One group, three employers: how we matched cooks from India to their permits

01 / The request

Three company stamps on one desk

The restaurant group's HR director put the recruitment request in front of Olena and, so that it could be signed and stamped straight away, three company stamps beside it. Olena, WORKIN's client projects lead, looked at the stamps for longer than at the request. To its guests the group is two restaurants in central Kyiv, a central kitchen on the left bank and a banqueting hall outside the city. To the business register it is three separate companies with three registration codes. The whole project depended on how those two pictures fitted together.

The task had a firm date. In four months the group was opening a third restaurant with an open kitchen, a grill and a tandoor, the central kitchen had to scale up for the new venue, and the banqueting hall was already taking wedding bookings. Fourteen people were needed: twelve cooks and two pastry cooks. The group's executive chef, who had spent ten years in hotels in Dubai, explained what mattered most to him: people who can cook in large volumes to standard recipe cards and stay calm at banquets for several hundred guests.

HR had already filled in the employer on the request: hire all fourteen through the central kitchen company, since it had the largest staffing schedule and the group's accounts department. After that, as the executive chef put it, the cooks would work wherever they were needed: in the restaurants, in the central kitchen, at banquets. To the group this sounded like ordinary flexibility. For the work permit it was the project's biggest risk, and we said so at that same meeting.

Who is needed

12 cooks and 2 pastry cooks

Deadline

New restaurant opens in four months

Group structure

Three companies, three registration codes

HR's plan

Hire everyone through one company

WORKIN's proposal

Employer map first, applications second

02 / Country

Cooks from hotel kitchens: why India

The group did not name a country, so we started from what the executive chef considered most important. We compared destinations on four points: experience in large hotel and banqueting kitchens, the language for working with the executive chef and sous-chefs, the length of the route against the opening date, and the pool of candidates available through our partners. Visa-free countries have a shorter route, but at that point our partners there had few cooks with experience of banquets for hundreds of guests.

In India that experience is common. Thousands of cooks train in large hotels in Delhi, Mumbai and the Gulf states, are used to recipe cards and international menus, and for many of them the grill and the tandoor are everyday work. The executive chef and both sous-chefs speak English, and so do cooks from hotel kitchens. The D visa route takes eight to twelve weeks on average and fitted into the four months before opening. We proposed India, and the group agreed.

Rajesh, our worker relations manager for India, planned selection with a licensed partner in Dehradun. Many cooks in Indian hotels come from Uttarakhand, where in mountain villages cooking has kept families going for more than one generation. Rajesh speaks Hindi with candidates and English with the executive chef, so interviews could run without an interpreter.

03 / The law

One owner, three employers

Nataliia, head of our documents team, walked HR's plan through a simple example. A work permit is obtained by a specific employer for a specific foreign national and a specific position. If the central kitchen company holds the permit and the cook works at a banquet, he is working for a different employer, because the banqueting hall belongs to a different company. A shared owner and a shared executive chef change nothing for the permit.

The employment law says plainly what to do when a person is needed by several companies: a foreign national may work for several employers provided each of them has obtained a permit for that person. Working for an employer other than the one named in the permit is grounds for revoking the permit and carries a fine of ten minimum wages for each person at the time the breach is found. Working with no permit at all costs twice as much: twenty minimum wages for each person.

Within a single company, on the other hand, there is more room than HR had assumed. Two restaurants owned by the same company are one employer, so a cook does not need a second permit for the second restaurant: we simply list both addresses in the draft employment contract. If a position is renamed or a person is moved to another position in the same company, the employer applies to amend the permit within 30 days, free of charge, and the decision is made within three working days. So the key question for the project was not how many cooks, but who employs whom.

04 / The map

The sign says one thing, the lease another

Olena asked the executive chef and HR to fill in a three-column table: position, the venue where the person will cook, and the company that owns the venue. We did not ask about hours or days, only places. The first version looked like this: five cooks in the two existing restaurants, four in the new restaurant, three in the central kitchen and two pastry cooks working both in the central kitchen and at the banqueting hall. Two grill cooks from the new restaurant were also meant to work at banquets. The new restaurant was opening under the same brand as the other two, so it had been listed under the restaurant company, which came to eighteen permits: one for each person, two more for the grill cooks and two for the pastry cooks.

Before filing, Nataliia checks the map against documents rather than signs: who leases the premises, whose staffing schedule holds the venue's positions and who will sign the employment contracts. The lease for the new restaurant turned out to have been signed by the banqueting company: the group had decided this back in spring while looking for premises, and HR had forgotten. The HR director confirmed that the new restaurant is run by the banqueting company and its positions would sit on that company's staffing schedule.

The map immediately became simpler. The four cooks at the new restaurant now worked for the same company as the banquets, so the grill cooks no longer needed a second permit. The two pastry cooks were the only people working for two companies, because the central kitchen and the banqueting hall belong to different companies. Eighteen permits became sixteen, and each one matched the place where the person would actually stand at the stove.

05 / Selection

Dehradun: two companies under Employer

Rajesh held the interviews in Dehradun with the partner. Each candidate brought a video from their own kitchen, and the executive chef watched them and spoke with people in English over video link: what dishes they had cooked, for how many guests, to which recipe cards. He approved twelve cooks, two pastry cooks and three in reserve, one of them a pastry cook.

We selected people against the map rather than a general vacancy. For the new restaurant we looked for cooks who had worked with a grill and a tandoor, for the central kitchen for cooks from large hotel kitchens, and we asked the pastry cooks separately whether they were ready to work for two companies under two contracts. Mohan, forty-one, twelve years at the tandoor in hotels in Delhi and Muscat, was heading for the new restaurant to pay for his daughter's college in Dehradun. Sunil, twenty-nine, a pastry cook from a hotel banqueting kitchen in Dubai, from a village near Pauri where his mother runs a small tea stall, became one of the two pastry cooks with two employers.

The information sheet for Sunil and for Ganesh, the second pastry cook, was different from the rest: under Employer it listed two companies, two addresses and two registration codes. Rajesh went through it with both of them in Hindi and explained what it meant in practice. They would work at the venues of their two companies, under two contracts and with two permits. They could not cook in the restaurant company's restaurants, even if a sous-chef asked them to, because that company held no permit for them. If such a request came up, the first step was a call to Rajesh, who would settle it with the group together with Olena.

For each of the fourteen we set up a cook's card: name in Latin script exactly as in the passport, one or two companies, position, the addresses of venues where the person may work, and later the numbers and dates of permits and contracts. The card became the single source of data for applications, invitations and tickets. HR received a copy, and each cook his own, in Hindi and English.

06 / Permits

Sixteen applications on a single day

Nataliia collected the three companies' documents using one employer checklist but separately for each: register extract, order appointing the director, staffing schedule with the required positions, powers of attorney for WORKIN. By then the banqueting company had added the new restaurant's positions to its staffing schedule, and we checked that the position titles matched those in the applications.

Each application came from its own employer with its own pack: copies of passport pages with a certified Ukrainian translation, a colour photo measuring 3.5 x 4.5 cm, a draft employment contract certified by that particular company, and proof of payment. The law sets the permit fee in subsistence minimums for able-bodied persons as of 1 January of the filing year, and it depends on the term: eight for a permit of one to two years. Each company paid for its own permits from its own account, and the group had budgeted for the two extra pastry cook permits at the map stage.

We filed all sixteen applications on the same day through the three employers' online accounts. For the pastry cooks this mattered in particular. Once a permit is issued, the employment contract must be signed within 90 calendar days, and had Sunil's two permits been issued a week apart, he would have had two different deadlines. The decision to issue is due within seven working days: all sixteen permits came in six, and both permits for each pastry cook were issued on the same day, with one deadline for both contracts.

Employers

3 companies, each with its own document pack

Applications

16, filed on one day

Fees

Each company paid for its own permits from its own account

Pastry cooks

Two permits each, issued on the same day

Decision

Due within 7 working days, came in 6

07 / Journey and handover

Dawn at the border crossing and sixteen contracts

We prepared the invitations for the consulate from the cook's card data, and the position in each matched the permit letter for letter. For Sunil and Ganesh the invitation was signed by the central kitchen company, and we put copies of both permits in the pack so that the consulate could see where and to whom the person was travelling. Consulate appointments were booked in groups, and within five weeks all fourteen had their D visas.

The route went via Chisinau: the migration partner arranged the Moldovan transit to match the ticket dates. Rajesh met the group at the border crossing at dawn. Mohan went to the window first and handed the border officer everything in order: passport with visa, copy of the permit, proof of the housing address and his cook's card. The rest did the same, because at the briefing in Dehradun Rajesh had laid out that order on the table.

The group rented housing for the cooks: two flats near the central kitchen and one near the new restaurant. We had checked the flats' documents for address registration and residence permits a month before arrival as part of living support, and people were housed so that those working for the same company lived together.

There were sixteen employment contracts: one with each cook and two with each pastry cook, each from its own employer and within 90 days of the permit. We filed copies of all sixteen within the 10-day term. People had tax numbers and bank accounts within the first week, and the migration partner ran the temporary residence permit filings in groups.

That is where our part ended: how people are deployed inside the venues is the group's decision. HR received from us a register of sixteen permits with deadlines and venue addresses for each person, and the executive chef a short rule: a person cooks only at venues of the companies named on their card.

08 / Summary

Every cook knows which kitchen is theirs

Map

Person, venue, company, checked against leases

Permits

16 for 14 people, two each for two pastry cooks

Filing

One day, decision in six working days

Candidates

Knew their employers while still in Dehradun

Handover

16 contracts, copies within 10 days, register for the group

The map does not close with the project. We agreed with the group that any change to where a foreign cook works is discussed with us first, and set out what to do in the most common cases:

• a cook moves to another company in the group: the new company obtains a permit, and the previous one applies to revoke its permit once the contract ends;
• a cook is appointed to another position in the same company: an application to amend the permit within 30 days;
• a pastry cook is needed by a third company: that company's permit first, work second;
• a venue moves to another company in the group: the map is reviewed before the move, not after.

Three companies in one group are no obstacle to hiring foreign cooks: people simply have to be matched to employers before the first application, not after the first inspection. WORKIN takes this work on from the map to the register, and every permit matches the place where the person actually works. 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: finding a replacement is not charged again, while state fees, the migration partner's services, the flight and the new worker's living costs are paid by the company. For a pastry cook that means two new permits, one from each of his companies. How permits work when staff go out to client sites is covered in the scenario on a cleaning company, and what happens when a worker wants to move to another employer in the scenario on the neighbouring plant. How cooks are assessed at a distance is described in the scenario on cooks for a hotel chain, and D visa packs for a group from India in the scenario on a construction crew. What each company is responsible for is set out on the page on employer duties, and the document itself on the work permit page. More on the pages on workers for restaurants and hotels, workers from India and migration support.

09 / FAQ

Questions and answers