Hiring a new employee is daunting enough. After you navigate your way through the recruiting and selection process, you’re just happy to make it to the other side with a qualified hire. And you should be happy. Recruiting is not for the weak, it’s hard work. Seriously, hard work. But now that you’ve found your employee, what’s next? Well, first comes the offer, then comes the paperwork. Your new employee will need to fill out several forms to make them an official employee and for you to officially hire them. Some of those forms are mandatory, meaning that the government requires that employers have new hire fill out the forms. While others are optional, meaning that you get to fully decide what forms you want your new hires to complete. Together these forms build your new hire package. If you haven’t hired your first employee yet, that’s ok. You’re ahead of the class. Planning out your recruiting process fully, including your new hire package and onboarding process will make your life easier when you do hire employees. For those that have employees, you’ll find some good suggestions to either create a new hire package for your next hire or make changes to your current one. Ok and just more thing before we dive into the whole purpose of this post (because I know you’re thinking yes, please get on with it Amanda) I’m really only going to talk about the optional forms, the ones that you get to pick in this post. But you can find out all about the mandatory forms, plus a free training in a previous post. You can find that here: THE MANDATORY FORMS YOUR NEW HIRES MUST COMPLETE PLUS FREE TRAINING The Purpose of the New Hire PacketLet’s start with a brief chat about the purpose of the new hire package. While I’m going to provide you with some suggestions for the new hire package that I use in my own business and suggest for clients, it may not be the perfect fit for your business. You may need more or fewer forms for your business. When considering what you need to include it’s important to understand why we’re giving new hires the forms and what information you need to complete your own specific onboarding and training process for new employees. The forms that you include in the new hire package are essentially the foundation of the new hire’s employee file. A few questions to ask include:
These are all good questions to get you thinking about what you need immediately from the employee to get your hiring process started. As your business grows and develops, you can always add too and change your new hire package. But I’m going to give you a good place to start, and you can always add from there. The Basic New Hire PacketSo let’s get on to actually building this new hire package. These are the forms that I recommend to start with and use in my business as well. The new hire package will work for most small businesses. You’ll want to include: An offer letter:: You’ll want to have something in writing that explains the job that you hired the employee to perform. Disagreements on job title, starting pay, work schedule and work location can easily be resolved if you have a signed offer letter that explains all these vital details. In addition to that it’s helpful for the employee as it confirms that they actually have a job, in the event they are quitting a job to come work for you. Receipt of employee handbook acknowledgment form:: So employees may or may not read your employee handbook. It’s up to them. However, whether they read it cover to cover or not they are still expected to follow the guidelines you so carefully crafted and wrote down. To prevent the “I didn’t know” or “No one told me” they need to sign something that says they were given a handbook and they understand they will be held accountable for whatever is in it. Emergency contact form:: Few things are worse than having something happen to an employee at work and you have no idea in the world who to call to help them. You’d feel pretty bad having a sick or injured employee and not be able to contact their family. There is a way to fix that. You could have them provide you with the names and phone numbers of the people they want you to call in the event of an emergency. Direct deposit form:: Employees want to get paid. If you use direct deposit, which I really hope that you do in these modern times, a direct deposit form is a must. Job description acknowledgement form:: The line of reasoning goes along with the receipt of employee handbook acknowledgement form. You want to document that the employee was given a job description and that they understand the job they are to perform. And of course all mandatory federal and state forms:: We’re trying to stay on the good side of the government, so throw those in there too. Additional optional forms depending on your business: Uniform order form: If your employees wear uniforms, this is a good form to have on hand. This way you will know what size to order, quantity and cost to the employee. You can also include any rules that you have about uniforms or your terms of use. Payroll deduction form: This form is useful to have if employees are required to pay for their own uniforms and the employee would like to pay for these or items through their paycheck. Insurance enrollment forms: Enrollment in insurance is something most employees would like to be done promptly. So providing these forms at the time of hire helps expedite this process and decrease delays in coverage. There you have it, everything you need to build a new hire packet for your small business. Using these forms you’ll have everything you need to start their employee file and get them set up in most payroll systems. Oh and if you're building up the forms for your small business, check out our library of ready to use forms. Many of these forms are just a click of the print button away.
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