3 Administrative Onboarding Tasks You Must Do When You Hire Someone New

The recruiting process is over (hooray!). You’ve extended a job offer to a candidate who has happily accepted. Although you may be tired from the long process of interviewing, your work’s not over yet. Onboarding a new employee includes a number of things like:

• Welcoming them and helping them get acclimated
• Introducing them to the team
• Giving them a tour of the office (unless they’re remote)
• Setting up their workspace
• Inviting them to a new hire orientation

These tasks are quite important for your new employee and existing team. But here’s the thing about them—they’re pretty fun, right? Most employers and hiring managers look forward to welcoming employees into the fold.

But there’s something else you have to do to cross your t’s and dot your i’s to make sure you’re compliant. I’m talking about the administrative tasks you must do after you hire a new employee. And to do those efficiently (and without going insane), you may benefit from having a standard procedure you follow. With my 30+ years of experience as an entrepreneur, I’ve put together a little cheat sheet to help you avoid shirking key employer responsibilities.

Don’t shirk these onboarding tasks after hiring an employee

Administrative work is one part of onboarding a new employee that’s a little less fun. But, this behind-the-scenes work keeps your business—and payroll process—legal and running like clockwork.

1. Collect new hire paperwork

Before a new employee can start working for you, you must distribute some federal, state, and business-related forms for them to fill out. You need this information to confirm the employee’s employment eligibility, accurately run payroll, pay them via direct deposit, gather benefit info, and make sure they agree to your business policies.

Here are the new hire forms I’m talking about:

• Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification
• Form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Certificate
• State W-4 forms
• Employee handbook acknowledgement form
• Direct deposit form
• Benefits (e.g., retirement plan, health insurance, etc.) forms

You can either ask new hires to fill out these forms before or on their first day. Just make sure they are aware of all the documents (e.g., passport for Form I-9) they need to show you.

After you collect said forms, do you send them anywhere? Nope. These forms are for your business records, not to file with federal or state agencies. But even though nobody’s looking over your shoulder at this moment, collecting them and keeping them in your records is pretty darn important for compliance and accurate payroll.

2. Report the employee to your state

All states require new hire reporting. Most of this can be done online in just a matter of seconds. Reporting new employees to your state keeps a number of things running smoothly, including:

• Child support
• Unemployment insurance
• Workers’ compensation
• Welfare assistance

What does new hire reporting have to do with things like child support and unemployment? Notifying your state of an employee working for you helps them detect fraud relating to unemployment insurance and workers’ comp claims, stop unlawful welfare assistance, and collect child support from parents who change jobs.

Remember to report the employee to the state where they work. Under federal law, you must report new employees within 20 days of hire. But, your state’s new hire reporting time frame may be even shorter, so be sure to verify. Also, check with your state to see what kind of options they have for submitting the new hire info, like via website, email, etc.

3. Add the employee to your payroll

Last but not least, you need to add the employee to your payroll. You want them to get paid, after all (something they very much want, too). New employers: don’t forget to register for your state accounts.

More articles from AllBusiness.com:

• 7 Startup Lessons From Successful Small Business Owners
• How to Hire Administrative Support Staff
• 5 Steps to Successfully Onboarding New Employees
• 10 Remote Employee Onboarding Tips to Help New Hires Succeed
• Starting a New Business? Embrace the Outsourcing of Everything

Onboarding administrative tasks under control. Now what?

Congratulations—getting the administrative tasks done and out of the way is great. Now, you can turn your attention to training your new employees. And let me tell you, effectively training and welcoming your new hire is a key part of retention.

New hires crave:

• Training
• Strong communication
• Clarity
• Recognition

After all that work distributing paperwork, reporting, updating payroll, etc., you want new hires to be around for a while. Not just three months (which is when one-third of new employees quit, FYI).

Don’t let your new hires become part of this statistic—get your administrative tasks done, effectively train, and do what you can to make new hires feel welcomed and confident in their new roles.

If you’re successful, you’ll not only get a metaphorical mug that says World’s Best Boss, you may also enjoy higher retention rates (and spend less time repeating these cumbersome tasks due to high turnover!)

RELATED: Employee Rights and Labor Laws Every Employer Needs to Know