Employee Onboarding: Must-Do's and Should Do's | Unfiltered HR

Emily Martin

Welcome back to another episode of Unfiltered HR. We're proud to be here again at Mercy Flight in Cheektowaga. A great nonprofit organization that helps save lives. They provide medical transportation for emergencies, non-emergency ground and air. And they're not just about the helicopters.

Jen Strait

Just about the helicopters that you think even though there's one on my shirt, there's one behind us. But there are you know, like you said, there are there are nonprofit organizations, so they rely heavily on donors. And if you would like to find out a way to donate, just visit their website, Mercy Flight dot org. And I know that Joe will put a link right on the video and below on the blog and every which way.

Jen Strait

But if you watch some of the testimonial videos on there, I know that will absolutely tug your heartstrings and you'll want to find a way to donate. So please do.

Emily Martin

A very worthy cause that you hope you'll never need to use. But hey, when you do, they'll be there. And that reminds me something else I know, which is your payroll provider and your friendly HR provider.

Jen Strait

Look at that segue! What are we talking about today, Em?

Emily Martin

Today we're talking about, in continuation of the last episode, after you find the right fit person for your company and for your job and hire them how to properly onboard them. So bring them into your business both from a compliance standpoint, what you must do and from a value add standpoint and retention standpoint from what you should do.

Emily Martin

Kind of the theme the last few episodes and how are breaking it down. So isn't all that time and money, Jen, recruiting and hiring and selecting. So, you know, first impressions are everything, right?

Jen Strait

I agree.

Emily Martin

I think are you in a really good first impression? Okay here we are to.

Jen Strait

We are today.

Emily Martin

So yeah from both point of view is right Like you want to impress them, they want to impress you. So you should keep that in mind if they come in in the first few days and weeks, they're having a terrible experience. No one's paying attention to them. They no one supporting them. They're probably going to wonder if they made a mistake and maybe they're not going to stick around right?

Jen Strait

Yeah. You want to have a plan in place. And you know, there's a lot of options right now for employees and you want to make sure that you stand out and know that you you want them to know that you feel that they're the right choice.

Emily Martin

Yeah. And that you care about them being there and are excited and all that stuff.

Jen Strait

So there's different things that you can do with that. And obviously taking them out to lunch and having things set up because nobody wants to feel awkward, you know, you don't want to feel like the new kid at school all the time.

Emily Martin

Yeah, I would say like there's a few experiences in life that are the most, like, unsettling and uncomfortable. And I do think starting a new job is one of the most like high end ones. You know, you just abandoned something else usually to start something else. You don't know if you made the right decision, but you can't go back and it's there's a lot tied to it.

Jen Strait

Yeah. So make it fun and make it, you know.

Emily Martin

They did the right thing. Yeah.

Jen Strait

You want to do the things that you have to do? Yeah.

Emily Martin

Let's talk about that first. Yeah, let's talk about what you must do. And actually, your friends at Complete Payroll can check a lot of these boxes for you. If you don't use a sophisticated payroll system now. Or maybe you do, but you're not taking advantage of the electronic onboarding feature, that's a really simple way to streamline and one of the most burdensome administrative functions when it comes to payroll and HR

Emily Martin

So you can set that right up in the iSolved system that Complete Payroll offers. And as soon as people are hired, you can trigger an email out to them and they can sign into the system and complete all of the essential paperwork, required paperwork. But anything you add as well. Right in the system.

Jen Strait

Yeah. And what's great is you can go to the next step until you upload a picture of that license. So you're never missing anything in somebody’s folder. But again, you can capture all of that information that you want in addition. So what are your what is your T-shirt size? What are your favorite sports.

Emily Martin

Teams to as well?

Jen Strait

If you want to run reports at any time to know things about your employees and you'll have that for them. So and what's really great about the onboarding is if it's not necessarily one location, if you're have multiple locations. So it's a bird's eye view of the starting point.

Emily Martin

Because your when you first onboard someone that is the very start of their employment file, things that you need but also things that you want or would be valuable for you to have. So if you do it all inside of an electronic system and that's there where they live forever with all things document related as an employee, it's a really easy spot to just keep all that stuff and never worry about losing it or it catching on fire or.

Jen Strait

Something like that fire, or having those fun little tidbits that you keep your I-9 with your other employee folders. I mean, these are just things that you don't know.

Emily Martin

So if you aren't using the lovely Complete Payroll system and you're not ready for that yet.

Jen Strait

Turn this off right now! <laughs>

Emily Martin

Or if you if you are, we'll just go through quickly the things that you the pieces of paper and basically the things you must do when you onboard someone that is obviously complete those tax forms you should have everybody do the W-4 or federal tax form and the state tax form, which is the IT-2104. Really boring that I know that,

Emily Martin

but that's what it's called. So especially now that the tax withholdings and tax tables are different for each of those and have changed. It's a good idea to have them do both of those forms.

Jen Strait

We also just is another side that to the new tax forms we do have an “Ashley Explains...” video of how to fill out those forms and how to answer those. So Joe, I'm sure I'll link to that as well, because I've been getting a lot of questions on how to how do I have these employees fill these out because there's been a couple different ones over the past couple.

Emily Martin

Yeah. And you have to be careful as an employer and advising them like how to fill those forms out and what they should withhold and whatever it might be. So giving them some of the resources and tools that Complete Payroll has and videos and how to do that would be helpful.

Jen Strait

Just information so they can make their decision themselves. Yeah.

Emily Martin

And then the other biggie is the I-9. Jen mentioned it a minute ago, but the I-9 is a form that verifies people's eligibility to legally work in the United States. Every single employer has to do it, and you actually have to do it within three days of the person being hired. So make sure you do that. But super important form.

Emily Martin

Make sure you follow all the directions to do that, getting all their personal information, everything else that's required to process payroll, address, social, all of that, that's important as well. Direct deposit. Make sure you have them signed authorization to do direct deposit that's technically legally required. Again, all built into the lovely Complete Payroll system.

Jen Strait

You can have e-signatures and all of this stuff. And now having all these papers.

Emily Martin

Yes. And then there are other things like sexual harassment policies and different notices about different employee rights. That's where it gets a little bit more complicated. I recommend is getting an employee handbook that has all that in it. And then it's a one sign off which we can help you with as well.

Jen Strait

Please do. Please do with the handbook. We've talked about this before too. It protects your business. You're protecting yourself. And you you know, the expectations are set up right up front. And if there's ever any sort of issue, you go back to the handbook all the time.

Emily Martin

You can just lean on that baby all the time. And then the other one big thing we want to mention is wage notices also. So in New York State, you are formally required to notify people of their, you know, their wage rate and their the payroll frequency and the pay date. So make sure that that's in your onboarding packet as well, which is a part of the Complete Payroll setup.

Emily Martin

So again, those are more or less the must do things which are really just boring, essential paperwork that isn't really curating much of an experience when people come on board. So let's definitely talk about what we recommend that you do or that you should do to help improve that experience.

Jen Strait

To make make yourself stand out.

Emily Martin

So in addition to the all those required paperwork forms, also think about what you could put in there that would just be helpful for the employee to know on their first day. So things like log in, information and a job description. So they clearly know without question and to dispel any uncertainty what their job is and what their role is.

Emily Martin

Maybe a list of contacts in the organization, or it could be a list of logins for systems that they have to use so they can hit the ground running and get set up right away. You know, it's going to be customized and different for every business. But the point is to reduce uncertainty and increase clarity of expectations and really try to set the person up to hit the ground running to be effective in performing their job as soon as possible, for your sake, but also their sake.

Jen Strait

Yeah, and I think that you said it. You hit the nail on the head with the list of contacts. Because I think, again, the most unnerving thing about starting a job is you don't know anybody. If you have a list of contacts of who to go to, for one, it's just so much easier. And then you start to get back in the flow of of feeling more comfortable with that.

Jen Strait

And instead of asking all different people, who should you go for, for different things, you're going to have something right there and you already feel more comfortable.

Emily Martin

Yeah, and even better yet, kind of playing on that concept is a goal around the first day and make sure there's a tour with introductions involved at some point. So not only are people reading, you know, names on a list of contacts or on an org chart and maybe seeing a picture, if they're lucky, if you're on site or if it's possible doing those introductions so they know someone face to face and start making those connections right away.

Jen Strait

Absolutely. You want to just like anything, just pretend it's your friend at a party who doesn't know anybody, even talking. Right. Introducing, introducing everybody. And don't just think that they're going to feel comfortable. And I know that you have a lot of hands on, too, when you are running your business, but you want to give that first impression because.

Emily Martin

It's well worth the investment of that little bit of time into to make sure that person feels good. Yeah, I like the idea of thinking about work as a party. We're going to I really.

Jen Strait

I that's kind of like what it was work for me.

Emily Martin

That's how you feel? Yeah, that's how she feels. Jen's what's In a good way! You love working there! Yeah.

Jen Strait

<crosstalk>

Emily Martin

Yeah. Again. Anything else you can do to really reduce fear, uncertainty, Uncertainty. Make people really convinced they made the right decision and want to come back the next day and the next day and the next day. And then finally, Jen, one of my biggest tips is assign someone oversight of this person, or responsibility for this person. So whether you have a formal buddy system, whether it's the HR

Emily Martin

Person or you, the owner, make sure they know they have someone they can go to for their first days, weeks, maybe even months with any questions or concerns they have, and also make sure that person is constantly checking in with them as well because some people may not feel comfortable coming forward if they're having a bad time. So someone should be checking in, making sure things are going well.

Emily Martin

And, you know, the first 90 days are definitely the most important time in any employees new life cycle. It determines basically whether they're going to stay with you for any prolonged period of time. They're making all their first impressions. It's really setting up for success or failure. So having a buddy system to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks and they are properly indoctrinated into your business is a good idea.

Emily Martin

And also make sure that person is like a fun, good person and someone you want to be sharing information about your business and spreading the word.

Jen Strait

Where exactly? Because that can that can lead to other things, right? Well, we've all encountered the cranky person who's just disenchanted. So yeah, that person that you assign is technically the face of your company to this new employee. And you know who you who do you want to have the face of your company? And like you said, it's important to check in even for little things that are comfortable.

Jen Strait

If you are using the payroll software where employees have an employee self-serve like like ours, making sure that they're comfortable in that they know how to find their their paychecks are they know how to get their year to date information. They know how to request time off. They know how to send those things. And so that's very important that you're just checking in on an every aspect of the job.

Emily Martin

Life at your business and how to make it easier for them. Yeah, Yeah. But yeah, I think that's a good point, Jen. I mean, the electronic onboarding tools are definitely very useful, but they should not replace the first day onboarding experience either. I mean, there's definitely there will never be any substitute, despite what AI might be trying to convince us all of right now for human contact.

Emily Martin

And, you know, having that friendly face on the first day explaining things and reviewing paperwork and requirements and all that stuff. So definitely a valuable tool to streamline administrative functions and do just the the paperwork that needs filing, but definitely reviewing and reiterating those things in their first days is always an essential idea.

Jen Strait

And going back to the previous episode, you just spent all this time and efforts and money recruiting the right person and making sure they're the right fit, give them the good first impression as well. So you don't want to have all that time wasted and you don't not have the best first impression. Have them jump ship. Yeah, Take care of them.

Emily Martin

<crosstalk> All right, Jen. So again, onboarding what you can do to I'm going to get back on track land that hire that you spent so much time sourcing and selecting.

Jen Strait

You're not spinning your wheels. That was another one that you use.

Emily Martin

All transportation analogies. Basically, that's where we’ve now. So maybe we'll be on the runway. Yeah, you're laying the runway for a successful employment experience at your business.

Jen Strait

Well, it is. With so many of these business, you just have a blooper video of all the ones that didn't make it that didn't make the cut.

Emily Martin

Yes. But check out more resources. I'm sure there's going to be plenty of links all around to additional resources on onboarding, checklist and paperwork and how to fill it out and templates and things. So make sure you check those out. If you aren't using all that paperwork. Now.

Jen Strait

Reach out to us to help you streamline all of those processes.

Emily Martin

Is something very easy to take off your plate if you're the one doing them now. So otherwise we.

Jen Strait

All thanks for watching and thank you to Mercy Flight again for having us. This was a very cool experience and I was trying not to get distracted by all the planes just jetting by. You know, I did a good job.

Emily Martin

But now it's time for us to take off.

Jen Strait

All We'll see you later. Thanks for watching!