Pre-Checklist in Onboarding New Staff

by Lily Jane Horn HR Specialist and Blogger

Locating suitable staff to recruit into your business can be challenging. Once the hard work is done to find new staff, it’s then important to consider you process for recruitment of new staff to ensure you meet your legal obligations under workplace laws.

This article examines the various compliance requirements that an employer must adhere to when they are onboarding new staff.

So, you have found a great candidate to work for your business, but what steps do you need to take to prepare for their arrival in your business?

There are actions which you must take from a legal perspective and there are also a number of best practice measures that we recommend you implement from the start.

Pre-Start date:

The foundation for most offers of employment is a vacancy in the business. In order to place an advert for the vacancy it follows that a description of the position has been thought about and written out. It is recommended that these details be fleshed out into a job description. A job description is extremely useful for both the employer and the employee as it sets out the parameters of work that are expected of the employee. When it comes to recognising good performance or addressing poor performance, reference should made back to the content of the job description to ensure that an assessment of performance is fair and reasonable.

A candidate is unlikely to accept an offer of employment without being aware of the main terms and conditions. Much of the vital compliance focus relates to payment of wages or salary. When it comes to determining an hourly rate of pay or salary for an employee, you must first identify the status of the employee.

Employment Status:

An employee can be engaged either as permanent full time, permanent part time or casual. There are distinct differences between a permanent employee and a casual employee, and it is vital that the correct status is allocated to the employee from the start when you are onboarding new staff.

A permanent employee is either a full time or part time employee. Full time employees work 38 hours per week and accrue annual leave and sick & carers leave (now known as personal leave). Part time employees work less than 38 hours per week, have reasonably predictable hours of work, and also accrue annual leave and personal leave entitlements. A typical permanent part time employee would work say, 15 hours a week every week and generally on the same shift or day each week, such as 5 hours each on a Monday, Wednesday and Saturday every week.

Permanent employees are entitled to receive notice of termination and redundancy payments, where applicable.

Casual employees, however, are effectively terminated at the end of each shift and can be rostered to work a variable and flexible shift pattern, varying for example, from 5 hours one week to 40 hours the next. The important difference between a casual employee and a permanent employee is that casual employees are not entitled to paid annual leave or personal leave. This means if they don’t turn up to their shift, they do not get paid. To compensate casual employees for their casual employment status, they are paid a casual loading, which generally means they get roughly 25% more than a permanent employee performing an equivalent role. Furthermore, a casual employee is not entitled to receive notice of termination of their employment.

It is important to get the classification of an employee correct from the start so that the appropriate rate of pay is allocated to the employee when onboarding new staff. This means for a casual employee that the appropriate loading is paid on their ordinary hourly rate and for a permanent employee that annual leave is calculated and accrued on all hours worked from the start of their employment.