The most common problem is not hiring without a permit
In companies with several foreign employees, the problem is almost never that someone was hired without a permit. Most companies do not do that.
The problem is working outside the conditions stated in an existing permit. An employee is promoted, moved to cover another department, posted to another factory, or transferred to an affiliated company. Everything is done correctly in the company's internal systems: there is an appointment letter, an approval record, a salary adjustment. The only thing that does not follow is the work authorisation document.
The structural cause is that HR treats these changes as internal matters it can decide for itself. For Thai employees that is true. For foreign employees, the position, the employer and the work location are the boundaries within which the state permits them to work, not personnel data.
This guide is split off from the HR guide to applying for and renewing a work permit because it is a topic that takes up its own space, and one that companies tend to raise only after something has gone wrong.
Disclaimer: This document is general information for planning, not legal advice. Procedures and timeframes differ according to the channel used and the type of business. Please confirm against the facts of your case before acting.
Three things tied to the permit
The employer — the permit is issued for work with the named legal entity, not for a group of companies.
The position and nature of the work — what was filed is the permitted scope of work, not a marketing title.
The work location — the places stated, not everywhere the company has operations.
All three can be changed, but by taking action, not by an internal decision, and in many cases the action must be taken before the change actually takes effect.
Common cases and what to do
Promotion within the same company
The question to answer is whether the nature of the work has changed from what was filed, not whether the job title has changed.
A section head who becomes manager of the same department, doing the same kind of work, is different from an engineer who moves to become a sales manager. The simplest check is to put the new job description next to the one that was filed and read them side by side. If an outsider would say they are different jobs, action is needed.
Moving to an affiliated company
Within the organisation this is a departmental move. On paper it is a change of employer, because the employing legal entity changes, even if the shareholders are the same and the offices are in the same building.
This must be handled as a new matter, not an amendment of details, and there is a point to watch: the gap between the end of employment with the old employer and the start with the new one, which affects both the work permit and the permission to stay in the Kingdom. Planning ahead keeps this gap as short as it can be.
Adding a work location
Typical situations are a company opening a second factory, renting a warehouse in another province, or sending employees to work at client sites from time to time.
The most economical advice is to state the work locations broadly at the first filing, including places the employee may be expected to go. Allowing for them from the start costs far less than filing to add them later, and it removes the problem of deciding case by case whether two days at a client site needs a filing.
Employee resigns
The duty to report the end of employment belongs to the employer, has a deadline, and is a separate matter from what the employee must do to sort out their own status.
A company that thinks the matter is over once the employee has resigned often finds it is not, when it is inspected later, because the items still outstanding in the system belong to the company, not to the person who has left.
Merger, name change or relocation of the company
This affects every foreign employee at once, and is work that should be in the transaction plan from the start, not discovered after the registration of the change is complete.
In an acquisition, this is an item that should also be in due diligence. A buyer taking over a company with many foreign employees is taking over the burden of those people's paperwork as well.
If it has already happened
The typical pattern is a company that realises at renewal time that an employee has been working in a position that does not match the documents for a year.
What not to do is file a new application over the top without assessing the position, because an application that contradicts what appears in the earlier documents can turn a manageable matter into one that has to be explained.
The right order is to assess first what evidence there is for the past period, how long it lasted, and how many changes there were, and then choose the way of handling it that has the least impact. This depends too heavily on the facts of each case for a ready-made answer.
The lowest-cost prevention
Tie position-change approvals to a document-status check — add one step to the internal approval form: ask whether this employee is a foreign national. If so, send the matter to the person in charge of documents to check before it takes effect. This step takes a few minutes and prevents almost every case in this guide.
Keep a register of foreign employees separate from the general staff register — with columns for the employer per the documents, the position per the documents, the work location per the documents, and the expiry date of each set. Someone must be responsible for this register, with a backup.
Cross-check twice a year — lay the register of what the documents say against the real organisation chart. Any mismatch shows up immediately, and while it can still be fixed.
Related services
We handle both case-by-case matters and the ongoing maintenance of a company's foreign employee register, including cross-checking documents against the real organisation chart before each renewal round. See visa and work permit services for employers, and if you want to review the whole employment system at the same time, see labour law compliance review or read the guide to a labour law health check for your company.
If your company has just discovered documents that do not match reality, call 092-254-2045 for an assessment before doing anything.
