Remove the need to collect paper forms from your team members with new hire onboarding. Using this feature, team members can enter some of their details before they start their employment.

In this article, you will learn:

Onboarding new hire allows you to digitally collect and record vital employee information. Deputy automatically requests the following:

• Personal & emergency contact details
• Bank (payment deposit) information
• Employment eligibility (I9)
• Federal tax withholding (W4)
• State tax withholding (varies)

You can then set up:

• Documents you ask them to provide as part of their employment
• Documents you ask them to electronically sign such as employee contracts or company information documents as part of their employment process
• Custom questions that are specific to your business

Sending a request to your employee to complete their onboarding process will send out an SMS and an email to the specified destinations. You will not be charged for the outbound SMS containing the invitation link.

Once the employee has completed the onboarding process the manager will be sent an email to notify them to review the documents and also the employee will be invited to set up their password to access your organisation on Deputy.

Team members will not be recommended by Deputy to be scheduled on shifts until they have submitted their onboarding forms. Managers will receive a warning during scheduling if they select a team member for a shift who has not completed their onboarding forms yet but are able to override this warning if required.

Before you can onboard a new hire you will need to go through a series of steps to set up your organisation for onboarding. You will only need to do this the first time and then it will be set up for all subsequent new hires.

The steps involve:

• Entering your business number (EIN) and state code in your location address
• Specifying which documents you will be asking new hires to upload eg. Birth certificate, driver's License, etc.
• Setting up templates that will be sent to new hires asking them to sign electronically.
• Setting up custom questions.

Accessing onboarding

There are two ways System Administrators and Location Managers can access onboarding in Deputy:

1. Add People on the People tab

On the People tab click Add people then select Onboard new hire.

2. Side navigation menu on the People tab

If you have used Deputy Hire to recruit the team member you can onboard them directly from there. On the People tab, select Applicants from the left-hand side navigation menu. Can't see this menu? 

Click on the team member you wish to onboard.

Click on Hire or Hired in the Move to drop-down menu.

Click on Onboard team member.

Once you have set up onboarding and accessed onboarding then you are ready to onboard a new hire.

Tip: Ensure you have finished setting up any templates or adding any questions you might need before you begin to enter the new hire's details. If you need to navigate away to reconfigure the settings during the onboarding process you will need to reenter any new hire contact details when you return to the Onboard Team member screen.

Note: the manager who initiates the onboarding of the new hire is the one who will receive the email notifying them that the onboarding form has been submitted.

1. Enter the following mandatory details about your new employee:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• Mobile (cell) phone number*
• The name of the main location they will be working at
• The Deputy access permission level you would like to assign.

* Note: check the phone number you enter very carefully! If you enter the wrong phone number when onboarding, you can't just update the phone number in Deputy and resend. You will need to delete the onboarding request and start again.

2. If you need your team member to sign a template document you have uploaded previously, click on Add from list of templates, search for the document you wish to add and click on the name of the document to add it.

4. If the document template has customised fields set up then you will be asked to complete these fields to send the documents to the new hire. Your answers will be populated in the custom fields of the document template when the document is sent.

5. Tick the checkboxes to select any documents for the list that you require the new hire to upload. If the document you require is not on the list you can add it as a new document type.

You will be notified by email when they have completed onboarding and the employee will then automatically be sent an invite to download the Deputy mobile app and join your organisation on Deputy.

Note: if you accidentally entered the wrong email address for your employee when you first sent the onboarding invite, you can update it later and resend the onboarding invitation to the new one. Read more in FAQs.

If your employee is already in Deputy but you’d like them to complete the onboarding process and upload documents you can still do this.

1. Click on their name from the list of team members on the People page then select Onboarding Forms from the menu on the left-hand side. Click on Onboard Team member.

2. Enter the email and mobile phone number of your employee, and follow the steps as described in How to onboard a new hire and click on Onboard team member.

The employee will be sent both an email and SMS with a link for them to complete onboarding and you will be notified when they complete it.

Once you have sent the onboarding invitation to your new hire, you can see the onboarding status within the People tab, underneath the team member's name.

The status will move through:

• Onboarding sent
• Onboarding in progress
• Approve onboarding
• Onboarding completed

as the team member actions the onboarding request and the manager approves it.

You will be able to filter for each of the onboarding statuses in the People tab to quickly see who’s been sent an onboarding invitation, which onboarding needs to be reviewed and who has been approved.

The manager who sent the onboarding request will receive an email letting them know when the new hire has completed their onboarding forms.

1. To review the information your employee has completed or document uploaded, either click on the Review and approve link in the notification email or else click on their name in the People tab as shown below. Note: this list has been filtered to show only team member's requiring onboarding approval 

2. Click Onboarding form from the list on the left-hand side and scroll down the right-hand side to review the information that has been submitted as part of onboarding.

3. Click on Documents from the list on the left-hand side to review any documents that have been submitted by the new hire.

Click on the document title to review it or click on the download icon to the right and download it to your computer. You can download each document individually or if you have multiple documents you can select them all using the checkbox selection and click Download to download them to your computer as a zip file.

Note:

• Documents stored on Deputy will be available whilst you maintain an active subscription to a Deputy plan. If you are required to store certain records for a specified amount of time to comply with any legislation then it is recommended that you download and store documents in your own document management system.
• A team member's documents will be stored with their profile in Deputy if the team member is archived, however, if the team member is deleted then their documents will also be deleted.

4. If you are happy with both the onboarding forms and documents submitted, go ahead and begin the approval process by clicking Review and approve in the Onboarding form menu.

Note: You can also print the onboarding form to PDF by clicking on the printer icon.

5. Please check all the Employment eligibility (I-9) information the new hire has entered.

Depending on which Citizenship/ Immigration status the new hire has selected, there will be identification documents to verify. The new hire will have received an email reminded them which documents that indicated they would bring on their first day of work.

Please complete any requested fields related to the identity documents that you are verifying such as Issuing authority, Document number or Expiry date. Once you have entered the information and examined the documents please click Verify identification documents.

Note: if your new hire brings different identity documents to their first day of work than those they nominated in their onboarding form you can click Update and select the applicable documentation you will be reviewing to verify employment eligibility.

Note: There is a check box to select if you used an alternative procedure authorized by DHS to examine documents.

6. Once you have reviewed the employment eligibility documentation, read the attestation provided and sign your signature in the box provided, then click Verify documents.

Have you noticed some entered information is incorrect and you want the new hire to amend and re-submit?

7. Review the Federal Tax Form (W-4) information that the new hire has entered and check the information prefilled in the first date of employment and company details fields are correct. Then click Verify details.

Have you noticed some entered information is incorrect and you want the new hire to amend and re-submit?

8. If relevant to the state that your new hire will be working in, there will be an appropriate state tax form to review and approve. In the example below, a state tax form for California is displayed however you can click here to see more information on the various state tax forms that will be available.

In this particular example, there is a field to enter your Employer payroll tax account number.

When you are happy with the details entered click Verify details.

Once approved, your team member will receive a copy of any documents they signed.

How to request changes to a submitted onboarding form

While reviewing the submitted onboarding form, if you notice that there is something not correct with what the employee has supplied, you can click Request changes on the top right of the Onboarding forms screen. You will be asked to type a short message to explain to the new hire what you would like them to correct or resubmit.

Your new hire will receive an email with your message asking them to make the requested changes. They can click on a click to access their onboarding form and make the required changes and submit the form again.

How to resend onboarding requests or delete requested documents for an onboarding form request

If a manager has sent a team member an onboarding form and then later realises they have requested the wrong form to be signed or documents to be uploaded, the team member may find they are unable to complete the onboarding form. To correct this, managers can resend the onboarding link and select the correct template or remove the incorrectly requested documents so that the team member is able to complete the onboarding form and submit it.

Note: The Resend link button only appears once the invitation has been sent and the team member has not yet submitted it. If your team member has already submitted the onboarding form and you realise you need to make amendments you can click Reset onboarding.

To resend a link for onboarding to a team member with amended templates or document requirements:

1. On the People tab, go to the Onboarding form in an employee’s profile

2. Click Resend link

3. A popup will appear where you can make changes to templates and requested documents.

You can:

• click Add from a list of templates for any documents that need signing,
• click Remove for any documents no longer needed,
• add a comment if required

and then click Resend.

Note: If you don't need to make any changes but just want to prompt the team members to complete the form you can leave all options the same and just click Resend.

An email will be sent to your employee to access the link to the onboarding form again.

How to reset or delete an onboarding request that has been sent

• wrong documents were requested/sent
• incorrect email or mobile number was entered (Note: if you enter the wrong phone number when onboarding, you can't just update the phone number in Deputy and resend. You need to delete the onboarding request and start again)
• accidentally sent an onboarding invite
• no longer want to store the data/documents in Deputy
• issues with the onboarding form which requires the updated version to be sent

Reset onboarding

Resetting onboarding will delete any existing onboarding data and documents that have been collected during onboarding and managers will be able to resend a new onboarding invite (with documents).

1. On the People tab, select the employee you wish to reset onboarding for.

2. Select Onboarding form from the menu on the left-hand side and then click on the ... button on the top right side of the screen and select Reset onboarding.

A pop up will appear where you can select the documents you need to be signed or uploaded and a new link will be sent to the team member to start onboarding again.

Delete onboarding

Deleting an onboarding request will delete any existing data and documents.

1. On the People tab, select the employee you wish to reset onboarding for.

2. Select Onboarding form from the menu on the left-hand side and then click on the ... button on the top right side of the screen and select Delete.

Watch a video on HR onboarding and documents

You may also be interested in:

• How to set up new hire onboarding
• For employees: How to complete your onboarding
• Export onboarding data as a CSV
• Pricing for new hire onboarding
• Adding employees