Reducing the complexity of immigration can give employees and People Operations team peace of mind, by building out and executing consistently on your immigration policy you’ve already taken major strides towards improving your talent management function from having only basic training. After identifying common visa types, building an immigration coalition and appropriate training resources, and finding an optimal process to follow you might think that’s all there is to it. But wait, before you drop that policy into a shared drive, there’s more.
Modern companies understand that talent acquisition is only half the battle, more importantly, crafting and fostering an employee experience that enables talent retention is the key to unlocking an organization’s potential. So how does immigration and visa sponsorship help with talent retention?
Training for critical immigration choices
Crafting a sponsorship policy is not a one-size-fits-all exercise, generally, companies tend to want to take an offensive or defensive position, depending on their vertical, geography, or other company factors, and a good immigration partner should be ready to help you understand your options.
One critical choice certain companies are making is when to sponsor an international employee for a permanent visa, aggressive companies in competitive talent markets might want to consider sponsorship quickly to demonstrate their commitment to investing in their employee’s wellbeing. However, other companies may choose to ride out the H-1B lottery for a few years and attach performance metrics before applying for an immigrant visa.
To help create a more seamless employee experience and improve employee engagement employers must make critical choices such as when to sponsor, what sponsorship fees you’re willing to help with, and whether to invest in additional resources and training for stakeholders. Additionally, certain immigration technologies have productized workflows to allow teams to incorporate their unique policy and guidelines into forecasting models and even employee case projections.
Tips to optimize your immigration training
- Have People Team and legal vendors collaborate on conducting training for hiring managers, recruiters, and executives to ensure consistent benefits administration
- Schedule some training to prepare recruiting team members and hiring managers to discuss immigration benefits with prospects and identify some common non-immigrant visa pathways such as H-1B, TN, L-1, E-3, etc.
- Work on building standard immigration-compliant job descriptions which in turn can be used to create a job bank. This helps to accelerate your path towards building a strategic immigration program and can dramatically reduce costs as your company scales.
- Continue to look for new opportunities where technology can automate time-consuming, administrative processes.
- Consider engaging your legal vendor for continuing education on special topics, such as ongoing travel bans, talent acquisition tips, IV vs NIV visas.
As your talent goals and the candidate landscape continue to change, by implementing some of the tips above you can stay on top of relevant changes and mitigate any erratic surprises in the immigration space. You also might consider revisiting some core immigration program metrics at regular intervals to take full advantage of the work you’ve already done by creating a policy that adds predictability to your immigration program.
Content in this publication is not intended as legal advice, nor should it be relied on as such. For additional information on the issues discussed, consult a Bridge-affiliated partner attorney or another qualified legal professional.
