New Employee, No Paperwork

“I hired a guy who showed up on his start date but didn’t return the next day and isn’t responding to my calls. I don’t yet have any of his paperwork completed to add him to payroll. What do I do?”

Your HR Survival Tip

While this isn’t an everyday occurrence, it does happen. This is a good reason to get all your new hire paperwork done as soon as the employee first reports to work.

As the employer, you may feel you don’t need to pay this person since you don’t have enough information to put them into your payroll system. Or perhaps you think you can just write them a check as an independent contractor. Both are wrong. This is treated basically the same as a longer-term employee who walks off the job. You have 72 hours to produce a final paycheck and wage statement (pay stub).

If no paperwork has yet been completed you probably don’t have the social security number, which is necessary to add the employee to payroll. However, you can still create a “manual check” through your payroll system… you just won’t save it because you can’t associate it with an employee in the  [click to read more …]