A familiar pattern: the company spends weeks choosing the right person, then hands them a first day with no computer, no logins, and nobody quite sure who they report to.
It is not a lack of care. It is a missing list, because every hire gets treated as if it were the first one.
Before day one
- Contract signed before the role starts, with the correct contract type and the probation period stated explicitly.
- Social Security notification of the hire, which must happen in the twenty-four hours before the person starts. It is the deadline most often missed, and it carries a fine.
- Enrolment in work-accident insurance. An employee who starts without cover is a risk the company should not carry for a single day.
- Payroll data sheet: IBAN, household details for tax-withholding purposes, personal information.
- Equipment and system access requested and confirmed, not just requested.
On day one
Less paperwork, more clarity. Three things solve most of it:
- Who they report to and who they work with day to day.
- What is expected of them in the first thirty days, concretely.
- Where things are — documented processes, folders, tools.
This last point tends to expose a deeper problem: if there is nothing documented to show, onboarding will depend entirely on the availability of whoever is already there — who is precisely the person with the least time to spare.
In the first ninety days
The probation period exists to be used, and using it requires follow-up. A short conversation at thirty, sixty and ninety days, with written notes, turns a difficult, late decision into a sequence of small corrections.
Most first-year departures are predictable by the second month. What is missing is not information, it is the formal moment to record it.
What gets kept on record
Every hire should leave behind a minimum record: contract, mandatory notifications made, equipment assigned, access granted. This is not paperwork for its own sake — it is what allows for a clean exit later, and what the company will need to check when a question comes up about seniority, holidays, or equipment still to be returned.
It is the same principle that applies to payroll processing: whatever is not recorded at the right moment is always more expensive to reconstruct later.