Most employers call about an LMIA when it is already too late.

Not because they were careless. Because nothing told them it should have started months ago.

Too late.

An LMIA is decided months before it is filed. By the time you are filling in forms, the outcome is largely set.

The usual way

React

Weeks

Notice the expiry. Rush the recruitment. File late. Hope.

How we work

Plan

Months

Know the start date long before the expiry date matters. File with the evidence already complete.

The cycle

Five steps, then it begins again.

One

Establish the workforce need

Which roles the business genuinely cannot fill locally, how many people each one needs, and when. Everything after this is guesswork without it.

Two

Work backwards from every expiry date

Take the permit expiry, work back through the permit application, the decision, the submission and the recruitment period. The date you arrive at is the only one worth putting in a diary.

Three

Prioritise by what the business needs

When several positions come due at once they do not all matter equally. The most important application should never be the one that got started last.

Four

Start early and build the evidence properly

Wage validation, occupation code review, advertising, and a recruitment record assembled as it happens rather than reconstructed afterwards. This is the part that decides the outcome.

Five

Track every permit and go again

Once a worker is here the clock starts on the next renewal, and on any permanent residence pathway open to them. Nothing is filed and forgotten.

CONTENT TO CONFIRM
Specific timings, how many months before expiry each stage begins and how long recruitment must run, are deliberately absent above. Isha to supply the figures, verified against current ESDC guidance, before this page goes live. A real number is far more persuasive than the concept.
Scope

One position, or every one of them.

Same method either way. Some employers bring us a single role. Others hand over the entire foreign workforce and never think about a deadline again.

Talk to us about your workforce
How we keep track

None of this works
on a spreadsheet.

Planning backwards from dozens of expiry dates is not something a person can hold in their head. So IKIC built software that does it, and gives it to employers free.

See the IKIC TFW Control Center

Bring us your expiry dates.

Employer conversations are free. Tell us what you are working with and we will tell you which dates you are already behind on.

Talk to us about your workforce