Discover the importance of Annaizu Compliance Management in today's business landscape and how a Home Office compliance management platform can help your business streamline its compliance efforts, reduce risks, and stay ahead of regulations.
A right to work share code is a 9-character code that lets you verify someone's permission to work in the UK online, without seeing a physical document. The applicant generates it through the UK government's “prove your right to work” service, and you enter it — along with their date of birth — at the Home Office's employer checking service to see their current status.
Share codes apply to anyone whose immigration status is held digitally rather than on a physical document: eVisa holders, most visa holders, and people with settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme. British and Irish citizens still use a passport or other approved document instead.
How to check a share code, step by step
- Ask the candidate for their share code and date of birth before their first day.
- Go to the View a job applicant's right to work details service on GOV.UK.
- Enter the code and date of birth. The result shows a photo, the type of permission held, and any work restrictions (for example, a maximum number of hours for students).
- Save a copy of the result — as a PDF or screenshot with the date visible — in the employee's file. This is what establishes your statutory excuse if the Home Office later reviews the check.
Share codes expire — check the date, not just the code
A share code is valid for 90 days from the date it's generated, not from the date of the check. If a candidate gives you a code that's already expired, ask them to generate a new one — an expired code returns no result, which is different from a negative right-to-work result and shouldn't be treated as a compliance failure on their part.
When there's no share code to check
Not every hire produces a share code, and treating “no code” as automatically suspicious is a common mistake. British and Irish citizens don't hold digital status and instead prove their right to work with a passport or, since the introduction of certified Identity Service Providers (IDSPs), through a digital identity check that verifies the document using facial matching technology rather than a manual look at the physical passport. Someone with an older, non-digital immigration document may still fall under the manual List A or List B checking process rather than the online service. Before assuming a candidate has done something wrong, check which route actually applies to their document type — the prove your right to work guidance sets out which category covers which document.
Timing: the check has to happen before day one
A right to work check only gives you a statutory excuse if it's carried out before the person starts work — not on their first morning, and not retrospectively once someone flags that it was missed. A check done after employment has already begun doesn't retroactively cover the period before it, which matters if the Home Office later asks when the check took place relative to the start date. Build the check into your offer-to-start workflow rather than your first-day paperwork, and don't let a delayed start date quietly push the check later without anyone noticing.
When you need a repeat check
If the result shows time-limited permission, the check result itself states the date by which you need to check again. Missing that date — not the original check — is what turns a manageable admin task into a compliance gap. A calendar reminder tied to that exact date, not a general “check visas annually” policy, is what actually prevents it.
What getting it wrong actually costs you
An employer who doesn't complete a compliant check, or completes one incorrectly, loses the statutory excuse and becomes exposed to a civil penalty if the person turns out not to have the right to work — the current penalty bands are set out on GOV.UK and are worth checking directly rather than relying on a remembered figure, since they've been revised upward before. Where the employer knew or had reasonable cause to believe someone lacked the right to work, the exposure moves from civil to criminal. For sponsor licence holders, a pattern of weak right to work checking is also one of the things a Home Office compliance officer looks for during a site visit, and it can feed into a wider licence downgrade or revocation rather than staying an isolated issue — see our guide to Home Office enforcement visits for how the two connect.
Agency workers and other indirect arrangements
Who is responsible for the check changes when someone isn't employed directly. Where a worker is supplied by a genuine, separate staffing agency under a contract for services, it's usually the agency's obligation to carry out the check, not the end user's — but that only holds if the arrangement is genuinely what it claims to be. If the “agency” is really just administering payroll for workers who are functionally your employees, relying on someone else's check can leave you without a statutory excuse of your own. Get written confirmation from any labour provider that checks have been completed and evidenced, and don't treat a verbal assurance as sufficient for a sector, like care or hospitality, where agency and umbrella arrangements are common — see our guide on care worker sponsorship rules for how this plays out specifically in care settings.
Keeping the evidence
Saving the result at the time of the check is only half the job. Home Office guidance expects employers to retain that evidence for the duration of the person's employment and for a further period after it ends, so a check saved once and then lost when a laptop is replaced or a folder is reorganised doesn't hold up if it's ever requested. Store the result somewhere with a clear date stamp and controlled access, separate from general personnel files that get archived or deleted on different schedules — our secure document management approach is built around exactly this kind of long-lived, auditable evidence trail.
How Annaizu handles this
Annaizu's dashboard logs the check date and the expiry stated on the result, and flags upcoming repeat-check deadlines automatically through smart alerts, so a lapsed check shows up before it becomes a live compliance issue rather than after. Because every check is timestamped and stored centrally, a mock audit ahead of a real Home Office visit can pull the full history in minutes rather than someone reconstructing it from separate inboxes and desks.
FAQ
Can a candidate reuse the same share code for a different employer?
No — a share code is tied to the specific request that generated it and is intended for one employer's check. If someone changes jobs, they need to generate a fresh code.
What if the checking service shows “no results found”?
This usually means the code has expired, was entered incorrectly, or the date of birth doesn't match. It doesn't automatically mean the person lacks the right to work — ask them to regenerate the code before escalating.
Do I need to redo the check when someone is promoted or moves teams internally?
Not if their existing right to work is unrestricted and hasn't changed — an internal move on its own doesn't trigger a new check. It's a different matter if the move takes them into work that a time-limited or conditional status wouldn't cover, in which case the underlying permission — not just the job title — needs re-checking.
Is a screenshot of a share code sent by email or messaging app acceptable?
The code itself works the same way regardless of how it's sent, but a code you didn't watch being generated is easier for someone to alter or misrepresent than one entered directly on the GOV.UK service. Where possible, have the candidate read the code to you or enter it themselves while you're present, and always verify it against the live checking service rather than trusting an image of a result.
Related: Onboarding · DBS checks
GOV.UK references: View a job applicant's right to work details · Prove your right to work to an employer
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