Why nominal placement fails twice

The anatomy of a nominal placement

A nominal placement has a title, a payroll entry and an organisation chart. It lacks a manager who actually assigns and reviews the work, deliverables that anyone relies on, and a reason to exist other than the status it supports. Sometimes it is designed that way. More often it drifts into being: an assignment that started as a real role but in which the client took over day-to-day direction, the salary came to be funded by someone other than the employer, and the employer's manager stopped paying attention.

How it is detected

Authorities detect nominal placements through inconsistency. Duties described in the petition that no one can explain at interview. A salary that is paid and refunded. An organisation chart in which the person reports to someone who has never met them. A worksite that is the client's, with the client giving instructions. Timesheets that do not exist. Deliverables that cannot be produced. Renewal applications that repeat the original petition word for word because nothing has happened. Each inconsistency is small; together they are decisive.

The three lines

Three lines determine whether an assignment is real: who hires and can dismiss, who pays and sets the salary, and who directs the work. When all three run through the employer, the employment is real. When any one of them runs through the client or the family, the arrangement starts to look like placement. WG's engagement structure keeps all three with the employer: clients recommend candidates but the employer hires and can decline; salary follows the employer's pay scale and is paid through its payroll without reimbursement; the employer's managers direct the work and clients set requirements and accept deliverables.

The second failure

The first failure is the authority's refusal. The second is quieter and worse: a person who spent two years in a nominal placement has built nothing. No knowledge, because no one relied on their work. No cognitive change, because they were never accountable in the foreign setting. And no durable opportunity, because the status that depended on the placement will not survive scrutiny. The family paid for mobility capital and received a title. This is why WG declines engagements in which the client requires day-to-day control: not because a rule forbids it, but because the arrangement cannot deliver what the family is buying.

Keeping an assignment real over time

• A named manager at the employer with real authority over the person's work
• Statements of work with deliverables that are accepted, and that the client would miss if they were not delivered
• Monthly evidence: timesheets, deliverables, reviews, on-site logs
• A limit on client-site working, with each visit having a purpose
• Training in proportion, as professional development
• A compliance function that can stop an assignment that has drifted