If your construction, civil or renewables project needs skilled overseas workers but you don’t want to take on sponsorship yourself, an On-Hire Labour Agreement (OHLA) is the way to do it. TradeConnex holds an approved On-Hire Labour Agreement with the Department of Home Affairs, sponsors the worker directly, and on-hires them to your business. You get the skills on site. You never have to become a sponsor.
Why employers are hiring overseas workers at all
Local supply isn’t keeping up with demand. Infrastructure Australia projects a shortage of more than 300,000 construction and infrastructure workers by 2027, and site managers around the country are feeling it already: roles sitting open for weeks, projects running short-handed, timelines slipping because the right ticket holder isn’t available locally.
Sponsoring overseas workers is one way to close that gap, and more employers are looking at it seriously than a few years ago. The part that puts most of them off is what comes next.
The problem with sponsoring workers yourself
Becoming an approved visa sponsor is a real undertaking. It means taking on an ongoing set of obligations to the Department of Home Affairs for every worker you sponsor, on top of running your actual project. For a business that wants three electricians on site next month, not a new compliance function, that’s often the wrong trade-off. It’s also not a decision you can easily unwind once you’re partway through it, so a lot of employers who look into it seriously end up putting it in the too-hard basket and going back to a shrinking local pool instead.
This is exactly the gap an On-Hire Labour Agreement is built to close.
How an On-Hire Labour Agreement gets you there instead
Under TradeConnex’s On-Hire Labour Agreement, we hold the sponsorship, not you. TradeConnex sponsors the worker on a Subclass 482 (Skills in Demand) visa for up to four years, employs them directly (payroll, tax, superannuation and ongoing sponsorship compliance all sit with us), and on-hires them to your site. Your business gets the worker. We carry the sponsor obligations. It’s the same labour hire relationship you’d use for a local hire, just extended to overseas talent through our On-Hire Labour Agreement, and it covers every state and territory in Australia.
Which roles this actually works for
The Skills in Demand visa framework is built around a defined occupation list, and TradeConnex’s agreement covers roles within construction, civil and renewables. In general terms, that includes civil, structural, electrical and mechanical engineers, construction and project managers, surveyors, estimators, and selected trades. Which specific role qualifies, and under what conditions, is set by the occupation list itself and can change, so treat any role list as a starting point for a conversation, not a guarantee.
What TradeConnex handles, and what you don’t have to
Once a role is confirmed for sponsorship, TradeConnex runs the process: engaging the worker, handling their visa sponsorship obligations, payroll, tax and super, and mobilising them to your site. Your business briefs us on what you need, the trade, the ticket requirements, the project timeline, and we manage the rest. You’re not managing a second workforce process alongside your existing hiring; you’re briefing one labour hire partner who happens to also handle sponsorship.
That matters most on projects where you’re already stretched. A site manager chasing a deadline doesn’t have spare capacity to also become an expert in sponsorship compliance, and shouldn’t have to. The whole point of routing overseas hiring through an On-Hire Labour Agreement is that the specialist part sits with TradeConnex, not with your team.
Who this suits
This approach fits employers with a genuine, ongoing shortage in a specific trade or discipline, not a one-off vacancy. If you’ve tried the local market and the roles are still open, sponsoring through an On-Hire Labour Agreement is worth exploring alongside your usual local recruitment and our labour hire service more broadly, rather than instead of it.
Getting started
If you’ve got roles you can’t fill locally and you’ve been putting off sponsorship because of the overhead, that’s exactly the conversation worth having. Tell us what you need on site and we’ll talk through whether an On-Hire Labour Agreement fits your project.
The information in this article is general in nature and describes TradeConnex’s On-Hire Labour Agreement service. It is not immigration, migration or legal advice. Visa requirements, occupation lists, income thresholds and processing times are set by the Australian Department of Home Affairs, change regularly, and depend on your circumstances. For advice about your situation, speak to the TradeConnex team or a registered migration agent, and confirm current requirements at homeaffairs.gov.au.
