HR onboarding in Australia: Your essential checklist

When you hire a new employee, your HR team has a lot to coordinate. From handling compliance paperwork and gathering payroll and tax information to giving them access to the right devices and apps, the onboarding process for new employees involves lots of moving parts across several systems and stakeholders.

Handled manually, these steps can take up a serious amount of time that could be spent on more strategic work. For HR leaders, this is a big challenge. In Rippling's latest State of the Back Office Leader report, 31.7% say onboarding tasks take up significant time, while updating employee information (50.4%) and answering employee questions (43.6%) are also major time drains.

The employee onboarding experience isn't just an administrative requirement. It plays a key role in shaping employee experience, productivity, and retention from day one.

In this guide, we'll walk you through the crucial steps for successful new hire onboarding, from pre-checks and first day essentials to ensuring the first 90 days are successful. And we'll explain how all-in-one HR software like Rippling can connect everything together, saving you time and ensuring the smoothest start for every person who joins your team.

Key takeaways

• Onboarding in Australia involves many different functions, including compliance, payroll, IT setup, and training across multiple systems

• Manual onboarding processes can create significant delays, errors, and administrative workload, particularly in IT setup and access provisioning, where tasks can take hours without automation

• Automating onboarding workflows with all-in-one platforms like Rippling helps improve speed, consistency, and compliance across HR, payroll, and IT, all while freeing up your team to focus on higher-value work and ensuring every new hire has a smooth, confidence-building start to their role

Preboarding new employees: Setting them up for success

A strong preboarding process ensures that a new hire has everything they need to begin their role with certainty and keeps you compliant with Australian regulations. It also helps employers reduce administrative delays, create a smoother first-day experience, and ensure HR, IT, and managers are aligned before the employee arrives.

Remember, different types of employees may require variations in onboarding. For instance, if you employ remote or hybrid employees, their health and safety briefings should relate to their specific work environments. Contractors may need a run-through of your invoicing process, while casual employees might need onboarding with rostering and time-tracking systems. 

However, the steps below are relevant to all new hires.

Verify work eligibility and compliance

Australian employers must confirm that employees are legally able to work and that required compliance checks are completed before employment begins. Doing so also avoids delays once the employee starts.

Australia has more than 100 modern awards, which set different minimum work conditions depending on an employee’s industry and occupation. The Fair Work Ombudsman has tools to help you find the right award, including an online calculator.

If your new hire isn’t an Australian citizen or permanent resident, they need a work visa issued by the Department of Home Affairs. Read our guide on work permits in Australia for more information.

It's also important to perform a background check, but only with the applicant's consent. You are also responsible for protecting the new hire’s personal information and maintaining their confidentiality. Read our complete guide to employment background checks in Australia to learn more.

Then you can send the offer letter. This is the legal agreement between a new hire and their employer. Make sure it includes the correct information to comply with Australian labour laws: the new hire’s position and contact information, working days and hours, compensation and minimum entitlements, as well as any details on probation periods and any other stipulations relevant to your company. Read our complete guide on creating offer letters for employees in Australia.

Here's a quick reference list for compliance tasks:

Key onboarding compliance tasks

Set up payroll, tax, and superannuation

You’ll need to make tax payments on your new employee’s behalf through a process known as pay-as-you-go (PAYG) withholding. Make sure you’re registered for this with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and that you have the new hire’s Tax File Number (TFN). Employers that provide taxable fringe benefits may be liable for Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT). Businesses whose Australian wages exceed their state's or territory's payroll tax threshold may also need to register for payroll tax.

You must also make superannuation contributions to a fund of the employee’s choice, so it's a good idea to send a superannuation standard choice form before their start date. You also need to set up a default fund if the new hire decides not to choose their own.

In addition to superannuation, employers must also arrange workers' compensation insurance in accordance with state or territory requirements, as well as manage annual leave, sick leave, and parental leave. The exact entitlements may vary by award and state or territory (find the breakdown in our guide to employee benefits in Australia).

Finally, add them to the payroll. You have to pay Australia-based employees in Australian dollars (AUD) unless you’ve specifically obtained their written permission to pay them in a different currency. You also need to report payroll information to the ATO through its Single Touch Payroll (STP) system, so make sure you’re properly enrolled.

Payroll management can be a particularly drawn-out task. In our latest State of HR report, it ranked first among HR professionals as their most time-consuming activity. That's where a coordinated, integrated platform like Rippling can help, as it allows a single source of truth for all these payroll aspects of the preboarding process. It allows employees to complete tax forms, nominate a super fund, upload identification, review policies, acknowledge company documents, and update personal details through a self-service portal before their first day. This reduces manual data entry while helping HR teams ensure onboarding tasks are completed on time. The platform can also flag missing TFNs, detect payroll anomalies before processing, or identify incomplete superannuation information. 

Check out our full guide to running payroll for employees in Australia.

Prepare equipment and system access

Whether they’re working onsite or remotely, your new hire needs the right tools to do their job. To help them hit the ground running, be sure to order and configure any devices they need before their first day. That includes access to apps, from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace to Slack, Zoom, Figma, and other role-specific applications.

This step often creates bottlenecks because it requires HR, IT, security, and managers to coordinate across multiple systems. A streamlined workforce platform like Rippling can save hours by providing a single point of authority for all employee IT requirements. Non-Rippling customers spend three times longer on IT setup and offboarding than those using the platform.

The platform can automatically identify the applications and permissions a new hire needs based on their role, department, or location, assign software licences, flag missing approvals, and alert HR or IT if any onboarding tasks are incomplete before the employee's first day.

Plan and communicate

Preboarding is not only about administration, it is also about creating a clear path for a new employee’s first days and weeks. A structured onboarding plan ensures responsibilities are clear internally and helps new hires understand what to expect before they arrive.

You may want to create a first-week schedule, set up a 1:1 with their manager, any meetings with their team, or even a team outing on day one (lunch is a great option!), and prepare any resources they need, such as the employee handbook, the company's mission statement, policies, and values, and a list of their colleagues. Send them an email with all the details so they know what to expect on arrival. Rippling AI can also personalise onboarding communications, automatically reminding new hires about outstanding forms, upcoming meetings, or required training without HR having to manually follow up.

8 things to do on an employee’s first day

Set the tone for your employee's entire time with your company by making sure they feel welcomed, informed, and confident as they begin.

1. Make sure their workspace is ready If your new hire works in the office, make sure their desk is set up with everything they need. You can consider customising their workspace with a nameplate and greeting them with a decorative welcome gift to make a good first impression.

2. Send a 'welcome to the team' email It's a good idea to send an email out to your company introducing the new hire, providing a brief bio and job description, and encouraging colleagues to pop over and say hi. This can give your new employee an early glimpse of the company culture they can expect. Learn how to write the perfect welcome to the team email with our guide.

3. Give them an agenda to help them get started It’s hard for new hires to grasp their first-day responsibilities without an agenda. Whether it’s over email or in person, give them a game plan for what to expect during their first few days on the job, including meetings, assignments, and other responsibilities.

4. Schedule a 1:1 with their manager Your new hire’s supervisor will be an important sounding board throughout their employment. Start the relationship off right by scheduling an initial meeting to address any questions, set expectations, and clarify communication norms. Ensure the new employee feels comfortable with what the role requires and confident to give and receive feedback, as this two-way exchange is encouraged in most Australian workplaces.

5. Schedule a meeting with their onboarding buddy or mentor Asking a welcoming colleague to guide your new hire through their onboarding process is a good practice. Set aside time for this interaction. It doesn't have to be formal. Something as simple as grabbing a flat white at a nearby coffee shop can make it a pleasant experience.

6. Have a get-to-know-you event with their team or closest peers Whether in or out of the office (or virtually), a meet-and-greet with all members of the new hire’s team breaks the ice, while ensuring the new employee knows who they’ll be working with and how to access them. 

7. Give an office tour If your new hire works in person, walk them around their new office right after they get settled at their desk. Show them the toilets, kitchen, and storage rooms, and give them a general sense of where to find colleagues they may need to interact with. This is also a good time to briefly introduce them to any co-workers.

8. Provide them with a list of contacts Before the day’s end, share a 'cheat sheet' of the company, including names, job titles, and contact information across all platforms, to make sure your new hire knows who to go to for specific questions.

Turn new hires into high performers in their first 90 days

Your new hire's goal in their first months should be to learn about your company and their role within it. Within their first week, start them off with organisational training, where they learn about the company, its goals, purpose, and values. Then, shift to role-specific training to help them learn specific skills and information needed to succeed. 

Assign work and help them set goals. New hires absorb a lot of information during their first few months on the job, so it’s no surprise that their work product won’t be perfect immediately. When assigning work, start them off slowly and encourage them to ask questions when needed. Consider setting realistic goals with them that, if met, will allow you to entrust them with more responsibility.

Schedule check-ins and mentorship to help them stay on track. Check-ins with a new hire help you track progress. They’re also the perfect space to review and reassess goals. No matter how frequent these meetings are, aim to schedule them regularly to ensure consistency.

Offer regular feedback as they get settled in. Regular feedback is crucial to ensuring your new hire stays on track with their goals. Rippling AI can monitor onboarding progress throughout the first 90 days, reminding managers when probation reviews or check-ins are due, identifying incomplete training, and highlighting employees who may need additional support based on missed milestones.

Seek their feedback on how you can improve the onboarding experience. Feedback is a two-way street. Make sure your new hire feels empowered to speak their mind about company processes.

Here's how it could all break down:

Key phases in onboarding successful employees

Use our practical first 90 days checklist to help your employees hit their stride. Rippling AI can also highlight new hires who may be disengaging by identifying missed onboarding milestones, delayed training completion, or reduced interaction with onboarding activities.

Onboarding automation: Speed up your new hire setup

Managing onboarding manually can create delays, inconsistencies, compliance risks, and unnecessary administrative overheads, especially as organisations grow and onboarding spans HR, payroll, IT, and operations teams. When processes are fragmented across systems and spreadsheets, small tasks like approvals, data entry, and account setup quickly create major bottlenecks.

Automating onboarding workflows cuts repetitive tasks, improves data accuracy, and speeds up employee setup, from preboarding through to full productivity. It also creates a more consistent experience for new hires, so nothing slips through across compliance, IT provisioning, and HR administration.

As onboarding becomes more complex, many businesses turn to workforce management platforms to centralise these workflows in one system. Platforms like Rippling combine workflow automation with AI to coordinate onboarding across HR, payroll, and IT. 

AI can recommend workflow improvements, identify bottlenecks, detect incomplete employee records, surface compliance risks before they become problems, and answer routine employee questions through conversational assistants, reducing manual work for HR teams. For example, rather than emailing HR, new hires can ask AI assistants where to find policies, how to submit leave, when they'll be paid, or what equipment has been assigned to them.

HR teams can also use conversational AI to answer questions about employee records, locate policy documents, generate reports, or build workflows using natural language instead of manually navigating multiple screens.

Most companies not using Rippling spend more than five hours setting up a new employee’s computer and more than five hours setting up third-party applications. Rippling customers can complete all onboarding steps within five minutes.

For example, with Rippling, productivity software company Superhuman cut the time spent on HR and IT tasks by 75%.

Bring every step of onboarding together

A strong onboarding process is ultimately about setting people up to do their best work with clarity and the right support around them. When you combine compliance, preparation, and thoughtful human touchpoints, you don’t just get someone started in a role. You give them what they need to become effective quickly and feel part of the organisation from day one.

Of course, in practice, onboarding can involve a lot of moving parts, including contracts, tax forms, superannuation, payroll setup, device provisioning, app access, and training schedules. And you have to do all that while keeping the experience smooth for the new hire. That’s where many teams feel the strain, especially as they scale or hire across different locations and employment types.

This is why many organisations turn to platforms like Rippling. By combining AI with workflow automation, Rippling can intelligently coordinate employee setup across HR, IT, and payroll. Rather than simply completing repetitive tasks, AI helps identify missing information, trigger the next onboarding step automatically, answer employee questions, and provide HR teams with real-time visibility into every stage of the onboarding process.

New hires can be set up and productive faster, and your team can ensure compliance without the usual back-and-forth across multiple tools. It also frees them up to focus more on creating a welcoming, well-structured first experience for every employee.

Request a demonstration of Rippling today to see how you can transform your onboarding process and get the best out of everyone.

FAQs

What is HR onboarding?

HR onboarding is the process of preparing a new employee to join an organisation. A robust process ensures all legal, compliance, and workplace requirements are met. It sets up payroll, superannuation, and access to tools and systems. Plus, it helps the employee understand their role and the culture of the company they’re joining. A good onboarding process goes a long way towards ensuring your new hire is confident and productive.

What are the legal requirements for onboarding employees in Australia?

The legal aspects of the onboarding process include verifying the employee's right to work, providing them with the Fair Work Information Statement, confirming the conditions of their employment, setting up payroll and superannuation, collecting tax details, and walking them through workplace policies.

What documents are required when onboarding a new employee in Australia?

The documents required for onboarding typically include an employment contract, Fair Work Information Statement, Tax File Number declaration, superannuation details, payroll information, and any relevant workplace policies or agreements.