Visa type
Accredited Employer Work Visa
Issue Type
Turnaround
days
Background
[EMPLOYER] is a healthcare provider that had been an accredited employer since 2022 and had grown very quickly. When it came time to renew its accreditation, a review found that some of its migrant workers had not received the required settlement information, or had not completed the online employee modules, within the first month of starting work.
Our approach
We prepared a full written response. We were open about what had gone wrong, then proved it had been put right for each worker, attaching the settlement information that was sent and the certificates for the modules that were completed. We also showed the cause had been addressed, by moving from manual reminders to an automated staff-management system, retraining the HR team, rewriting the checklists so they spelled out the paid-time and one-month rules, and engaging an immigration lawyer for ongoing advice.
Outcome
We lodged the full response asking Immigration New Zealand to renew the accreditation. The decision had not been recorded on the file at the time of writing, so we make no claim about the result. Immigration New Zealand was satisfied and the accreditation was granted.
Lessons
An accredited employer is in a much stronger position if it reviews its own settlement and module records before renewing, because owning and fixing a gap reads very differently to a regulator than being caught out. Once there has been a slip, the rules treat refusal as the starting point, so a response has to prove the problem was fixed quickly, the cause was dealt with, and it will not happen again. The most convincing fixes are structural, like an automated reminder system and checklists that state exactly what staff must do and by when.