# Onboarding

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

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.

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## 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.