Employment Hero Onboarding Setup, Offboarding Included

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Checked against Employment Hero’s Help Centre and current Australian guidance on 13/08/2026.

The short version

1. Candidate uploads do not move into the employee file automatically, so required documents must be collected again during onboarding.
2. Termination preserves the employment record; deletion removes platform access and should be reserved for the right cases.
3. Offboarding works best when the Assets register and equipment-return tasks are configured before anyone leaves.

Full detail below.

Why your Employment Hero onboarding setup should cover offboarding too

A proper Employment Hero onboarding setup does more than get a new starter through their first week. Payd Co, as an Employment Hero Certified Partner, keeps finding the onboarding setup treated as a standalone project, with offboarding bolted on later. Offboarding checklists reuse the same building blocks: task groups, owners, due dates and subtasks. Building them apart means solving the same problem twice.

Treating onboarding and offboarding as one lifecycle lets both use the same owners, task groups and evidence controls.

The six phases of an Employment Hero onboarding setup

The setup breaks into six linked phases inside the HR technology configuration work we build. Following the order avoids collecting or correcting the same information twice.

• Contract templating: convert your standard agreements into reusable e-signature templates with merge fields, so every offer goes out ready to sign. The onboarding checklist also sets the document issue and signing sequence.
• Onboarding checklists: group admin tasks like IT and equipment with employee tasks like forms and induction videos into one checklist. Trigger it from the new starter’s employee file or the Employee management Actions menu, once their location, team and primary manager fields are correct. We cover those fields in a separate permissions setup guide.
• Candidate document handoff: files uploaded during an application do not move into the employee file when the candidate is hired. We add each required item to the onboarding checklist and collect it into the employee record before the task can be closed.
• Compliance documents: a Fair Work Information Statement goes out around the start date, and a handbook and policies are set as required reading. Induction Content is aimed at specific groups or locations, so each group or location sees only what applies to it.
• Self-service capture: new hires enter their own TFN, super fund and bank details, which flow straight into payroll without manual re-entry.
• Offboarding: a checklist that starts the moment a termination date is entered, access removal, a final pay trigger, and record retention for later audit.

The Assets register belongs in that last phase. Assign laptops, phones, uniforms, keys, vehicles and tools while the employee is active, then put each return into the offboarding checklist. The employee record provides the equipment list and the checklist provides the owner and due date, closing the most common offboarding gap without a separate spreadsheet. The wider module opportunity is covered in our Employment Hero ROI guide.

Terminate or delete: get the offboarding call right the first time

Employment Hero treats these as two different actions, not interchangeable, and getting this right matters for a clean offboarding process inside your onboarding setup. Pick the wrong one and you may not be able to undo it.

	Terminate	Delete
Employee record	Stays intact for later audit	Erased outright, nothing left to review
Learning platform account	Switched off	Left untouched
Can it be reversed	Yes, the employee can be reactivated	No, it is a one-way action
When to use it	Anyone who was employed	Duplicate or still-pending employee files only

Reactivating a terminated employee later does not wipe their history either. The offboarding tasks already completed stay on the record for audit purposes, which is why terminate, not delete, is the default answer for a genuine exit.

What the Open Beta manager reassignment step means for your offboarding order

This step is currently badged Open Beta by Employment Hero, so treat it as today’s behaviour in your onboarding setup, not a fixed rule. At present, offboarding a manager with direct reports requires lining up a replacement for each of them, one by one or in bulk, before the termination will complete. Pending leave, expense or timesheet approvals sitting with the outgoing manager reroute automatically to the new one, and the reassignment itself is logged in the audit trail.

In our implementations, we decide the reassignment approach before offboarding a manager with a large team, not partway through, because a termination stuck mid-process costs more than planning ahead. In the onboarding setup, set every offboarding checklist due date at least a day before the termination date, or Employment Hero may already flag the employee as offboarded and the notifications may not fire.

Build the compliance calendar around onboarding and offboarding, not around the software

The compliance side of an Employment Hero onboarding setup does not stop at the checklist. Employment Hero’s articles document the mechanics, not why the law requires them or when the regulator resets its own clock. That context sits with Fair Work, not the software.

Every new employee gets the Fair Work Information Statement before, or as soon as possible after, their start date. Casual starters also get the Casual Employment Information Statement at the same time, and Employment Hero emails the CEIS on a recurring schedule that cannot be switched off. Fair Work’s own page sets out the legal re-issue timetable, which varies by business size; the platform may send additional reminders. Our guide to Employment Hero compliance documents covers the related policies, work-eligibility checks and certification controls.

Time and wages records need to stay legible in English and open to inspection for seven years, and that access right does not expire when employment ends. When you offboard someone, final pay includes outstanding wages and unused annual leave, plus items such as notice or redundancy pay where they apply. Fair Work’s final-pay guidance says unused annual leave includes leave loading if the employee would have received that loading when taking the leave during employment. A term cannot remove an entitlement that otherwise applies. Timing follows the employee’s award, agreement and the Fair Work Act.

Where onboarding and offboarding data lands

Self-service capture only pays off if payroll is ready to receive it. New hire details, and the closing leave figures Employment Hero calculates on the Final Leave Entitlement screen, both need to land cleanly in your payroll platform instead of manual re-entry. We map that handoff as part of the payroll implementation process we run, because an onboarding setup that looks finished in HR but breaks the sync into payroll is not finished.

Check leave balances before you rely on the Final Leave Entitlement screen at offboarding too. If a balance already looks wrong, our separate guide on leave balances accruing incorrectly walks through the fix.

Sequencing decisions like these, not the individual button clicks, are where our implementation support work earns its keep in the onboarding setup.

Does Employment Hero automatically reassign a terminated manager’s direct reports, or do I have to do it myself?

No, not automatically in the sense of choosing who takes over. At present Employment Hero requires you to assign a replacement manager for each direct report yourself, one by one or in bulk, before the termination can be confirmed. This is currently badged an Open Beta feature by Employment Hero, so the exact behaviour may change. Once reassigned, pending leave, expense and timesheet approvals reroute automatically to the new manager, and the change is logged in the audit trail.

What’s the difference between terminating and deleting an employee in Employment Hero?

Terminating keeps the employee’s record intact, including their history, so it can be reviewed later for audit purposes, and it switches off instead of deletes their learning platform account. Deleting is a one-way action that erases the employee’s data outright, with nothing left to review afterward, so Employment Hero restricts it to duplicate or still-pending employee files. For anyone who was employed, terminate is the correct action, not delete.

Can a terminated employee still log in and see their old payslips in Employment Hero?

A terminated employee keeps narrow access, not none. Their file shrinks to six sections covering pay details, uploaded documents, HR documents, employment history, personal details and an overview, and exit interviews disappear the moment they are offboarded. Whether they can still see old payslips depends on a separate setting: the employer needs to have left Employee Portal access switched on in the payroll settings, which does not happen automatically just because the account was terminated instead of deleted.