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Employee Onboarding Pack Template

Every form, statement and acknowledgement a new starter needs — assembled once, reused for every hire.

Why a pack beats a pile of forms

Onboarding paperwork is one of those jobs that's trivial when systemised and chaotic when improvised. Miss the super choice form and you're scrambling before the first pay run; forget the Fair Work Information Statement and you've breached a legal requirement on day one. A standing onboarding pack — assembled once, version-controlled, reused for every hire — turns a two-week email chase into a one-day checklist. It's also the first impression your new hire gets of how the business runs.

What the pack must contain

1. The signed employment contract

Issued and returned before the start date. Use the right variant for the engagement type — see our full-time contract template as the starting point — with the position description attached.

2. Tax file number declaration

The ATO's TFN declaration, now typically completed through your payroll software or the employee's myGov account. Follow the ATO's current process; payroll can't be set up correctly without it.

3. Superannuation choice and stapled super fund check

Offer the choice of fund form, and if the employee doesn't nominate one, request their stapled fund from the ATO before defaulting them into yours — paying the wrong fund is a genuine compliance problem, not a paperwork quibble. The ATO sets out the exact sequence.

4. Fair Work Information Statement — and the CEIS for casuals

Every new employee must receive the Fair Work Information Statement, and every new casual must also receive the Casual Employment Information Statement. Both are published by the Fair Work Ombudsman; always link or attach the current versions rather than a saved copy that quietly goes stale. Record the date each was provided.

5. Bank, emergency contact and personal details form

Payment details, emergency contacts, and any details payroll and rostering need. Collect once, in one form — new starters notice when they're asked for the same information three times.

6. Policy acknowledgements

Code of conduct, workplace health and safety, IT and acceptable use, privacy, and social media as relevant. Have the employee acknowledge each in writing (a checklist page with signatures works fine), and keep the acknowledgement with their record — it's what makes a policy enforceable in practice.

7. Role and week-one essentials

Position description, reporting lines, a first-week schedule, systems access list, and who to ask for what. Not legally required — just the difference between a hire who's productive in week one and one who's still guessing in week four.

How to use the template

  • Assemble the master pack once, with placeholders for name, role, award classification and start date.
  • Keep a per-hire checklist on top: each document, who sends it, when it's due back, and where the signed copy is filed.
  • Send the pack with the offer, not on day one — the goal is that the first morning is about the job, not the paperwork.
  • Diarise an annual review of the whole pack, refreshing statement versions from the Fair Work Ombudsman and forms from the ATO.

Signs your onboarding needs this

  • Payroll setup regularly waits on missing forms after the start date.
  • Nobody can say for certain which policies a given employee has acknowledged.
  • Every hire is onboarded slightly differently depending on who ran it.

Onboarding touches tax, super and employment law at once, so treat this as a general framework and check the current requirements with the ATO and Fair Work Ombudsman when you build your version. Onboarding is also one of the easiest processes to systemise end-to-end — a good first candidate if you're working through how to systemise your business.