Available for the following plans: Lite, Plus, Unlimited HR, Essentials, Engage, Elite, Unlimited HR+Payroll
Available for the following HR classic plans: Free, Standard, Premium, Platinum
Available for the following user access levels: Admin, Manager
Employment Hero's onboarding feature is a digital tool that automates and streamlines the onboarding process when welcoming new employees to an organisation. It helps manage employee onboarding effectively, and allows new hires get up to speed quickly, integrate into the company, and become productive as soon as possible.
Employment Hero's onboarding increases efficiency of onboarding processes, improves the new-hire onboarding experience, and enhances compliance and security. Having onboarding solutions in place also creates personalised and more engaging employee onboarding experiences, ensuring new hires are set up for success. Managers can onboard employees, but only if they have the necessary permissions set through CSS Permissions. Admins can grant these permissions. See this article to learn how to set this up.
With Employment Hero, you can easily send a letter of offer and e-contract for electronic signing, eliminating the need for cumbersome paperwork and lengthy processing times. Our platform also takes care of the electronic submission of personal and tax information, saving you valuable time and reducing administrative tasks. Using the Employee Onboarding widget on your dashboard, you can track employee progress, and send reminders if needed, ensuring that the onboarding process is as smooth as possible for everyone involved.
In this guide, we will look at how to easily onboard your employees in Employment Hero, which documents you need to send to them, and how to manage onboarding. To go to the correct part of the article, click on the topic you want to learn about:
- How do I onboard my employees?
- Onboard a new employee
- Onboard an existing employee
- Adding employee details
- Contracts, documents and certifications
- Daily activities
- Onboarding with integrations
- Removing data
- Frequently asked questions
- Explore related content
How do I onboard my employees?
If you are an administrator or manager looking to onboard your employees into Employment Hero, start with this section. The Employee Onboarding widget on your dashboard streamlines the process of integrating a new employee into your organisation. You can choose to fully onboard an employee by completing all required details in one continuous flow, or opt for the quick-add method. If you are interested in automating the onboarding process, refer to this article. Additionally, if an employee chooses the Company Nominated Super Fund option during onboarding, your organisation's payroll admin will need to manually create the employee's super account.
This demo will show you the entire onboarding process. Employment Hero will guide you through the onboarding process, prompting you to add the employee's details, the employment details, the pay details and finally, to create, edit and send a contract, to complete the onboarding process.
Enhance your new employees' onboarding experience with Employment Hero's paperless onboarding process. The Employee Onboarding widget on your dashboard allows you to specify pay and allowance details, track your employees' progress through the onboarding process, and send reminders if necessary. Your employee is then taken through just a few simple steps before onboarding is complete.
For full details on onboarding employees, see Onboard a new employee. To onboard a contractor or volunteer, click + Add Worker on the People List and select the relevant worker type.
When setting up your new platform, you can invite staff members to become Early Adopters, which will allow your chosen people to explore the platform in the set-up phase with you.
Early adopters will be able to explore the platform during setup, so that all admins and early adopters can learn about the platform together. For full details, see Add Early Adopters in setup mode.
Tip
Remember, if you're currently in setup mode, emails won't be sent out. Make sure you turn off setup mode before initiating a new employee's onboarding process if you want them to receive the corresponding email notifications.
The Onboarding Checklist feature helps hiring managers manage any necessary steps to introduce new staff to the company. It allows an administrator to generate a list of tasks to be implemented during the onboarding process. They can edit, clone and delete individual tasks, as well as delete onboarding checklists. For full details, see Create, set up and trigger my onboarding checklists.
An onboarding WorkFlow allows an organisation to customise its onboarding flow so that some repetitive tasks are automatically triggered when an employee reaches a certain stage of their onboarding. For full details, see this article: Automatically create a 1:1 when a new employee is onboarded.
You can use the Onboarding Workflows feature to trigger onboarding checklists, create a Google Workspace and Microsoft account, a 1:1 or create a task once an employee finishes onboarding onto your platform. For full details, see Configure my organisation's onboarding workflows.
Onboard a new employee
Ensure you have the name and email address of your new employee.
Helpful Hint
If you choose to onboard a new employee without a contract, you can issue the contract later using the HR Documents feature. To read more about it, refer to this article.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- From the Employment Hero dashboard, find the Employee Onboarding widget.
Helpful Hint
If you cannot see the Employee Onboarding widget on your dashboard, see this article to access and sort your dashboard widgets.
- Click the Plus button to add a new employee.
- In the Basic Information page, enter the following:
- Personal email.
- First name.
- Last name.
- Click the Continue button.
- In the Employment Details page, enter the following:
-
Will this employee fill an existing vacant position?
Important
Users on the Classic Platinum and Employment Unlimited plans can choose to fill a vacant position with the employee being onboarded. Doing this will remove the vacant position from the Vacant Positions page.
- Employing entity.
- Location.
- Employee code.
- Employment type.
- Contract type.
- Employee income type.
- Start date.
- Job title.
-
Industry standard job title.
Helpful Hint
Industry standard job title is the role name that your industry most commonly uses to refer to your employee's job title.
- Probation length.
- Primary manager.
- Secondary manager.
- Teams.
-
- Select if you want to trigger onboarding checklists for the employee.
- Click the Continue button.
- In the Pay Details page, enter the following:
- Industrial Instrument.
- Classification.
- Leave allowance template.
- Date of birth.
- Anniversary date.
- Pay rate.
- Superannuation.
- Work hours.
- Pay employees their normal working hours by default.
- Ordinary work day.
- Pay category.
- Pay schedule.
-
Primary Worksite.
Helpful Hint
Once you select a Primary Worksite, the Primary Position drop-down will become available. Cost centres will automatically populate based on your worksite and position selections.
- Primary Position.
- Additional Worksites (optional).
- Cost Centre.
- Additional Cost Centres.
- Benefits.
- (for payroll classic users) Synchronise With Payroll – You can sync this employee's data to your chosen payroll platform if it is integrated with Employment Hero.
- (for Intelligent Payroll users) Do not add employee to payroll – Check this box if you do NOT want to include the employee to your pay runs and payroll.
- Click the Finish button.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- From the Employment Hero dashboard, find the Employee Onboarding widget.
Helpful Hint
If you cannot see the Employee Onboarding widget on your dashboard, see this article to access and sort your dashboard widgets.
- Click the Plus button to add a new employee.
- Click the Continue button.
- In the Employment Details page, complete all fields as described in the "Onboard an employee without a contract" steps above.
- Select if you want to trigger onboarding checklists for the employee.
- Click the Continue button.
- In the Pay Details page, complete all fields as described above.
- Click the Issue Contract button.
- Click the Actions button for the contract you need.
-
Click the Select button.
Helpful Hint
You can only send one contract during onboarding but you will get the option to upload supporting documents, such as a job description, on the next screen. Additional contracts can be issued using the HR Documents feature. See this article for more information.
- In the Draft Contract page, make the required changes to the contract.
- Click the Continue button.
- In the Finalise Document section, click the I have read and understood the disclaimer and accept the terms of use checkbox.
-
Put your signature on the Sign your signature field.
Helpful Hint
To sign, you can:
- Use your mouse to draw your signature; or
- Click the upload button to upload a photo of your signature. The recommended size for your upload is 300 x 100 pixels.
- Click the Upload document button if you want to upload additional documents, such as a job description.
- You now have three actions you can take:
- Email the document to the employee:
- Click the Email circle button.
- Review the email message you are sending to the employee.
- Click the Email document button.
- Print a copy of the document:
- Click the Hard copy circle button.
- Click the Print document button.
- Save the document as a draft:
- Click the Save As Draft button.
- Email the document to the employee:
Under the 2026 Fair Work Act (NES) amendments, Australian employers must proactively offer permanent employment to casual employees once they reach a 12-month qualifying period. Employment Hero now flags this at hire time so no employer is caught off guard.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- From the Employment Hero dashboard, find the Employee Onboarding widget.
Helpful Hint
If you cannot see the Employee Onboarding widget on your dashboard, see this article to access and sort your dashboard widgets.
- Click the Plus button to add a new employee.
- Begin the onboarding process above.
- At Employment Type, select Casual.
- Tick Regular and systematic?
- Continue with the onboarding process.
- Now you will receive an alert in the Employee File when the casual employee is approaching a 12-month qualifying period.
Onboard an returning employee
If you have a returning employee to your organisation, you will not need to create a new employee in your platform. Employment Hero recognises that the employee has an inactive account and will send the returning employee an email once you have added in their basic details to reactivate their Employment Hero account.
- Log in to Employment Hero.
- From the Employment Hero dashboard, find the Employee Onboarding widget.
Helpful Hint
If you cannot see the Employee Onboarding widget on your dashboard, see this article to access and sort your dashboard widgets.
- Click the Plus button to add a new employee.
- In the Basic Information page, enter the following:
- Personal email.
- First name.
- Last name.
- Click the Continue button.
- In the Employment Details page, enter the following:
-
Will this employee fill an existing vacant position?
Important
Users on the Classic Platinum and Employment Unlimited plans can choose to fill a vacant position with the employee being onboarded. Doing this will remove the vacant position from the Vacant Positions page.
- Employing entity.
- Location.
- Employee code.
- Employment type.
- Contract type.
- Employee income type.
- Start date.
- Job title.
-
Industry standard job title.
Helpful Hint
Industry standard job title is the role name that your industry most commonly uses to refer to your employee's job title.
- Probation length.
- Primary manager.
- Secondary manager.
- Teams.
-
- Select if you want to trigger onboarding checklists for the employee.
- Click the Continue button.
- In the Pay Details page, enter the following:
- Industrial Instrument.
- Classification.
- Leave allowance template.
- Date of birth.
- Anniversary date.
- Pay rate.
- Superannuation.
- Work hours.
- Pay employees their normal working hours by default.
- Ordinary work day.
- Pay category.
- Pay schedule.
-
Primary Worksite.
Helpful Hint
Once you select a Primary Worksite, the Primary Position drop-down will become available. Cost centres will automatically populate based on your worksite and position selections.
- Primary Position.
- Additional Worksites (optional).
- Cost Centre.
- Additional Cost Centres.
- Benefits.
- (for payroll classic users) Synchronise With Payroll – You can sync this employee's data to your chosen payroll platform if it is integrated with Employment Hero.
- (for Intelligent Payroll users) Do not add employee to payroll – Check this box if you do NOT want to include the employee to your pay runs and payroll.
- Click the Finish button.
Once you have added the returning employee's basic and employment details, they will receive an email prompting them to log into their existing Employment Hero account. They won't have to fill in their personal, tax, superannuation and bank details, they will be able to review the existing details and edit if necessary. For more information on how to onboard as an existing or returning employee, see this article.
Next steps for new employees
Once you've onboarded a new employee, it's time to welcome them to the team with Employment Hero! New employees will receive an email inviting them to Employment Hero. They will have the option to set up their account on the web or through the Employment Hero Work app. Once they've chosen, they'll be taken through the following mandatory steps to complete the setup of their account:
- Set a Password
- Sign their contract (if applicable)
- Provide their personal details
- Enter their tax information
- Confirm their work eligibility (confirming if they are an Australian or New Zealand Citizen/Permanent Resident)
- Set up their superannuation or KiwiSaver
- Upload any necessary certifications (if enabled). If the employee was sourced from the EH Recruitment experience, all candidate data will be brought across when onboarding.
- Disclose any medical conditions (if enabled)
- Explore Employment Hero and the Employment Hero Work app.
We've got you covered with all the tools you need to help new employees settle in quickly. If you'd like more information about this process, check out our helpful article.
Adding employee details
To add your employees' details, click on the accordions in this section.
The Custom Fields feature lets you customise onboarding and employee file fields, with the ability to ask a free text, single-select, or multi-select question. You can also set the user visibility, editing, and location of those questions. In addition, you can edit any information and delete a record you no longer need. For full details, see this article: Customise onboarding and employee file fields.
Contracts, documents and certifications
To send documents to your new employee, to issue their contract, filling in tax information, medical disclosures and more, read this section.
View the interactive demo at the top of this article for a walkthrough as to how to choose, edit and send a contract to a new employee.
For further information, see here: Ensure employee can access employment contracts even after the link to it expires.
Send the required documents and forms to your employees prior to their commencement date. If the employee was sourced from the EH Recruitment experience, all candidate data will be brought across when onboarding. For full details regarding how to do this, see these articles: Issue HR documents to employees and Upload supporting superannuation documents for an employee.
You can ask your new employee to upload their certifications and qualifications before their commencement date. For information about how to do this, see Require employees to add their certificates when onboarding.
If you require medical disclosure from your employees prior to their commencement date, see the following: Require employees to complete a medical disclosure when onboarding.
Daily activities
Helpful Tip
The Remind Signatory feature is only available when you have issued a contract during the onboarding process but the employee is yet to sign the contract.
- Click the Home menu.
- On the Employee Onboarding widget on the Employment Hero dashboard, click the … button for the employee you need to remind.
- Click the Remind Signatory button.
Helpful Tip
The Re-send Invite feature is only available when the employee has yet to create their Employment Hero account by completing the password creation section on the Employee Onboarding workflow.
- Click the Home menu.
- On the Employee Onboarding widget on the Employment Hero dashboard, click the … button for the employee you need to re-invite.
- Click the Re-send Invite button.
Helpful Tip
The Resume Onboarding feature is only available when you have issued a contract during the onboarding process but have not sent the contract to the employee.
- Click the Home menu.
- On the Employee Onboarding widget on the Employment Hero dashboard, click the … button for who needs to resume onboarding.
- Click the Resume Onboarding button.
- Click the Home menu.
- On the Employee Onboarding widget on the Employment Hero dashboard, click the … button for the employee whose file you want to view.
- Click the View Employee File button.
Onboarding with integrations
If your Employment Hero account is integrated with any other programs, see this section for onboarding advice.
If your Employment Hero account is connected to a Xero account, see the following: Onboard an employee on HR classic when integrated with Xero?
If your Employment Hero account is connected to a JobAdder account, see the following: Employee onboarding with JobAdder.
Removing data
- Click the Home menu.
- Click the … button for the employee whose file you want to delete.
-
Click the Delete Employee button.
Helpful Tip
Deleting an onboarded employee will bypass the off-boarding process. Use the Delete Employee button primarily for cases where you have made a mistake with the onboarding application process.
- Type the employee's name.
- Click the Yes, delete file button.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. You can send documents to an employee if you require them to read or sign documents other than the one issued during the onboarding flow. The document templates page allows you to upload a document, including any that requires signatory compliance. You can use the Basic or Advanced editor to add requirements, such as signatures from the sender or recipient.
Step 1: Add and edit the document to your document templates
- Select the Compliance menu.
- Select the Document Templates submenu.
- Select Add Template.
- Enter the details of the template.
The following options are available:- Template name.
- Signature logic – Whether you require the document to be signed to be marked as complete.
- Template type – Allows you to specify the type of document.
- Template editor – Basic allows you to upload a PDF document, where you can add items such as logos, areas for signatures, among other options. The advanced editor allows you to create the document with full control within a word document tool.
- Countries – Allows you to specify the region in which the document can be assigned.
- Select Save.
- Within the editor, you can place different components, such as employee, manager, and organisation details. Simply drag the items you would like added to the document from the list of fields.
In this example, we require the sender and recipient of the document to sign this. We will drag Recipient Signature and Sender Signature into the document. - Select Save.
Step 2: Assign the document to the employee
- Select the People menu.
- Select the People List sub-menu.
- Select the employee you would like to assign the document to.
- Select the HR Documents tab, then select Add new document.
- Locate the document you would like to assign, select the Actions drop-down menu, then click Select.
- Preview the document, then select Continue.
- Confirm that you have read the disclaimer, then select Email Document to notify the employee of the document.
- Select Save at the bottom of the page.
You can require new employees to upload the required certifications. You will just need to check and make sure you have enabled this option via the Employee File customisation feature.
Turn on certificates as part of the onboarding process
- Click the Settings menu.
- Click the Employee File submenu.
- Tick the Use in Onboarding Process check box next to the Certifications option.
- Click the Save button.
You can require new employees to complete a medical disclosure form. You will just need to check and make sure you have enabled this option via the Employee File customisation feature.
Turn on medical disclosure as part of the onboarding process
- Click the Settings menu.
- Click the Employee File submenu.
- Tick the Use in Onboarding Process check box next to the Medical Disclosure Statement option.
- Click the Save button.
This may be due to the link to the contract expiring. When this happens, ensure the new starter/existing employee resets their password. You do this simply by asking the new starter/employee to do the following:
- Log in to their Employment Hero account using the email address provided.
- Click the Forgot password button.
- Log in with their reset password and then try the link again.
Having reset their password and logged back in, the new starter/existing employee should now be able to view their contract when they click the link to it.
Yes. Contractors and volunteers both appear alongside employees in the manager selection list when admins are setting up or updating reporting relationships.
Once assigned, a contractor or volunteer manager works exactly like any other manager — they receive approval requests, can approve or decline timesheets and leave, and appear correctly in the organisation chart.
To successfully sync an employee to an Australian payroll platform, the employee must have valid Australian payroll details recorded, including:
- An Australian Tax File Number (TFN)
- Australian bank account details
- Superannuation details
If you are looking to employ workers internationally, consider exploring HeroForce services.
Explore related topics
- Set My Account Time Zone – This FAQ answers a common question from our clients about how they set the time zone used on their HR platform account.
- Change My Organisation – This FAQ answers a common question from our clients about how they can change the organisation selected on their HR platform.