Employer accreditation reinstated after suspension

A Christchurch-based hospitality group with three venues and twenty-two migrant workers on AEWV had its employer accreditation suspended following an anonymous complaint to INZ alleging breaches of employment standards. The compliance review identified concerns around record-keeping for hours worked, inconsistent pay slip formatting, and gaps in the settlement information provided to migrant workers at induction. Suspension meant the business could not hire new migrant workers and faced potential revocation, which would have required terminating existing AEWV employment.

We worked with the employer’s HR manager and external accountant to conduct a full audit of employment records across all three venues, identifying every gap and discrepancy. Where genuine errors had occurred we acknowledged them directly rather than minimising — INZ’s compliance team responds far better to candour than to defensiveness. The remediation package included a new payroll system implementation with audit trail, revised pay slip templates meeting all Wages Protection Act requirements, a documented settlement information process with sign-off forms, training records for all managers on migrant employment obligations, and back-pay calculations for the small number of cases where rounding errors had resulted in minor underpayments (paid before submission). The legal response framed the issues as systems failures that had been comprehensively addressed, not as substantive non-compliance with migrant worker protections.

Accreditation was reinstated at the standard tier. INZ accepted the remediation in full and did not impose conditions or require a follow-up audit. The employer has since hired four additional AEWV workers and the new payroll system has prevented any recurrence.