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Downloadable New Employee Forms Template & New Hire Checklist
Downloadable New Employee Forms
- Offer letter
- Non-compete agreement (NCA)
- Confidentiality agreement
Downloadable New Hire Checklist
- New hire checklist
New employee forms and a new hire checklist are needed to ensure that your new hires cement themselves as employees as well as understand what is expected of them.
These forms are crucial because one topic that all retail business owners can agree on is that recruiting can be a giant pain. Candidates come in late, don’t show up for interviews, along with doing plenty of other mistakes that not only guarantees that they don’t get the job but also completely wastes your time along with the time of your managers and supervisors that are supposed to be taking care of your store’s operations. Thankfully, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and retail business owners don’t have to always worry about recruiting employees (as long as they do it right the first time).
While ending the recruitment process is always nice, don’t think that it all ends there. A new hire means a lot of new paperwork to ensure that everything is in accordance legally, as well as ensuring that their new hires properly understand what is expected of them and what they can and cannot do while working here. This is especially true in restaurant environments where food safety is heavily regulated and any issues can result in hefty fines or lawsuits. It’s also important in retail environments where you’ll need written documentation from employees to ensure they don’t share any trade secrets on social media or to any of your competitors, not only is it a sign of mistrust, but it can end up destroying the brand you worked so hard to build.
Now that you understand the importance of new employee forms and a new hire checklist, you’re probably wondering about how they’re supposed to look like along with what they should contain. To help you with this, we’ve attached three templates to this blog (offer letter, non-compete agreement, and a confidentiality agreement) that represent new employee forms along with a template made for your new-hire checklist.
But before we get into that, keep in mind that you’ll want to work to ensure that you don’t have to deal with recruiting any more than you have to. If not, you’ll have a terrible employer brand and will have a revolving door of employees coming in & out. One way of getting hourly employees to stay is by offering them a platform that makes it easy for them to receive their schedules and swap shifts with co-workers when they need to. The use of a proper employee scheduling platform can do wonders for improving how employees feel about working for your store and can be the difference between them staying or leaving. To give you a head start, take a firsthand look at how a platform like Deputy can positively affect your workplace procedures by clicking on the button below.
Downloadable New Employee Forms
Offer letter
The first form up for discussion is a template for an offer letter, this is important because before the employee officially starts working with your organization, you’ll want to get them to sign their offer letter to assure that they are indeed planning on following through with their plans of taking the job offer. Not only that, but you also want your offer letter to be able to convince them to leave their old job behind if they are still working one. This is very common in the hourly workforce, workers interview for positions even when they’re gainfully employed. This is because they want to keep their choices open and want to be fully aware of all of their options, and if they really are a rockstar candidate, then you can be sure they’ll have more than one choice available to them and that you’ll have to work for their attention. This is where the offer letter comes in, it gives you the opportunity to show off why working for your company is so amazing and what it can do to further the careers of your candidates.
While the template we provided has everything you need for putting out an effective offer letter, keep the following in mind so you understand what a proper offer letter should contain.
An official letterhead with your company’s logo at the top
Use a proper heading format for letters (it should contain the name of the business, the business’s address, along with the date the letter was created, the candidate’s full name and address.)
The exact job title (ex: Waiter, General Manager, Hostess, Dishwasher, etc.)
The specific hourly rate
If you provide your workers with health insurance, make sure to state it here
Any issues that can lead to revoking the job offer (failing a drug test, failing a background check, etc.)
Lastly, you need to provide the exact date that their offer should be either accepted or rejected. (This should typically be one week)
Although you’ve created an effective offer letter, you must still complete a number of tasks to make it official and to solidify the process. One of which is to make a verbal offer either over the phone or in-person before sending the offer letter out so the candidate can have a chance to talk it over and ask any questions that they may have. Also, make sure to show your excitement in having the candidate over during your verbal offer discussion, this can be the key that sells them on taking the position and leaving their old one behind.
Non-compete Agreement (NCA)
The next template to be mentioned is incredibly important and can prove to be disastrous for your brand should you forget. I’m talking about a non-compete agreement, which is a document stating that an employee isn’t allowed to start a competing business or work for a competitor during a certain period of time. It’s understandable that a business would want their employees to sign this contract. When a new employee is brought on, they are given an in-depth view of all of the business’s operations and procedures, which means they’re garnering a knowledge base that can lead them to take your ideas and use it for their own benefit in the form of starting their own business or giving it to one of your competitors. After all, you need to be able to trust the employees you have running your store, they will know all of your secret ingredients, little tricks, etc. that helped make your business into what it is today.
Imagine this scenario, you own a very successful cookie delivery business that is the talk of the town and constantly has a steady supply of customers placing deliveries. One of your most trusted employees ends up leaving and you hear that they are planning on starting their own cookie delivery business after seeing the success that you’ve had with yours. Not only that but after doing some research, you see that they’re thinking of using a concept that is very similar to yours along with utilizing the same flavors as your company. After realizing that their business is a near copy of yours, you speak with your attorney and they reference the fact that the employee signed a non-compete agreement when they began working at your business. You inform the former employee of the non-compete agreement they signed and that they’ll have to halt their plans for building their own other cookie business. This example gives you a glimpse of why a proper non-compete agreement is so important for your business.
The attached template will have everything your business needs to guarantee it’s protected from anything happening, but if you want to go the extra mile, we recommend getting a lawyer to take a look at your situation to assure you’re covered.
Confidentiality Agreement
A confidentiality agreement, also known as a non-disclosure agreement, is a legal document used to ensure that all important information and data regarding your business is protected so that an employee can’t turn around and sell the information or otherwise use it against the company. No matter what type of business you’re running, you’ll find that a confidentiality agreement is a useful tool that guarantees you don’t have to worry about your ideas being stolen or your business being taken advantage of. To give you a better idea of what is covered by an NDA, take a look at the three groups of critical information that are typically covered by an NDA:
1. Time Frame
It’s important to specify the exact time frame that the confidentiality agreement will remain effective. For this step, it would be best to speak with your lawyer regarding the length that would be most appropriate for your business and your situation specifically. Because of this, your time frame can be anywhere from a month to an indefinite period after they’re done working for your business.
2. Protected Information
You can’t forget the most important aspect of any confidentiality agreement, which is the exact information that is to be protected and is not to be spread under any circumstance. To ensure you do this section right, try to be as detailed and specific as you can when detailing the information that is to stay confidential, this way, you’ll know that you were very specific regarding what you expect of your employees.
3. Consequences for Breaching
In order for your message to really hit home, you’ll need to include proper information detailing what would happen if they were to break the agreement. Make sure they understand that they’ll be sued for damages if they were to breach the agreement.
Downloadable New Hire Checklist
Let’s face it, there’s always a million and one things that need to be done around your business, so it’s understandable that you may forget something while rushing your new employees through the new hire orientation. But that is still no excuse, imagine if you forget to make them sign a non-compete agreement or a confidentiality agreement. That can prove to be a mistake that can potentially end your business. To ensure this doesn’t happen to your business, keep a stack of new hire checklists close by so your managers can easily grab one and go through it whenever they’re onboarding a new hire. Another idea is to hang it somewhere in your employee area so it can be easily referenced.
Closing thoughts
Onboarding can be a difficult process, but with the proper new employee forms along with a new hire checklist, you’ll be well on your way to building an onboarding process that is speedy, efficient, and protects your business.
But don’t think that a good onboarding process is all you need to build a great business, you also need to use an employee scheduling platform that makes it easy for your employees to receive schedules so they never have to worry about not knowing about a shift again. To find out more on how Deputy can help you, click on the button below to start your free trial today!
