Onboarding

From "they said yes" to the end of the first 30 days.

The checklist

Six groups. Generate it when the owner picks someone, with owners and dates on every line.

Paperwork. Offer letter, employment agreement, the country's right-to-work and tax-withholding forms (in the US: I-9 and supporting documents, W-4 and state equivalent — substitute the local equivalents elsewhere, per Country in the ## Business context block), direct deposit, emergency contact, any policy acknowledgments, and role-specific items — a driving record consent for a driving role, certification copies where the work requires them.

Payroll and benefits. Employee record, pay rate, pay schedule, classification, tax withholding, benefits enrollment and its deadline, PTO accrual start.

Access and accounts. Email, phone, any software they need, building or shop keys, alarm code, vehicle assignment and fuel card.

Equipment. Tools, laptop or tablet, uniforms, PPE, vehicle. Ordered with enough lead time that day one is not spent waiting.

People and schedule. Who they report to, who they shadow in week one, the day-one schedule hour by hour, and introductions to everyone they will work with.

Learning. The SOPs relevant to the role, in reading order, from whatever the business already has written down. Safety and compliance training with its deadline. The first-week goal, stated concretely.

The payroll handoff

Hand to payroll-prep and Gusto with: legal name, start date, pay rate and basis, classification (employee or contractor, exempt or non-exempt), work location, and pay schedule.

Every one of those is confirmed by the owner before anything is created. Wage, classification, and start date carry legal and tax consequences, and a misclassification is expensive to unwind months later.

Never create a payroll record automatically. Show the values, get an explicit yes on each, then hand off.

Classification is not a guess. If it is genuinely unclear whether a role is employee or contractor, or exempt or non-exempt, say so and point the owner at their accountant or counsel. Getting it wrong is a real liability and this skill is not the place to decide it.

Offer letter and signatures

The offer letter states role, start date, pay, classification, reporting line, and any conditions — background check, license verification, probation period.

With DocuSign connected, route for signature. Without it, produce the DOCX and PDF and the owner sends them. Either way the owner approves the exact document and the recipient before it goes anywhere.

Do not send an offer before the owner has confirmed the numbers in it. An offer letter is a commitment, and a wrong rate in writing is a conversation nobody wants to have twice.

Day one

A bad first day is the most common cause of a hire not sticking, and it is entirely preventable. Almost always it is the same failure: their access does not work and nobody knows what they should be doing.

The day-one schedule is specific:

7:00  Ray - welcome, paperwork, walk the shop
8:00  Marcus - truck, tools, inventory
9:00  Ride along with Marcus, 3 service calls
3:00  Ray - questions, what week 1 looks like

Confirm access works the day before, not on the morning. Email, keys, alarm code, vehicle. This is the single highest-value item on the checklist.

The first 30 days

Three checkpoints, on the calendar before day one:

End of week 1. Do they have what they need? What is unclear? Cheap to fix now.

Day 14. How is the work going, from both sides. First real feedback, in both directions.

Day 30. Honest read on fit against the rubric that got them hired. The same criteria, now with evidence from actual work. This is the moment to address a mismatch, and it is the moment most SMBs skip and then regret at month six.

Closing the loop

Two things worth doing when the hire is settled:

Feed the outcome back. Which rubric criteria actually predicted performance, and which turned out not to matter. The next hire's rubric gets better for it, and that compounds.

Capture their first-weeks questions. Every question a new person had to ask is a gap in the knowledge base. Collect them into a running list for the owner — a new hire is the best SOP auditor the company will ever have, and only for about a month.