A practical Massachusetts restaurant onboarding checklist

Restaurant onboarding fails in a specific way: the paperwork is issued, partially completed, and then never closed out, because the new hire’s first shift arrives and wins. Six months later nobody can say whether the file is complete, and finding out means opening it.

The sequence below is organized by when each item has to happen, because timing is what actually goes wrong. Anything that can be done before the first shift should be done before the first shift.

Before the first shift

Everything in this section can be completed the day the offer is accepted. None of it needs the employee to be standing in your building.

• Offer details in writing. Role, pay rate, whether the role is tipped, whether it participates in a tip pool, and the start date. Verbal-only terms are the origin of a large share of later disputes.
• Federal Form W-4. Without it, withholding runs on a default that is usually wrong for the employee.
• Massachusetts Form M-4. The state withholding certificate. Frequently forgotten because the federal form feels like the whole job.
• Direct deposit authorization, if you pay that way.
• Handbook and policy acknowledgements. Signed, dated, filed. A policy you cannot show the employee received is difficult to enforce later — see the handbook guide.
• Emergency contact details. Trivial to collect on day zero, unpleasant to be missing on the day it matters.

On or around the first day

• Form I-9. Section 1 is completed by the employee no later than their first day of work for pay. Section 2 requires your manager to physically examine the employee’s documents within the federal deadline. This examination and attestation is the employer’s responsibility and cannot be delegated to a service provider — including to BOHO.
• Role certifications. Alcohol service and food-safety certifications relevant to the role, with the expiry date recorded so it can be tracked rather than rediscovered.
• System access. POS logins, scheduling app, and time clock set up under the employee’s own identity — never shared credentials, which make every later timecard question unanswerable.

On the payroll clock

These two items are tied to deadlines that run independently of your onboarding paperwork, which is precisely why they get missed.

• State new-hire reporting. Massachusetts requires new hires to be reported to the state directory. This is the single most commonly missed step in restaurant onboarding, because nothing inside the restaurant prompts it. See Mass.gov — Report new hires.
• Employee record created before the first run. Not after it. Someone who worked before a record existed generates a retroactive correction and an incomplete file at the same time.

Ongoing, from day one

• Earned sick time accrual begins with employment. Whether it is paid time turns on your employee count — a threshold a seasonal restaurant can cross without noticing. Check the current Mass.gov guidance against your own headcount rather than assuming last year’s answer holds.
• Certification expiry dates tracked, with a reminder that fires before the lapse rather than after it.
• I-9 re-verification dates tracked where applicable.
• Probation or first-review milestones diarised, if your handbook commits to them. A review your handbook promises and you never hold is a documented gap.

The file, six months later

The test of an onboarding process is not whether the packet went out. It is whether you can open the file in six months and answer four questions without hunting:

1. Is the I-9 complete, with Section 2 properly done and dated?
2. Are both withholding certificates present and current?
3. Did this person acknowledge the handbook, and which version of it?
4. Are their certifications current, and when do they expire?

If any answer requires a search, the process needs work — not the person.

A note on what this list is

This is an operational checklist for restaurant administration, not legal advice, and it is not a complete statement of every obligation that may apply to your restaurant. Requirements change and several of them turn on facts specific to you — headcount, entity structure, and the roles involved. Verify against the official sources linked below and your own advisers.

BOHO runs this sequence as onboarding administration for Massachusetts restaurants: documents issued, tracked, chased, filed, and reported on the payroll clock — with the I-9 examination and every hiring decision remaining yours.