Redefining Compliance: Onboarded's Approach to the Forms Experience

As states prepare to issue their updated 2024 state income tax withholding forms, employers face the perennial challenge of keeping their onboarding workflows compliant and up to date. And keeping up with these document changes is only part of the equation: To compete for talent, employers need efficient consumer-driven workflows–not more linkouts to “fillable” PDFs. That’s where Onboarded comes in.

Rethinking Forms with Consumer Experience in Mind

Completing government forms, like the I-9 and state income tax withholding certificates, are among the first assigned tasks a new employee completes. As an employer, you’d like that initial experience to go well. Unfortunately, these forms aren’t exactly designed with a delightful consumer experience top of mind. Instead, they elicit feelings of confusion and frustration. So that’s the challenge: how do you transform something like an Illinois Employee Withholding Allowance Certificate (IA W-4 ), into something much more like an online shopping experience, where every click matters and time is a precious asset.  

At Onboarded, we’ve built something much more than a “form” builder. Our tools are designed to transform these necessary compliance tasks into streamlined experiences. We take a holistic approach that starts with understanding the purpose of each form. We then carefully evaluate the order, progression, validation, and education necessary to drive a fundamentally different experience.

We structure forms logically–creating workflows that actually make sense. This might mean changing the order of questions or using conditional logic to bypass irrelevant sections. For example, in the case of tax withholdings, we can avoid the rabbit hole of dependent calculations for those claiming exempt. Our approach makes completing forms less of a chore and more of an informed journey.

The Onboarded Compliance Library

‍We maintain a growing library of consumer-driven experiences built on top of government forms. But more than that, we keep them up to date. When a new I-9 is released, or states issue their 2024 withholding certificates, we ensure that our library has the latest available. Our library goes well beyond state withholding forms: wage notices, electronic delivery consent, background check disclosure and authorizations, required policy disclosures, and the list goes on. We bring the same approach to building consumer-driven experiences.

We believe that these form experiences are about respect. Respect for your internal HR teams stuck trying to keep up with these changing laws and forms. And respect for your new hires. Having your first assigned task be completing a confusing government form sends an unintended message–we don’t respect your time or your brainpower. When you onboard a new employee, you are building a relationship with them. Start that relationship right.

**Tyler Browne, Head of Compliance & Operations at Onboarded. Tyler is an attorney with 10+ years of regulated product development, including compliance and operations teams at Checkr and Apple. He’s a father of 2 and is no slouch with a spreadsheet.

Want to learn more? We’re here to help. Book some time with me directly over the holidays.