We believe the future of right to work checks are digital

There is much expectation that 2022 will see the Home Office introduce changes to regulation to allow digital identity verification to be used for onboarding of new employees. COVID has created enormous challenges but it has also forced all of us to think how we use digital technologies. For organisations, remote and home working as a norm has encouraged employers to engage new employees in physical locations that were previously impractical.

Now, with the prospect of regulation change, remote employees would not need to travel long distances simply to show photo ID and could start to use a digital identity verification service such as the one developed by Reed Screening and IDEMIA.

In a typical year, about six million people in the UK start new jobs. Under special rules introduced for the COVID period, the Home Office has allowed identity verification to be conducted by the employer via a webcam interview in which the candidate holds their photo ID to the camera and the responsible person at the organisation checks that it belongs to the candidate.

Spotting fraudulent ID documents is challenging enough face-to-face for most people but under these conditions it is, of course, extremely difficult. So, the Home Office announced that employers should physically check the documents of new employees when COVID restrictions came to an end. Of course, the ‘temporary’ situation has gone on for over a year and a half and employers have been faced with an enormous backlog of checks.

But a change in rules would mean a remote digital identity verification process like Reed Screening and IDEMIA’s can be used. This would allow employers to eat through the backlog of new employees without having to set up individual interviews for each employee. The service would allow document validity checks and facial matching technologies to be used that can detect issues that the human eye is not good at picking up.

Employers are waiting to hear whether there will be changes to regulation from the Home Office, but the prospect of change will bring some relief. When we hear more, we will let you know.