If you’re ready to hire your first employee, everything you need to do to onboard them may seem overwhelming at first. But once you break it all down, it will become easier each time you do it. Before you meet with a new hire, you want your onboarding process to run smoothly and you want all the necessary forms available. 

Take the time to prepare yourself and your business before you begin the onboarding process. 

5 Important Things to Do With New Hires | Financial Foothold #business #onboarding

What Onboarding Is and Why It’s Important to Onboard New Hires Correctly

Why is Onboarding Important

The onboarding process for new hires will save companies money on employee turnover and loss of productivity. The other reason it’s so important is that without onboarding procedures, new employees will feel disconnected from the rest of the team and may look for work somewhere else. 

Your new hires will be more engaged and feel up to speed with everyone else faster when onboarding is done correctly. This process will benefit everyone in the company whether you have a  huge business or run a small one. Proper onboarding procedures make hiring new employees easier.  

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What is Onboarding?

Onboarding is how an organization introduces new hires to the expectations, skills, knowledge, and culture of your company. This process can continue for months or even years after someone is hired.

The onboarding process is best started before the employee even starts working. Get them acquainted with your company first and feeling comfortable in your workplace. Continue nurturing your new hires so that they can become highly productive employees.

Part of the onboarding process for new hires is making sure you have all the proper forms ready and filled out before you start working with someone. You want to be sure you follow all of the legal rules that apply to you. 

These are some of the things you need to do with new hires.

1. Obtain an Employee Identification Number 

Before you hire anyone you need to set up your EIN, or Employer Identification Number. This is also known as the federal tax ID number. You use this number on tax returns and other tax-related documents.

2. Register With Your State’s Labor Department

Before you take on employees you’ll need to register with the labor department in your state.

When you have employees, you’ll be required to pay state unemployment compensation taxes. These taxes go to your state’s unemployment compensation fund. Unemployment helps those workers who lose their jobs.

3. Set Up a Payroll System to Withhold Taxes

Choose a payroll system when you start paying your employees. You’re responsible for withholding a portion of each employee’s income and sending it to the IRS. You’ll also have to make Social Security and Medicare tax payments. 

4. Have Each Employee Fill Out the IRS Form W-4, Withholding Allowance Certificate

With each new hire, you will need them to fill out a W-4 form. This tells you the number of allowances each employee is claiming for tax purposes. Then you can withhold the right amount of tax money from their paychecks. It’s a good thing to ask each employee to fill this form out once a year in case they want to make any changes.

5. Fill Out Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification For Each New Employee 

You need to fill out the USCIS, (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) form for every new hire you have. This form verifies that each employee is eligible to work in the United States. You have to keep this on record in your files for 3 years in case there is an inspection by officials from the ICE. Keep these forms in a separate I-9 folder for all employees instead of in each employee’s personal file. 


Now that you have all the forms taken care of, you can start the process of bringing on a new employee. Your new hire should know what is expected of them and what is or is not allowed in your office.

There may be other things you want to set up like benefits and an operation manual before hiring. It may seem like a lot to do before hiring someone new but it’s easy if you break down each step and do one thing at a time.

Happy hiring!