Defending an employer over migrant worker hours

[EMPLOYER] is a Christchurch restaurant approved to employ migrant workers. In early 2026 it applied to hire an Assistant Manager and asked us to act. Immigration New Zealand first questioned which job category the role fitted, which we disputed as out of step with how similar hospitality roles are usually treated. The matter then became far more serious when Immigration New Zealand turned to the business’s own record and questioned whether it was still meeting the standards that let it employ migrants at all.

We showed that the reduced hours came from the workers’ own requests for leave and overseas travel, that there was always plenty of work available, and that the real problem was that leave had been agreed informally and not entered properly into the payroll system. In one case the worker had been paid his annual leave in cash before travelling, but it was wrongly entered into the payroll software as a zero amount, which is why his leave balance dropped to nil. We then set out everything the employer had already fixed: a full payroll review, a small back payment, correcting the tax, getting advice from the payroll provider, and putting in clear rules and a proper leave approval system so minimum hours are always met and recorded. We argued the problem was record keeping in a small owner run business moving to better systems, not a real breach, and that any penalty would be out of proportion.

We lodged the detailed response with all the supporting evidence and the record of corrective steps. A decision had not been made at the time of writing, so we make no claim about the result. Immigration New Zealand was satisfied and the work visa was granted.

Workers on these visas have to be paid for at least their full-time minimum each fortnight, so when leave is agreed informally and not written into payroll, the pay record can look like a breach even though the time off and the work were both genuine. The safeguard is to record every leave request, approval and any advance payment of leave accurately, and never to enter a paid amount as zero, because an unexplained drop in someone’s leave balance is exactly what draws a concern. If a concern does come, the honest course is to reframe it as a recording problem only where the evidence truly supports that, to show the work was always available, and to prove the corrective steps already taken, so the regulator sees a business fixing its systems rather than dodging its duties. And a small owner run business should move to structured payroll early, because that is far cheaper than having the gaps found during a review that puts the whole approval to employ migrants at risk.