Employee onboarding form checklist for Australia

An employee onboarding form checklist for Australia has two halves. The official half: give the Fair Work Information Statement to every new employee, plus the casual or fixed term statement where it applies, and have the employee complete the TFN declaration and super standard choice through the ATO. Your own half: one onboarding form for personal details, right to work, bank account, emergency contacts, policy acknowledgements and equipment. A web form should never stand in for an official form where the ATO or the Fair Work Ombudsman provides one; it collects what payroll and the team need and points to the rest.

The new starter onboarding form for Vantage Ridge is built that way: twenty four questions in seven sections, one form for payroll, IT and the manager, with no tax file number anywhere on it.

Before day one

Send two things before the start date: the information statements and the link to your onboarding form. The Fair Work Ombudsman says employers must give every new employee a copy of the Fair Work Information Statement before, or as soon as possible after, they start, and every new casual employee the Casual Employment Information Statement at the same time. A new fixed term contract brings the Fixed Term Contract Information Statement. The statements can be given by email or as a link, so they can travel in the same message as the form.

Tell people what to have ready. The Vantage Ridge welcome screen says to have super fund details and a photo of ID nearby and that the form takes about fifteen minutes. That one sentence turns a form started and abandoned into a form finished in one go.

Ask for the name as it appears on ID, and separately what the person would like to be called. The example does both, which saves the email address, the badge and the org chart from carrying a name nobody uses.

Tax and super

These are the official forms, and your onboarding form should point to them, not copy them.

TFN declaration. The employee completes it through ATO online services, which gives them an employee tax details summary to hand to you, or on the paper form. The ATO’s guidance for payers says not to ask a payee to send this information by email, because email is not a secure channel. It also says that a payee who has applied for a TFN has 28 days to provide it, with tax withheld at the standard rate meanwhile. The simplest safe design is to leave the TFN out of your own form and add a line telling people to complete their tax and super details in ATO online services before the first pay.

Super choice. The ATO’s superannuation standard choice form lets the employee name their fund, and when you give it to them you must fill in your default fund first. Employees can complete it in ATO online services too, with your ABN and the USI of your default fund. If the employee does not choose, the ATO says you need to request their stapled fund details before making contributions, and employers cannot recommend a fund. Completed choice forms are kept for five years.

The example asks whether the employee has a fund or wants the company default, with an optional table for fund name, member number and USI or ABN. Read a default fund answer as the trigger for the stapled fund check, not as the end of it. This is general information, not tax advice.

Bank and emergency

Bank. Account name, BSB and account number, as three short text fields, required. Bank details are what fraud targets, so verify changes outside the form. The payroll details change form says on its thank-you screen that a bank account change is only applied after payroll calls the employee back on the number already held, never a number supplied in the form.

Right to work. The ATO’s payer guidance reminds employers that it is a criminal offence to knowingly or recklessly allow someone to work in breach of their visa. The example asks for the work entitlement as a single choice and a required upload of proof, one PDF or photo under 10 MB, with a note that a phone photo is fine if the whole document is readable.

Emergency contacts. One contact is enough on an onboarding form. If you want the full version, the emergency contact form for Ardenway Care Services asks two questions most forms skip: what the contact may be told if something happens at work, and whether anyone must not be contacted. It also asks whether the contact knows they have been listed.

Policies to acknowledge

List each policy as its own statement the new starter ticks, and make each tick required. The example uses one checkboxes field for its policies, including the code of conduct, acceptable use and information security, the health and safety induction, and the privacy statement. A required checkboxes field is satisfied as soon as any one box is ticked, so if every policy has to be acknowledged, give each its own required field. A signature confirming the details are correct comes last.

The acknowledgement records that a policy was received. The policies themselves live in a handbook, and the post on employee handbook sections covers what goes in one. For the one sentence version, see what an employee handbook is.

Equipment

Ask for what IT has to prepare, early enough for them to prepare it. The example asks which systems are needed on day one, which laptop, whether a work phone is needed, and anything that would make the workspace work better, then promises on its thank-you screen that the laptop is built by Thursday. Its role section, with the manager and the office, is what routes the request.

What is issued on the day belongs on a different form. The staff induction checklist for Tarrow Freight is completed by the supervisor with the new starter on the first day: a table of equipment with asset tags, licences sighted with expiry dates, and two signatures.

The checklist

The table at the end of this article lists thirteen onboarding documents with when each is due, who completes it, and whether it is an official form or part of your own onboarding form. Build your form from the rows marked as your own, and link the official ones.

A few weeks later, ask how it went. The onboarding survey questions are written to be asked again at day 7 and day 90 so the movement between the two shows.

Common mistakes

Collecting the TFN in your own form. Use the ATO’s process.

Stopping at “default fund”. Check for a stapled fund before contributions.

Accepting bank changes without a call back. The form is not the verification.

All policies in one required field. One tick passes the whole field.

A public link. An onboarding form holds identity documents and bank details. Put a Secret Key on it and send the key separately.

Build it

The address field form page shows the address component this form leans on: street 1, street 2, suburb, state and postcode, each switchable, exported as one column with the parts joined by commas. Around it, an onboarding form uses full name, date, short text for BSB and account number, single choice, table for super fund details, file upload for right to work with images and PDF allowed, checkboxes for policies and Inline Signing for the confirmation, which needs a classic form. A classic field’s description is not shown except on upload fields, so instructions such as completing the TFN declaration in ATO online services go in a paragraph component.

Access is set on the Publish tab: public, secret key, login required or domain restricted. Email alerts send each submission to one address, a webhook posts it once with no retry, and e-signing sends the submitted form to a named signer, such as the manager, by email. To generate the first draft from a description, follow create a form from scratch with AI.