Hiring your first employee in Australia: a checklist

To hire your first employee in Australia, work through five stages in order. Before hiring, choose the employment type, find the award and the minimum pay. Then make the offer and sign a contract that gives at least the National Employment Standards. Before the first pay, register for PAYG withholding, set up Single Touch Payroll, arrange workers compensation and collect a TFN declaration. On day one, give the Fair Work Information Statement and induct them. From the first payday, pay super with each pay, issue a pay slip within one working day and keep the records for seven years.

That is the whole list. The rest of this article walks through each stage with the documents it produces, using a fictional first hire: Nadia Kouri, an operations coordinator starting at Waverley Foods in Marrickville on Monday 5 October 2026. Her contract is the employment contract example, and the checklist table at the end puts every step in the order it falls due.

Before hiring: type, award and pay

The business.gov.au hiring guide starts with a decision most first time employers skip: what type of employee you need. Full time, part time, fixed term and casual each carry different obligations, and a trainee or apprentice is different again. The same guide warns that whether someone is an employee or a contractor is not as simple as whether they have an ABN or send invoices, and that getting it wrong brings penalties.

Next, find the award. The Fair Work Ombudsman explains that minimum terms come from the award, any registered agreement, the contract and the National Employment Standards, and that a contract cannot provide for less than the NES. Its pay tool gives the minimum rates, penalties and allowances once you know the classification.

Only then write the job description and the advertisement. Fair Work’s guidance is blunt that a job ad cannot include pay rates that breach the Fair Work Act or an award. A job description with measures makes the classification easier to justify later, because each duty is written down.

The contract

Once the offer is accepted, put it in writing. The offer letter example shows the letter’s job: the package figures, the conditions the offer depends on, when it lapses, and a plain statement that the attached contract is the binding document.

The Waverley Foods contract is the document to compare yours against. It runs to nine pages with a cover and contents, and its eleven numbered clause groups follow the order a new employee asks questions in:

• the job, reporting line and place of work, with four weeks written notice before a site change
• commencement, with right to work evidence as a condition of starting
• 38 ordinary hours a week and the position on reasonable additional hours
• a base salary of $86,000 plus $10,320 of superannuation, which is 12 per cent
• a seven row leave table drawn from the NES
• six months probation with a written feedback schedule
• policies, confidentiality, a notice table by length of service, post employment non solicitation, and signature blocks for both parties

On probation, the Fair Work Ombudsman says the length is usually the employer’s call and often ranges from three to six months, and that an employee on probation keeps the same entitlements as everyone else. The probation clause page sets out how that is usually drafted.

If the role is casual rather than full time, the casual employment agreement example shows the other shape: a $34.00 hourly rate built from a $27.20 base plus a 25 per cent loading, with every other rate worked out from that base.

Registrations before the first pay

Three things have to be ready before any money moves, and business.gov.au lists all of them.

PAYG withholding. You need to register before you pay employees for the first time. It is done once for the business, not once per employee.

Single Touch Payroll. STP is how payroll, tax and super information is reported to the ATO. You either pay through STP enabled software or use a service provider, such as a tax agent, to report for you.

Workers compensation. The guide states that you must have workers compensation insurance, and lists it beside the work health and safety changes a new employee may require.

Check payroll tax and fringe benefits tax too. business.gov.au notes that payroll tax only applies once total wages pass a limit that differs by state and territory, and that fringe benefits tax can apply when you give an employee benefits other than salary or wages, such as a car they can use privately.

Onboarding forms and statements

On or before day one, the employee needs information from you and you need information from them.

From you: the Fair Work Information Statement, given before or as soon as possible after they start. A casual employee also gets the Casual Employment Information Statement at the same time, and a fixed term employee gets the Fixed Term Contract Information Statement. If an award covers the role, business.gov.au says it must be made easily available, digitally or on a noticeboard, and the employee should be told the classification.

From them: a TFN declaration, completed online, so you can withhold the right amount of tax. Without a TFN you must withhold at the highest rate. For super, you give a superannuation standard choice form within 28 days of the start, and if they do not choose a fund you request their stapled fund from the ATO.

Everything else goes on one onboarding form. The new employee onboarding form collects legal name, address, right to work status with a file upload for the evidence, bank account name, BSB and account number, the super fund if they have one, equipment needs and policy acknowledgements, ending in a signature. It deliberately does not ask for the TFN, because that goes through the ATO’s own declaration.

Induction comes last in this stage. business.gov.au’s list covers the premises, introductions, key policies, systems access and, separately, health, safety and emergency information: hazards, safe work procedures, evacuation, exits, first aid kits and who the first aid officers are.

First pay and the records that follow it

On the first payday, pay the wage and the super together. business.gov.au’s guide describes the super guarantee as an amount equal to 12 per cent of qualifying earnings paid into the employee’s fund each payday, on top of the wage and never deducted from it. Super is paid electronically through SuperStream.

Within one working day of payday, give a pay slip. The Fair Work Ombudsman says pay slips can be electronic or paper, must carry the same information either way, and must be given even if the employee is on leave. The payslip example shows the fields, and what a payslip is covers the definition.

Then keep the records. Time and wages records are kept for seven years, must be legible in English and readily accessible to a Fair Work Inspector, and cannot be changed except to correct an error.

The checklist table

The table at the end of this article puts sixteen steps in the order they fall due, with the document each one leaves behind and the body whose guidance sets the rule. If a step has no document, you cannot show later that it happened, which is the question a Fair Work Inspector will ask.

Common mistakes

Paying before registering. PAYG withholding registration comes before the first payment, not at the end of the quarter.

Treating the first employee as a contractor to save paperwork. An ABN and an invoice do not make someone a contractor.

Forgetting the information statement. It is required for every new employee, and the casual statement is required on top of it for casuals.

A contract below the award. A salary that looked generous can still fall short once the award’s penalties and overtime are counted.

Collecting the TFN on your own form. Use the TFN declaration, and keep your onboarding form to bank, emergency contact and right to work details.

Late pay slips. One working day is the limit, and a missing pay slip can shift the burden of proof onto the employer in an underpayment claim.

Build it

The AI document generator page shows how a contract or offer letter is written from a description: name the parties, the role, the pay, the hours, the leave you give above the NES and the notice periods. Documents are classified before they are written, so a nine page contract is planned section by section with numbered clauses, and a contents block is only added to long documents. Documents never contain input fields, so every figure you give is written in as text, and the AI chat can edit that text afterwards.

For signing, each party in a signature block becomes one signer with a name, email and signing order, so the employer’s block and the employee’s block become two recipients. The steps are in the guide to sending a document for signature, and the employment contract signing example shows the finished envelope. What to put in front of an employee for signature beyond the contract is covered in e-signature for HR documents. Check pay rates against the award yourself before sending; a generated document writes the numbers you give it and does not look up an award.