In brief
On 6 March 2026, the Home Office updated its sponsor guidance to introduce a new requirement for sponsor licence holders to ensure that sponsored workers both receive and understand information about their employment rights in the UK, and to retain evidence of this. Employers who sponsor workers have flexibility in how they deliver this information, but should ensure that their approach is comprehensive, clearly communicated, and supported by good record-keeping.
Key takeaways
- While the Home Office guidance lists certain rights, it is non-exhaustive, so sponsors should take a broad and purposive approach.
- Sponsors can choose how they deliver this information, for example in employment contracts, policies, training or a standalone document.
- Sponsors should maintain clear records to show compliance; evidence of the information being read and understood is as important as the content itself.
- For now, it’s unclear what level of “understanding” is required and how the Home Office will assess compliance in practice.
In more detail
This development forms part of a broader shift in the Home Office’s approach to sponsor compliance, placing increased emphasis on worker welfare and transparency, and reflecting heightened scrutiny in sectors where concerns about exploitation have arisen. Part 1 of the Home Office guidance now includes a new paragraph (L2.6) setting out a non-exhaustive list of employment rights which sponsors should cover when informing workers. These include:
- Entitlement to National Minimum Wage.
- Compliance with the Working Time Regulations.
- Pension auto-enrolment and opt-outs.
- Entitlement to statutory leave and pay.
- Health and safety.
- Trade union membership, participation in union activities and the rights of trade union representatives (insofar as this role is otherwise compatible with this guidance and role a worker is being sponsored for).
- The sponsor’s Equality Act duties.
- How to raise grievances.
While the list is broad, it’s significant that some core employment protections, such as unfair dismissal and redundancy rights, are not expressly called out, reinforcing that this list is illustrative, rather than exhaustive. Sponsors should, therefore, take a purposive approach and avoid relying on this as a ‘compliance checklist’.
The Home Office also updated Appendix D of the guidance to state that sponsors must retain: “Evidence you give your sponsored workers information about their employment rights in the UK (as set out in section L2 of Part 1: Apply for a licence) – for example, copies of any written information you have provided to your workers (this could be in their contract of employment) or training or awareness courses you have provided to your workers”.
Practical considerations
The key practical question is how best to deliver this information, especially when it relates to what is a wide and evolving area of law. Helpfully, the guidance confirms that sponsors may use a range of methods, including employment contracts, internal policies and training, and does not require a particular format, so employers have some flexibility in how they comply.
Options include:
Employment Contracts
Sponsors could incorporate this information into employment contracts, to the extent it is not already included, for example using sponsor-specific clauses for relevant employees. Contracts will already be part of the onboarding process in most cases. However, the guidance refers to a broad range of rights, many of which are not usually covered in employment contracts. This means that incorporating them may require expanding template employment contracts, with potentially lengthy and/or artificial drafting. This option is unlikely to operate as a complete or standalone solution for most employers.
Policies
Sponsors may also choose to rely on existing internal documentation, such as policies and handbooks. For many employers, these will already cover some of the areas identified in the guidance, such as statutory leave and pay, health and safety and grievance procedures. This approach avoids duplication and allows for more detailed information to be provided than would typically be included in an employment contract. However, in practice, employers are unlikely to have policies in place to address all relevant rights, meaning that gaps would need to be identified and addressed before this approach can be relied upon. Even where a full suite of policies exists, attempting to distil all relevant rights into these risks oversimplification and may quickly become outdated as the law evolves. There is also the issue of evidencing compliance, as the guidance requires sponsors not just to make information available, but to demonstrate that it has actually been provided to sponsored workers. For example, if the range of policies are held across multiple documents and/or accessed through internal systems, it may be less straightforward to show that all relevant information has been communicated.
Training
The Home Office guidance also indicates that information may be provided through training or awareness programmes. Employers could incorporate employment rights into onboarding processes or broader compliance training. Training is likely to be particularly effective in ensuring that workers truly understand their rights, but, as a sole or primary means of compliance, it may present challenges in terms of consistency and record-keeping. For this reason, training is likely to work best as a way to supplement other methods of delivering the required information.
Information sheet
A pragmatic approach is using a short, standalone ‘sponsored worker information sheet’ or side letter, alongside existing onboarding documents. This would contain a concise overview of key rights, together with links to third-party resources such as ACAS or GOV.UK. This has the benefit of being relatively easy to update and straightforward to evidence. Employers will need to ensure that any links provided are reliable and remain up-to-date and that workers are clearly directed to them, but for most employers this will be more manageable than maintaining standalone in-house materials. The Home Office’s guidance itself recognises this by referring sponsors to the ACAS website (or the Labour Relations Agency in Northern Ireland) as a source of further information. From an evidential perspective, a dedicated document provides a clear and identifiable record of what has been provided to sponsored workers and when.
Sponsors may also wish to obtain acknowledgements from workers confirming that they have received and understood the information, for example via signed forms or email confirmations. Ultimately, the audit trail will be as important as the substance of the information provided.
Looking ahead
Areas of uncertainty remain. The guidance does not define what level of understanding is required, and it is not yet clear whether simply providing information will be sufficient or whether the Home Office will expect a more interactive or training-led approach.
Questions may also arise in more complex scenarios, such as for peripatetic workers where the application of UK employment law may be uncertain.
In addition, it remains to be seen how strictly the Home Office will enforce this requirement in practice, and it will focus primarily on form (i.e., whether information has been provided and recorded) or substance (i.e., whether workers genuinely understand their rights).
Ultimately, sponsors should ensure that they have taken reasonable steps to inform workers of their rights, that those steps are clearly documented. In most cases, this will not require a complete overhaul of existing documentation, but rather a review of current materials, introducing new supplementary documents as necessary, and the use of clear processes for communication and record-keeping.
For specific advice on this development and to help your business navigate the changes, please get in touch with your usual Baker McKenzie contact.
Anna Boresjo, Associate, contributed to this legal update.