Hiring professionals for the UK businesses in 2025: Should you choose a Global Business Mobility senior or specialist worker?

The Global Business Mobility Senior or Specialist Worker visa is ideal if you want to bring a foreign worker into the UK to work in your branch in the country. The visa is most suited to highly skilled workers or those in leadership roles.

This post covers the central advantages of the Global Business Mobility Senior or Specialist Worker visa, alongside its drawbacks that may require your business to consider alternative options. It then introduces you to the challenging and rigorous application process and why getting assistance from immigration lawyers and advisers may be essential.

The Advantages of a Global Business Mobility Senior or Specialist Worker Visa

Senior or Specialist Worker visas allow you to bring foreign nationals into the UK so that they can work in a UK branch of your non-UK business. This visa is ideal for your most valuable staff members, including senior management and specialists.

A great strength of this visa is its lengthy eligibility periods. A Global Business Mobility visa senior or specialist worker lasts the shorter of the time given on the worker’s certificate of sponsorship + 14 days or five years, whichever is shorter.

Some of the most skilled and highest-paid workers can extend their stay. This can be done as many times as they want, so long as they aren’t continually in the UK for too long. The limit is five years in six years for annual salaries less than £73,900. It is substantially less limiting for those earning £73,900 or more: nine in ten years.

Shortcomings of the Global Business Mobility Senior or Specialist Worker Visa

This visa is great to facilitate your best workers coming to the UK, but it is not a permanent solution. This is a non-immigrant visa intended for temporary work assignments. The holder cannot get Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK, and it is not a pathway to citizenship. Instead, it is expected they will return home after the assignment is completed. If you want your worker to become a permanent fixture in your UK branch, you will need to look into alternative visa options.

European Nationals Often Require A UK Senior or Specialist Worker Visa

In the vast majority of cases, your workers will need a valid UK work visa to contribute to your business from the UK. The major common exception will be for those on the EU Settlement Scheme. The UK Government created this scheme while the UK was leaving the European Union. It allowed nationals from EU nations, Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway who had been living in the UK on or before 31 December 2020 to remain in the country.

The deadline for this scheme was on 30 June 2021. If the individual did not successfully apply for this scheme before then, they will need a visa to work in the UK.

Another exception will be if your prospective worker has Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the UK. Designed for those who have been continuously living legally in the UK for an extended period, ILR allows the holder to live and work in the UK without time restrictions. However, it is not the same as citizenship.

Applying for a Global Business Mobility Senior or Specialist Worker Visa

If you decide that this visa is the right option to bring your talented worker into the UK, you will need to begin the application process. Before your worker can apply for the visa, you will need to assign them a certificate of sponsorship, requiring your business to have a sponsor licence. This document affirms that your business is sponsoring the worker to come to the UK.

Your worker can then apply for the visa online. They will need to submit a completed application form and provide supporting documentation, including their unique certificate of sponsorship number, through the Home Office website. The application will be sent off once they have paid the application fee. The fee will be £769 for a three-year visa or £1519 for a longer eligibility period. You will need to come to an agreement with the worker on who will cover this fee.

The application then moves into the biometric phase. Your worker will need to submit their biometric information through the UK Immigration: ID Check app or by attending a biometric appointment at a visa application centre.

After submitting biometric information, Home Office authorities will check the application. You can expect a decision within three to eight weeks, although the wait time can be significantly longer if there is a Home Office backlog or issues with the application. If the visa application is accepted, the worker can travel to the UK immediately.

How Can IAS Help?

IAS can help with Global Business Mobility Senior or Specialist Worker visas in two ways. Firstly, the team’s corporate lawyers can help your business’s UK branch obtain a sponsor licence so that it can give certificates of sponsorship. Our advisers can also guide you through the whole sponsorship process for UK visas.

You can also hire IAS’s immigration lawyers to guide your worker through the application process. This includes ensuring the visa is right for their circumstances, bringing together their documentation, and submitting the final application. They can help regardless of whether the worker is applying from outside the UK or switching from a different visa if they are already in the UK.