One hundred and sixty-two documents, none lost: a Bangladesh group for a corrugated plant

01 / Request

A box from a flat blank and the choice of country for a corrugated plant

The training room at our partner's office in Gazipur, an industrial city outside Dhaka, smelled of fresh cardboard. Rakibul, thirty-one, six years at a corrugated box factory, folded a box from a flat blank, taped the bottom and put it on the table. On a laptop screen, the warehouse manager of a plant in the Vinnytsia region was watching him. He asked Rakibul to count a bundle of blanks, and Rakibul split it into fives without pausing. Eighteen of the people who passed the trial that week were due to be at the plant in two and a half months. Between that room and the plant lay one hundred and sixty-two documents, nine for each of them.

The corrugated packaging plant was expanding its finished goods warehouse for new orders from food producers and had three and a half months to staff its packing section. The HR director asked for eighteen packers with experience of corrugated board and left the choice of country to us. Kemal, our Head of Recruitment, compared the options by experience in the trade, partners' reserves, language and route length against the start date. Visa-free countries offer a shorter route, but at that moment our partners there had few people from corrugated box factories. In Bangladesh, around Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj, there are many such factories, because the garment industry ships its clothing for export in corrugated boxes. Senior workers in the groups speak English, as does the warehouse manager, Arif speaks Bengali with everyone, and the D visa route of eight to twelve weeks fitted the deadline with room to spare. The plant agreed.

We named the main risk of this route to the plant straight away: not the consulate and not the border, but the chain of paperwork. Every candidate document passes through several hands and several cities, and one lost sheet or a single letter that differs from the passport takes a person out of the group for weeks.

Who is needed

18 packers with experience of corrugated board

Why Bangladesh

Experience at corrugated box factories, partner's reserve, route within the deadline

Plant's deadline

Three and a half months

Main risk

The document chain for eighteen people

02 / Selection

The trial in Gazipur: a blank, a bundle and a stable pallet

Arif, our Worker Relations Manager for Bangladesh and Nepal, held interviews with our licensed partner in Gazipur and Narayanganj. First came a conversation in Bengali: where the person had worked, why they wanted to go, who was waiting at home, whether they were ready for a two-year contract. Then a trial agreed with the warehouse manager: fold a box, count and tie a bundle, stack boxes on a pallet so the stack does not wobble, and read a label in Latin script. Out of thirty-two candidates, the plant approved eighteen and four in reserve.

Among those approved were Rakibul, who pays for his younger sister's college in a village near Mymensingh, Tanvir, twenty-seven, from an export warehouse in Narayanganj, and Jahid, thirty-five, eight years at a corrugated box factory, who became the group's contact person. Under our contract with the partner, candidates pay nothing for being placed in a job.

Everyone received an information sheet in Bengali: the plant and its address, the job title and contract term, housing, the approximate processing time and a contact in Ukraine. Arif added a page that mattered more than anything else in this project: which documents the person provides, in what order and by what date. The general list is on the page on documents for candidates, but people need dates, not bullet points.

03 / The chain

Nine documents per person, each with its own route

A document list guarantees nothing unless you know how many hands each document passes through and where the original is on any given day. Nataliia, Head of Documents at WORKIN, wrote down the route of each of the nine items from the first step to the last.

Part of the route is set by law. A work permit application needs copies of the passport pages with personal data and a certified Ukrainian translation, a 3.5 x 4.5 cm photo and a draft employment contract certified by the employer. Documents issued abroad are legalised unless an international treaty provides otherwise, documents in a foreign language are translated into Ukrainian, and the translator's signature is notarised. Nataliia checked the procedure for documents from Bangladesh at the outset. We collected nothing extra: requiring documents beyond the law is prohibited, and the trial had already shown the packers' skills.

04 / The tracker

One hundred and sixty-two cells that show every paper

The tracker is a shared spreadsheet with strict rules: eighteen rows for the candidates, four reserve rows below and nine columns for the documents. A cell holds not a tick but a status, a date and the location of the original: with the candidate, at the partner's office, in transit with a tracking number, with the translator or in Kyiv. Arif keeps the candidates' rows, Nataliia's team keeps the Ukrainian side, and the plant's HR director sees her part.

There are four rules. A name goes into any document by copying it from the passport scan, never by ear. The next step starts only when a second person has checked the previous cell. Each cell has one person responsible. And every Thursday, before the Friday day off in Bangladesh, we and the partner look not at what has been done but at what should have been done and has not. Each candidate received their own row from Arif as a message, so nobody handed documents to acquaintances who promised to speed things up.

1. 01

   Status

   Requested, received, checked, legalised, translated, in the file.

2. 02

   Where the original is

   Candidate, partner's office, envelope with a number, translator, Kyiv.

3. 03

   Who is responsible

   One name per cell: Arif, the partner, the documents team or the plant.

4. 04

   What next

   The date of the next step, not a note saying 'in progress'.

05 / Names

MD or MOHAMMAD: checking the powers of attorney before legalisation

In week five, on a Thursday evening, a notary's clerk brought eighteen powers of attorney for obtaining tax numbers to the partner's office. On Sunday, when the working week of Bangladesh's government offices begins, they were due to go for legalisation. The partner's manager, Farzana, switched on a video call and began reading the names aloud while Arif checked each one against the passport scan.

On the seventh power of attorney she read MOHAMMAD RAKIBUL HASAN. Rakibul's passport says MD RAKIBUL HASAN. In Bangladesh this is the same name: MD is the usual abbreviation of Muhammad. For Ukrainian documents these are two spellings, and a power of attorney with a name that does not match the passport risks failing exactly when the person is already in Ukraine waiting for a tax number. Three more documents had MUHAMMAD, MOHAMMED and again MOHAMMAD instead of MD.

The notary had typed the names the way he was used to, and we caught the difference at the moment when fixing it cost three days. After legalisation and translation it would have surfaced only in Ukraine, and a new power of attorney from Bangladesh cannot be produced in a day. On Sunday morning Farzana took the four documents back to the notary with a sheet of names printed straight from the tracker, and the new ones were ready by lunchtime. The check was repeated, and only then did the powers of attorney go for legalisation. Arif added a line to the information sheet: we write the name exactly as in the passport, even if at home the person has been written down differently all their life.

06 / Certificates

Six weeks of certificates and the one that took longest

We requested the police clearance certificates in week two, and the tracker showed an expected date for each one. In week six sixteen of the eighteen arrived, and early in week seven the seventeenth. Tanvir's was late, and the tracker showed it three weeks before his consulate appointment. The partner confirmed that the application was being processed. Arif moved Tanvir to the last group, asked the reserve candidate, Sumon, to keep his passport and photos ready, and told Tanvir that his place was safe. The certificate arrived in week eight, and Tanvir made it with the third group.

Every certificate followed the same order: name check against the passport, legalisation, translation into Ukrainian including all the stamps, and notarisation of the translator's signature. A translation made before legalisation would have to be redone, because it would not include the stamps. Someone did suggest saving a week that way, but the tracker would not allow it: the translation cell opens only after the legalisation cell turns green.

1. Weeks 1-2

   Country choice, trial, 18 candidates and 4 in reserve, certificates requested.

2. Weeks 3-4

   Passport translations, 18 permits, invitations sent to Gazipur.

3. Week 5

   Powers of attorney, name check, legalisation.

4. Weeks 6-9

   Certificates, translations, consulate in three groups.

5. Weeks 10-11

   Visas for all 18, tickets for one date.

6. Weeks 12-13

   Entry, contracts, tax numbers, residence permits.

07 / D visa

An envelope of fifty-four sheets and three groups at the consulate

The Ukrainian side ran in parallel. Nataliia collected the plant's documents using the company checklist, we filed eighteen applications in week three, and a decision to issue a permit is made within seven working days. In week four all the permits were issued without remarks, and a new column appeared in the tracker: the 90 days within which the employment contract must be signed. The contracts were scheduled eight weeks later, so there was plenty of room.

Invitations, certified copies of the permits and housing confirmations went to Gazipur in one envelope with an inventory of fifty-four items. Farzana opened it on a video call and checked every sheet against the list before sorting them into folders. Candidates apply at the consulate in person, and we secured appointments for three groups of six. Those whose cells were all green went first. Before each appointment Arif checked the folder against the D visa file list and asked the person what they would say about the job. Visas for all eighteen were ready in week ten, and we bought tickets for one date.

08 / Arrival

A folder for the border, the dormitory and tax numbers in the first week

Before departure Arif held a video meeting with the group. Everyone packed a folder in their hand luggage: passport with visa, a copy of the permit, the invitation, the dormitory address and Arif's phone number. Arif went through the questions that may be asked at the border: the purpose of the trip, the employer, the job, where the person will live. The group flew to a country neighbouring Ukraine, crossed the land border by coach, and Arif met them on the other side. We had checked the dormitory documents before the permit filing as part of living support.

The plant signed the employment contracts in the first days, and we filed the copies within the 10-day term. This is where the Sunday in Gazipur paid off: the powers of attorney with names exactly as in the passports were already with the migration partner, and everyone had a tax number within the first week. The filings for temporary residence permits went ahead in groups of six with the same passport translations.

The last column of the tracker became a set of dates for each worker: permit expiry, passport expiry, residence permit filing. We handed this part to the plant's HR team, and we keep the group's documents under migration support. Assigning people within the section is the plant's job, and that is where our part ended.

09 / Summary

Eighteen people, one hundred and sixty-two documents and not one lost

Selection

32 trials, 18 approved, 4 in reserve

Tracker

9 documents per person: status, date and location of the original

Name check

4 powers of attorney reprinted before legalisation

Certificates

18 of 18, the last in week eight

Route

12 weeks from request to the group's entry

A long route from Bangladesh stops being a lottery once every paper has its own row, a person responsible and a date for the next step. WORKIN takes on this part entirely, the part the plant never sees, from a notary in Gazipur to a tax number in the Vinnytsia region. The WORKIN replacement guarantee runs for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are kept, and finding a replacement is not charged again. How to separate the documents you need from the ones you do not is covered in the scenario on documents from abroad, what to do when an application is left without motion in the scenario on correcting a permit application, and how housing becomes an address for a residence permit in the scenario on village addresses. The whole journey is on How it works. More on recruitment, workers for manufacturing, packers from abroad and workers from Bangladesh.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers