So You Hired a New Employee. Now What?

So you hired a new employee.  Now what?

So you took over a new operation and you needed to hire your first person.  After all the resume review, interview, reference check, drug test, background check, personality profile, and credit check Johnny Q. Cashier is ready to roll, you have yourself a grade A number one “Enthusiastic Beginner” on your hands!

At every company that I have worked at there is some form of “New Hire” packet.  Some are small but most are absolutely insane in size. Normally these include emergency contact info, direct deposit forms, maybe even another copy of the application to fill out!   In many cases you will have to allow 30 minutes to an hour to get a person all ready to roll as far as paperwork is concerned.  Not to mention the time that you will have to spend.  “You are under 18 so your parents have to fill out that section”, “make sure that you put the phone number of the person you want us to contact in case of emergency here and not your number”, “Don’t sign this one until after I have covered the new hire safety with you.”,  Etc. 

While the paperwork is a bureaucrats idea of a perfect Christmas present the ever busy retail manager thinks this is some Rube Goldberg means to make sure that you never hire anyone!  

When you take over a new operation and you are looking at bringing on new bodies make sure that you are using the most up-to-date version of the new hire documents.  If you don’t then you are sure to get a nasty gram from HR about your lack of bureaucratic expertise.

By far the most import document in this pile is going to be the I-9.   The I-9 is a government required document that is the means by which your employee proves that they are allowed to work in this country.  In the past the I-9 was used primarily by immigration, but immigration now falls under DHS, The Department of Homeland Security.  Since 9/11 an already important document has become VERY important.  You don’t want to be the manager who hired the next Mohammed Atta. (One of the 19 9/11 hijackers)

Key to the whole process is the time line, I-9’s are to be completed no later than three days after employment, if a person is to work less than three days then the I-9 is to be completed on the FIRST day of employment.   An employer CANNOT tell the new employee which documents to present as proof.  There is a list of documents on the back of the I-9 and the employee must present one document from list A which proves identity and authorization to work OR one document from list B which provides identity AND one document from list C which proves authorization to work.

Section one of the form is filled out by the employee and sections 2 and if necessary section 3 are filled out by the employer. (Section 3 is for non-citizens who have a temporary work permit that has expired and re-authorization needs to be noted)  Section 3 has to be completed no later than the expiration of their original temporary work authorization.

The Link below will give you a very cool pdf of the I-9 form that you can type in before you print.

 http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf

The link below will give you instructions on the I-9

http://www.uscis.gov/USCIS/Resources/E3en.pdf