New employees? Here’s our free onboarding checklist

Hiring and onboarding employees is a continual task for companies of all sizes, so the more you’re able to automate the process, the better. Every business has its own specific needs when choosing new team members and bringing them into the fold, but there are certain boxes that need to be checked across the board.

As you onboard new employees, keep the important 5Cs of onboarding in mind to make a great first impression that will enhance employee satisfaction and retention:

• Compliance: Ensure new employees complete all required paperwork and training per regulatory requirements. 
• Clarification: Set clear expectations for the role, including responsibilities and performance.
• Culture: Explain and emphasize what makes the company culture unique.
• Connection: Establish rapport with colleagues and others in the organization. 
• Check-ins: Provide opportunities for ongoing feedback and support.

Each of the 5 Cs help build a solid foundation for a successful onboarding and provide a fulfilling employee experience.

Good hiring and effective onboarding practices are crucial to company success for so many reasons. It costs an average of $4,683 per new hire, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) 2022 Benchmarking Talent Access report. With these costs in mind, thoughtful hiring tools and practices that enable you to select the right candidate are worth investing in. Retention begins as soon as your new team member signs on—even before they’re in the office. Almost 40% of employees who’ve been with a company for less than six months plan to leave within the next 12 months, according to a survey by software company Qualtrics. Ensuring that new hires are set up for success, and enabling a smooth transition into your workplace, will help save time, effort, and ultimately improve retention. 

Here’s our onboarding checklist of everything you need to integrate new employees successfully.

Prepare a job requisition form

A job requisition form is a template for what your future employee will be doing and how the new role will contribute to company success. As the name suggests, the requisition is a formal “request” to create a new position and provides an at-a-glance handbook for internal stakeholders to learn everything they need to know about the role. The kind of information you might find in a job requisition form includes notes like whether the position is permanent or contract, the budget for the role, and the reason for the hire. While a requisition is for an internal audience, a job description is intended for candidates. It provides an outline of the skills, knowledge, and qualifications candidates should have when applying for the role.

When it comes time to begin the process, the job requisition form is an important document in your new hire checklist. Having all that information laid out plainly will aid in your automated onboarding, where you can input pertinent details and the system does the rest, adjusting based on the type of employee. Automation also helps streamline approvals from multiple levels of stakeholders regarding details like salary and length of term.

Complete a background check

There are many reasons to complete a background check as part of your hiring and onboarding process. Global HR Research determined that 96% of employers surveyed “conduct at least one type of employment background screening.” The top reason given was safety, followed by improving the quality of hires and complying with laws and regulations. 

Adding this step to your employee onboarding checklist ensures that all the paperwork related to hiring and onboarding remains in one place. Once automated, the opportunity to e-verify important documents also provides peace of mind that the information in hand is accurate. Once you have this vital information, the true onboarding process can begin.

Send an offer letter

When all the details are squared away and you’re ready to bring your new hire on, sending an offer letter is the next step. The art of the offer letter relies on clarity and concision while setting up expectations and providing the candidate with everything they need to make their decision. 

An effective offer letter should include the following:

• Job title
• Name and role of supervisor
• Expected duties
• Salary
• Benefits
• Details relevant to your company culture, like your in-office policy

Refer back to your job requisition form, and the job description it supported, for the information most relevant to the new hire. Depending on the complexity of the hire, you might need to include information about relocation budget, or more detailed information about liability. The letter can also include some details about your company culture—a taste of what it will be like to work there. 

When your offer is accepted, the paperwork begins.

Fill out the necessary forms

New hire paperwork can take a considerable amount of time to complete. Common forms that need filling out upon hiring and onboarding include contracts, agreements, tax documents, and any legal forms relating to things like confidentiality.

Being able to digitally send, sign, and store these forms with an automated onboarding software saves back-and-forth and multiple email chains from stakeholders across the organization. HR departments need more time to work on strategic priorities, programs, and plans, so getting through necessary paperwork as quickly and efficiently as possible is integral. 

Rippling keeps all your data—from open headcount to new hires—up to date. Every step of the hiring lifecycle is connected and reduces the administrative work with one source for employee data. Changes sync across your applications, eliminating busy work and keeping every team closely aligned. Forms are connected to the candidate’s initial job application, which streamlines the process for employers to auto populate and send documents to candidates, who can make any necessary updates, sign off, and submit for processing. Once all forms are completed and received, hiring teams can move to next steps on your employee onboarding checklist. 

Onboarding checklist: Things to do before the employee’s first day

When you make new team members feel welcomed and supported, you’re developing trust and enhancing long-term employee engagement. Your efforts on day one support retention for months and years to come. Depending on the type of role, it can take anywhere from one to six months to achieve productivity in a new job, so starting off on the right foot can make a huge difference. Here are some items on the new employee onboarding checklist you can complete before their first day. To avoid manual errors and increase efficiencies, try to automate the steps in your onboarding checklist as much as possible.

Confirm payroll and health benefits enrollment

Getting all your paperwork digitally signed and stored is a great first step to ensuring all systems have what they need to begin processing your employee right away. Confirming this information in advance means day one isn’t about waiting around to complete paperwork. Rippling automatically adds the employee to payroll and invites new hires to enroll in benefits. They only see the plans for which they are eligible, making an easier experience for everyone involved.

Order and ship work computer

Depending on the role, and whether or not your new employee will be working remotely, different equipment will be required. When you onboard new hires in Rippling, you can buy or reassign devices—and then set up and ship them—as a step of the hiring flow. Automated onboarding enables you to take action, assign tasks, and track what still needs to get done before the new hire’s start date. When a new hire has their computer on their first day, they can instantly get to work. Reducing wait times in this way enhances the overall onboarding experience. 

Set up G-Suite, Slack, Microsoft 365, and other external applications

No one wants to spend their first day attempting to log into various applications they need to get started. Setting up employees with everything they need access to for their role from a centralized dashboard is simple and efficient. With app provisioning, Rippling can automatically assign applications based on the new hire’s role.

Verify I-9 information and ensure compliance

Remote I-9 verification became the norm during the pandemic—when employers could temporarily inspect work authorization documents remotely when onboarding new employees. But with more than 28% of US employees working from home or in a hybrid model, remote onboarding is here to stay. When all of your documents are digitally stored in one place, ensuring compliance by verifying tax and other government documents should be a snap.

Prepare required resources and guides

Having the employee handbook ready—even sent in advance so your new hire can get acquainted—will make it easy for you to go over company policies, rules, and regulations, as well as any compliance-related training such as health and safety. Consider including an FAQ with answers to the most common questions someone new to the organization might have.

Send a welcome email

An email message welcoming a new hire to the organization helps to confirm their decision to accept the job and will make the new team member feel valued. It can also provide important details about what they should expect on their first day. With Rippling’s workflow automator, you can automatically trigger a welcome email to send to your new hire when their start day is approaching, so they can have all the details they need to feel confident on their first day.

Schedule an orientation and team lunch

Dashboard access and management of employee portals enables you to schedule attendance at a new hire orientation at a relevant time, as well as any team bonding events like a lunch or an introduction session during the first week of employment.

Each new hire requires care and attention, so the more you’re able to automate and template the process for yourself, the more time you’ll save. The onboarding experience continues through the first month, at three months, and even the first year. Make sure that hiring managers use one-on-ones to regularly follow-up and check in about the overall employee onboarding process.

Make hiring new employees easy with Rippling

No matter the size of your company, hiring is an ongoing task that requires both expertise and efficient systems. Being able to complete and verify background checks, write and send offer letters, send, store, and sign digital documents, and complete necessary tasks prior to their first day all from one centralized location is the key to that efficiency. 

Automating tasks that can cause bottlenecks during the hiring and onboarding processes saves you and your colleagues time and your company money. It can also help to avoid instances of human error that can come from repetitive tasks, making sure that nothing gets overlooked or creates a barrier to getting the job done. If you’re looking for an HR solution to help you effortlessly onboard and manage employees, learn more about Rippling’s workforce management platform.

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.