Best Practices for Employee Onboarding

Best Practices for Employee Onboarding

June 9, 2020 | Personnel Management

Today’s Tip offers timely, useful guidance in the hiring process. Are you busy trying to fill positions for the 2020-2021 school year? What do you need to know? What does your new hire process look like?

Not sure what you need or where to start?

CSS is here to help! We can unload your plate while simultaneously increasing the amount of work you accomplish by working in partnership with your charter as your back-office service provider.  Our state-of-the-art, electronic HR System seamlessly integrates your new employees into your school, ensuring your employees’ compliance paperwork is completed and always accessible.  Check out our best practices below!

What documents should each employee have in his or her personnel file?

  • New Hire Application
  • Background Authorization Form
  • Offer Letter
  • Job Description
  • Letter of Reasonable Assurance
  • I-9 Form*
  • Direct Deposit Form, if applicable
  • W-4
  • Emergency Contact
  • Equal Employment Opportunity Survey
  • Public Access to Information Form (Optimal Confidentiality)
  • SSA 1945 (Employment not covered by Social Security)
  • Benefits Enrollment (Enrollment/Declination)
  • Statement of Confidentiality (Records & Information)
  • Conflict of Interest
  • Employee Handbook Acknowledgment
  • Work Calendar
  • Market Place Notice
  • Pay Date Calendar
  • School Instructional Calendar
  • Employee System Access- How -To Guide
  • Responsible Use Guidelines for Technology Agreement

How do you onboard an employee?

  1. The onboarding process is the best time to start introducing your new hire to your school’s culture, ethical principles, and values. You want your school to be a high-context environment where your employees can respond to each other and the needs of students in productive and meaningful ways. To accomplish this, your onboarding steps should be well-prepared, practical, and efficient. Here are the best practice processes Charter School Success utilizes when working with Texas charter schools, which make for an effective and meaningful onboarding program:
  2. Collect the required paperwork for the application process: Before the interviews start, each applicant should be required to complete an application, a background check authorization form, and provide references.
  3. Interviewing and Selection: Depending on the job, it is pertinent that you choose an appropriate type of interview and/or screening exercises, whether it be online assessments, panel interviews, performance-based challenges, or something else. Once the selection process has been completed, it is selection time.  The appropriate candidate will be one who fits in with your culture, displays the KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) that you require, and best satisfies the needs of the position at your school.
  4. Notification of Hire: Once the selection is made, you will notify your HR team of the hire to be made with an official document that establishes the job title, FLSA type, status (full time, part time, temporary), salary amount, campus, start date, job description, calendar, budget code and/or supplemental pay code, and signature approvals from the hiring manager, superintendent, or whomever your school’s policy states.
  5. Paperwork: Your HR Team will then take this information and start the paperwork and compliance component. They will use the Background Check Authorization to upload the prospective new hire to your TEAL account to start the fingerprinting/background check process. Then they will create an onboarding packet that will include all the documents listed above for their personnel folder, including their offer letter. These documents will be provided to the new hire for completion.
  6. Documentation: Once the new hire completes all required paperwork, he or she will bring in their identification documents and have them verified by a representative at your school. This person will complete the new hire’s Federal I-9 form. It is best practice to keep these I-9 forms in a separate folder so that when audited, you only have to turn a single folder over to the auditor instead of multiple personnel folders. By law, an employee must have their work eligibility (I-9) completed within 3 days of beginning employment.
  7. Background Check: By law, your new hire only has to show proof that he or she went to get fingerprinted. The actual results do not have to be available for viewing before the new hire begins working, as a background check result can take up to 2 weeks to be made available in the TxDPS system.  However, it is best practice to give yourself ample time to be able to check the background results before the new hire is on your campus.
  8. School Orientation/Shadowing: The fun begins when you get to show off your charter!  Making the new employee feel welcome, comfortable, and informed is the purpose of an effective onboarding experience.

Still have questions?

Need a step by step walk through of the complete the new hire process? Charter School Success can help! Register now for the New Hire Process: The Quick Compliant Way online course.

Are you overwhelmed just reading this?

It can be overwhelming! But at Charter School Success, we are here to help!  In addition to handling all of the documents and processes above, CSS also offers benefits liaison and logistical support to all of our HR clients, saving you from another one of the many headaches that running a school business can bring.

Ready to talk to the experts?

Contact Jordan Elliott at Jordan@charterschoolsuccess.com  or call 1-833-I-LUV-CSS (833-458-8277) today!