date at the same moment you do the first check, because nothing else in the business will remind you.
Do I have to check British citizens too?
Yes, every single person you employ, without exception. Checking only the people you think might need it is discrimination, and it is the exact failure mode the Home Office's code of practice on avoiding discrimination exists to prevent. Run the identical process for everyone: same stage of the hiring sequence, same records, same file. For British and Irish citizens you can either check the original passport with the person present, or use a certified Identity Service Provider to run a digital identity verification. For anyone holding an eVisa you use the Home Office online right to work check service with a share code the individual generates for you. In practice nobody objects to 'we do this for every hire'.
What if the document turns out to be a forgery?
You are protected, provided the check was done properly and before employment started. The statutory excuse is designed precisely for the case where a document was convincing enough that a reasonable employer, following the correct process, accepted it. What you must have done is satisfy yourself the document is genuine and belongs to the person in front of you — with them physically present, or on a live video call holding the original after sending it to you first — and keep a clear, dated copy for the duration of employment and two years afterwards. Undated copies, copies of a photograph rather than the original, and checks done by someone who never saw the person are where the excuse falls apart.
Is the scheme changing?
Yes — it widens on 1 October 2026. Section 48 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 extends right to work checks beyond conventional employment to cover individuals engaged under a contract personally to do work, which pulls in a large amount of contractor, gig-economy and self-employed engagement that has sat outside the regime until now. If you use subcontractors, agency-supplied labour, or self-employed people doing work personally for you, the practical move is to fold the check into onboarding for those engagements now rather than waiting for the date. The penalty levels and the statutory excuse work in exactly the same way once the wider scope applies.
