Onboarding seasonal staff before the busy season
How a hotel or restaurant can prepare a group of seasonal staff before day one, and get them into payroll so their first pay run is right.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Hospitality businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
The busy season starts on a Friday. On Thursday afternoon, a group of new waiters, room attendants and kitchen hands arrives, and the first hours go on finding uniforms, filling in forms, hunting for the person who sets up till logins, and explaining where the staff entrance is. By Friday night some are working without knowing the menu, and by the first payday at least one is missing from the pay run because their bank details were still on a scrap of paper.
Seasonal hiring compresses months of onboarding into a few days. The hotels and restaurants that handle it well do most of the work before the staff arrive. Here is a way to plan it, drawing on the Society for Human Resource Management's (SHRM) onboarding guidance and on how the payroll side works in Achekam.
Orientation is the paperwork; onboarding is the rest
SHRM defines onboarding as the process of integrating new employees into an organisation, including orientation and opportunities to learn about its structure, culture, vision, mission and values. It draws a clear line between the two: orientation covers paperwork and other routine tasks, while onboarding is a comprehensive process involving management and other employees that can last up to 12 months.
A seasonal worker may be with you for a few weeks rather than a year, but the distinction still matters. If day one is all forms, the new waiter learns where to sign and nothing about how your restaurant treats its guests. Move the forms earlier, and day one can be about the work.
SHRM lists four integral onboarding components: preboarding, orientation, foundation building, and mentoring and buddy systems. A seasonal plan can touch all four in a compressed form.
Preboarding: before the first shift
SHRM suggests preboarding activities such as inviting new employees to tour the facility, sending informational material, providing care packages and assigning a buddy before their official start date. For a hotel taking on seasonal staff, that might look like:
- a short walk-through of the property a few days before the start, in small groups;
- a message with the staff entrance, the uniform pick-up time, the shift pattern and the name of their supervisor;
- the menu, the drinks list or the room-cleaning standard, sent in advance to study;
- a named buddy from the permanent team for each newcomer, introduced before the first shift.
Collect the paperwork in the same step: identity documents, tax numbers, bank details and emergency contacts, gathered by a set date before arrival rather than on the morning.
Systems ready before anyone walks in
SHRM describes Facebook's "45-minute rule", under which new employees can begin work within 45 minutes of arriving because their systems and devices were set up before their first day. A restaurant does not need laptops, but the principle carries over directly:
- a till login for every waiter and bartender, created and tested in advance;
- access cards or keys for the staff areas they need;
- uniforms sized and ready;
- their names already on the roster and in payroll.
A newcomer who can sign in at the till in their first half hour is serving guests rather than waiting around.
Loading the whole group into payroll at once
In Achekam, employees can be added one by one or imported from a CSV file, and the import checks every row and writes all rows or none. For a seasonal intake, the import is the sensible route: prepare one spreadsheet with the whole group, import it, and fix any row the check rejects before trying again. Because nothing is written until every row is valid, you never end up with half the group loaded and half missing.
Bank details need a second pair of eyes. An employee's bank account entered or changed by one person must be verified by another person before it is paid in the payment schedule or bank file. Plan for that: the person who loads the file is not the person who verifies the accounts, and the verification is done against the documents the staff supplied, well before the first pay date. A seasonal intake is exactly when a fake employee or a swapped account number is easiest to slip in.
Weekly runs and payslips staff can fetch themselves
Pay runs in Achekam can be monthly, fortnightly or weekly, with each period's overtime, commission, allowances, reimbursements and unpaid leave entered as variable inputs. Many hotels pay seasonal staff weekly, which suits people who may leave after a few weeks and want their money as they go. Weekly pay runs for casual and shift staff covers that run in detail, and setting up a first payroll covers the groundwork if this is your first season on the system.
Short-stay staff often leave before the payslip queries arrive. A staff member whose login is linked to their payroll record can download their own payslips, apply for leave, and submit expense claims, detail changes or a new bank account for payroll to decide. An approved bank change still needs a second person to verify it. Link each seasonal worker's login to their payroll record during onboarding, and they can fetch their own payslips after they have gone home.
A timeline for the intake
- Confirm offers and send the preboarding message.
- Collect documents and bank details by a fixed date.
- Build the import file, load it, and have a second person verify the bank accounts.
- Create till logins and link staff logins to payroll records.
- Hold the walk-through and introduce the buddies.
- Day one: short orientation, then shadowing on the floor.
SHRM's complete employee onboarding guide explains the four components and gives more preboarding ideas than a seasonal plan will need.
Work backwards from your opening date this year, and give every step a name and a deadline. A season that starts calmly tends to stay that way.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
