Perth Chapter Meeting on the 15th August 2017  was titled “ Navigating the New Work Visa Regime: Insights from Industry” and hosted by Deloitte.

We’ve all had some time to process the significant changes announced in April so in this session, we want to go beyond the technical and get into the practical.

The panel discussion focused the ‘real-world’-side of the immigration changes. Additionally, since the last session there have been another round of announcements regarding the skilled occupations list, a brief technical update from the Deloitte immigration advisory team was delivered (see slide deck for more detail). 

The panellists were: 

• Sasha Grimm, Director Immigration at Deloitte
• Barbara Legaspi, Specialist Reward and Capability at South32
• Rebecca Logan, Global Remuneration and Policy Manager at Woodside

And the main focus of the discussion was:

1. Going forward, how is your, or your clients’ approach to mobility changing?
2. What internal challenges (e.g. stakeholder management) are you or your clients facing?

As most of the discussion was conducted around round tables, the content was difficult to capture but issues similar to those raised in other chapters were discussed. 

The requirement to educate the business -  not that easy to bring people here anymore, more time consuming in terms of visa processing time, etc. Additionally the following came up:

• Review of population of expats, dealing first with the critical cases impacted by the changes.
• As a result of the heavy impact of the changes on the workforces, companies have been proactive in providing feedback to the government and lobby groups and to their employees.
• A key area of development was ensuring the Global Mobility Teams had the relevant technical knowledge to help advise the business and employers.
• Age limits for permanent residency will impact the attraction of senior people.
• Clients were already concerned about getting the right skill set into Australia now even more difficulty.
• Some tricky issues to work through with the talent acquisition team but have found ways to get to the right outcome in most cases.
• The issue of labour market testing was raised and how it was being handled by different organisations.
• Reassessment of recruit and training strategies.

Want to know more about the Perth Chapter Meeting or receive updates on future events? Please email Aysegul Kayahan