An employee onboarding packet is the documents a new hire receives and signs, in the order they are signed, and it is assembled once per hire from the same list. The welcome letter. The contract. The handbook with its acknowledgment page. The tax and payroll forms. The eligibility verification form. The equipment record. The first-week schedule. The thirty-day review date. The onboarding checklist on this site prints the list, and the contract tool and handbook template print the two largest documents, free and without an account.
Signed before day one
The contract and the handbook acknowledgment, returned with the tax and payroll forms and the eligibility form by the date in the welcome letter. The employee contract tool and the employee handbook template on this site print the first two; the forms are the government's.
Signed on day one
The equipment record, listing what was issued, signed by the hire; the employee ID assigned and on every page. The record that makes a missing item a conversation. The employee ID is assigned by the checklist's first line and printed on the equipment record and everything after it, so the packet is keyed from the start.
Received, not signed
The first-week schedule, the team by name, the buddy's name, the thirty-day review date. The parts of the packet that make the first week run rather than the parts that make the file complete. They are printed for the hire rather than filed for the employer, and they are the pages most often forgotten because nothing depends on them until the first morning.
The packet as a record
Every signed page against the hire with its date, exportable. HeadcountDesk Pro keeps it; the checklist and the tools print it. From the vendors' own pricing pages, cited below: Homebase lists its Essentials plan at $30 per location per month billed monthly or $24 billed annually, with unlimited employees, and a Basic plan at $0 for one location with up to 10 employees; BambooHR starts at $10 per employee per month for Core and $17 for Pro; Deputy's Core plan is $6.50 per user per month. HeadcountDesk Pro is $24 per month per location.
Questions people ask about employee onboarding packet
Paper or digital packet?
Digital for signature and record; a printed schedule for the desk if the hire wants one.
How long does a packet take to assemble?
Minutes, when the documents print from the tools with the hire's details.
Is the checklist free?
Yes, without an account.