# Employee Onboarding Checklist: Before Day One to Day 90 > An employee onboarding checklist sorts tasks by date: before the start (contract, equipment, accounts, right-to-work checks), on day one (written terms, safety induction, welcome), in week one (role plan, remaining paperwork such as US Form I-9 Section 2) and through the first 90 days (check-ins and a probation decision). Legal deadlines belong in the list, not in someone's memory. - URL: https://personaloptimierer.de/en/hr-processes/employee-onboarding-checklist/ - Language: en - Updated: 2026-10-19 - Publisher: Personaloptimierer (OnlineBuilders LLC, https://onlinebuilders.biz) Plenty of first days start with waiting. The laptop was ordered but hasn't arrived. The email account doesn't exist yet. The manager is stuck in a meeting. None of this is dramatic, but all of it sticks, and it is avoidable with a list that starts three weeks before the start date. The checklist below is sorted by time, not by department. There is a reason: legal deadlines are tied to dates, not to who happens to own them. ## The deadlines you cannot move Every country has a handful of hard dates in the first days of employment. Miss them and you face fines or lose evidence you might need later. Here are the main ones for three common hiring countries. **Hard onboarding deadlines in three countries** | | UK | US | Germany | |---|---|---|---| | Work authorisation | Right-to-work check before work starts | Form I-9 Section 1 by day 1, Section 2 within 3 business days | Check residence permit before work starts (non-EU staff) | | Written terms | Written statement on or before day 1 | No federal rule; offer letter common | Core terms on day 1, more by day 7, rest within 1 month | | Tax and payroll | Starter information for PAYE | Form W-4; state new-hire report within 20 days | Tax ID and social security registration with first payroll | | Pensions | Auto-enrolment if eligible | Plan-specific | Only if offered | The UK right-to-work check deserves emphasis. It must happen before the person starts work, and since February 2024 the civil penalty for employing someone without the right to work can reach £60,000 per worker. Doing it on day three is not good enough. US Form I-9 has two separate dates. The employee fills in Section 1 by the first day. You then have three business days to examine original documents, or use an approved remote method, and complete Section 2. Germany splits written terms into three dates under its Evidence Act. Since 2025, those terms may be sent as a PDF if the employee can store and print it and you request a receipt. Some sectors, including construction, hospitality and cleaning, still need paper with a signature, and they must register new staff with social security on the first morning. Our German-language edition of this checklist covers those dates in full. ## Before day one This is where a smooth start is decided. Allow two to three weeks, more if hardware has to be shipped. **Two to three weeks before the start date** - [ ] Signed contract or offer filed, personal details and tax forms requested - [ ] Right-to-work or work authorisation check scheduled before the first shift - [ ] Laptop, phone, keys or access badge ordered - [ ] User account, email and system roles requested from IT - [ ] Desk set up, or home-office equipment shipped with tracking - [ ] Learning plan for the first two weeks written - [ ] Buddy from the team named and briefed - [ ] Welcome email sent with first-day logistics The welcome email sounds trivial. It answers the questions everyone has the night before: what time, which entrance, who meets me, where do I park? Three sentences will do. If you want to be generous, include a photo of the entrance and the name of the person waiting at reception. ## Day one Day one carries more compliance than people expect. Health and safety induction should take place before someone starts real work, not sometime in the first month. For office roles it takes twenty minutes. Nobody remembers all of it, so hand out a one-page summary with emergency exits, first aiders and who to call. Warehouse or workshop inductions take longer, and it should be documented and signed. Also on day one: - Written terms handed over, if not already part of the contract - Equipment, keys and access issued against a signature - Confidentiality and data protection briefing - Explanation of how working time is recorded - Lunch with the team rather than alone in the canteen Working-time recording is not optional everywhere. EU employers in particular must track hours, and Germany is moving towards electronic recording. See [time tracking law in Germany](https://personaloptimierer.de/en/law-and-works-councils/time-tracking-law-germany/) if you employ people there. ## The first week Use the first week for orientation. Good learning plans name a topic and a person for each day. One example for a purchasing role: Monday systems and access, Tuesday a day shadowing the most experienced colleague, Wednesday the five key suppliers and their terms, Thursday first purchase orders with approval, Friday a review. No day is fully booked. New people need slack to read things twice and to collect questions. Fill every slot and you produce tiredness, not knowledge. At the end of the week, a short conversation with the manager closes the loop. What was clear, what wasn't, what is missing? ## The first month and the first 90 days After four weeks comes the first proper check-in. Talk about expectations for the probation period and write them down in two or three sentences. Whoever has to decide at the end needs something to measure against. Plan two more conversations: one around day 60 and one a few weeks before probation ends. The second matters most. If you are not going to confirm someone, the decision and notice must happen before the probation period expires. Leaving it to the last week puts you under pressure, and in Germany it can mean the longer statutory notice period applies. Probation rules vary. UK employers commonly use three to six months set by contract. German law caps it at six months with two weeks' notice. US employment is mostly at will, but many employers still run a 90-day introductory period as a structured review point. ## Special cases worth a separate line Some hires don't follow the standard path. Interns and students may need proof of enrolment, sometimes every term. International hires may need visa sponsorship steps that take weeks, so start them before the offer is signed. Remote hires in another country raise payroll and tax questions that a checklist cannot answer; that is a call for an employer-of-record provider or local advice. Treat these as extra lines on the main list rather than separate processes. ## What to automate Almost every administrative item on this list repeats with each hire. That makes onboarding a good candidate for automation: a start date triggers tasks for IT, facilities and the manager, reminders go out on schedule, and written terms are generated from templates. According to a Bitkom survey of 602 German companies published in August 2026, 14% use AI in onboarding and another 36% could imagine doing so, up from 11% and 28% in 2024. For most businesses, plain workflow automation is the bigger lever. How to approach it is covered in [HR process automation](https://personaloptimierer.de/en/hr-processes/hr-process-automation/). Documents should then live in a properly structured system, see [digital employee records](https://personaloptimierer.de/en/hr-processes/digital-employee-records/). If you want onboarding connected directly to recruiting and your HR system and need custom software for it, [OnlineBuilders](https://onlinebuilders.biz/solutions/talent-management) builds that kind of platform. Your next step: take your next planned hire, enter the start date and work every item on this list backwards into a calendar. Share it with the manager and IT so nobody learns about the start date on the day itself. You will find more process guides in the [HR processes section](https://personaloptimierer.de/en/hr-processes/). ## FAQ ### How long should onboarding last? Most administrative steps are done within the first month. Getting someone fully productive usually takes longer, and many employers use the first 90 days or the probation period as the onboarding window. ### Who is responsible for onboarding? HR or the office manager owns the paperwork, the line manager owns the learning plan. A named buddy from the team, who is not the manager, handles everyday questions and makes a measurable difference to how quickly people settle. ### When must the US Form I-9 be completed? The employee completes Section 1 no later than the first day of employment. The employer must examine documents and complete Section 2 within three business days of the start date. ### Do UK employees need a written contract on day one? Since April 2020, employees and workers must receive a written statement of the main terms of employment on or before their first day. Some additional information can follow within two months. Photo: Ryan Riggins ryan_riggins, CC0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laptop_and_a_mug_(Unsplash).jpg)