At peak, NESF supported circa 350 individuals working on the construction of the two Ichthys facilities in the South Korean fabrication yards.
Our recruitment solution
The NES Fircroft South Korea office comprises expatriates and locals for an operations team, assignment support manager and assignment support officer. The client account is coordinated by a regional account manager based in Perth, who manages client contact with our client’s corporate HR and global mobility team locally, and coordinates with the wider NESF team based in Korea.
All visa requirments were managed by our local corporate entity. We provided an efficient, compliant visa solution with clear time-frames outlined for end-to-end processing.
Expatriate mobilisations and onboarding logistics pose a significant and complex area in South Korea. NES has gained significant experience in successfully managing the difficulties associated with these processes and provide a consistently compliant and on-time service.
Expatriates were supported on the following statuses: single-rotational, residential-single/couple, and residential-family.
With a local in-country presence we co-ordinate all mobilisation activities and meet the needs of individuals upon arrival with tailored plans.
We provided:
- Initial mobilisation support and face-to-face assignment briefings (where possible)
- Pre-assignment due diligence, including medicals
- Flight, air freight, and temporary accommodation arrangements (home and host country), including management of any third party vendors, maintaining quality and cost control
- Compliant assignment contract arrangements
- Post assignment requirements to close the assignment in a compliant manner
Our local orientation in South Korea includes:
- immigration registration
- local bank account set-up
- home search
- managing the set-up and ongoing requirements of long-term accommodation leases
We provided compliant payroll services, ensuring all local income taxation requirements were met
- Compliant insurance arrangements such as Workers Compensation Insurance, Wage Claim Insurance, Industrial Disaster Insurance etc.
- Processing of exemptions from South Korean statutory social security costs: national pension and national health insurance
- Compliant year-end tax reporting, and reconciliation of overall income tax and benefit in kind tax paid to the authorities/invoiced to client
- Tax compliance and reporting is conducted in conjunction with NES’s in-country accountancy partner and our client’s tax services provider. NESF has established a strong working relationship with both, leading to a better overall service provision to the contractors and end client at year-end, along with compliant reporting processes.
The results
Our solution streamlined mobilisations through leveraging our process and global resources. The team’s efforts successfully improved the safety matrix for not only the client’s current project, but also for their future work. We successfully placed nine roles within the two weeks required. Key acheivements for the client have included:
Better Safety
An incident free project (since the HSE team was onboarded)
Contract extensions
Our successful placements led to contract extensions for two key contractors: Lead HSE and HSE Advisor. They were tasked to maintain the project’s safety standards and improve the client’s own safety procedures.
Confidence
By prioritising safety, the client will now return seamlessly to the shipyard, confident in their compliance.