Renewing Business Sponsorships using Training Benchmarks
It is crucial to maintain Business Sponsorship status for businesses wanting to preserve their visa program under the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP). Sustaining the DIBP’s training benchmarks and retaining supporting documentation for each year of recent sponsorship approval can be challenging but Workforce Education can assist.
What are the training benchmarks?
Businesses operating for 12 months or more must meet Training Benchmark A or B to be granted sponsorship status by the DIBP. Businesses operating for less than 12 months must show their plan to meet benchmarks.
Training Benchmark A
Calculated by reviewing 2% of payroll expenditure where a business makes a contribution to a training fund.
Workforce Education only provides Training Benchmark B.
Training Benchmark B
Training Benchmark B is calculated by reviewing 1% of payroll expenditure to demonstrate direct training of staff who are Australian citizens or permanent residents.
An approved business sponsor must continue to meet their benchmark for three years post-approval (or six years if they have Accredited Status). They must keep records of training expenditure for monitoring purposes by the DIBP or for renewing or varying the terms of sponsorship or nominating a subclass 457 visa holder under the Temporary Residence Transition Stream of the Permanent Employer Sponsored program.
To become a business sponsor, a business must have operated for more than 12 months and have a payroll (i.e. wages, remuneration, salary, commission, bonus, allowances, superannuation, termination payments). The payroll amount must be used to determine the figure required to meet Training Benchmark B.
