Introduction
The offer letter is a formal offer of employment to a candidate for a job. It usually includes the prospective employee's start date, formal job title, manager, pay/salary, other compensation, and conditions for employment. This article answers frequently asked questions about the offer letters in Fidelity Private Shares.
Why does the platform ask for salary, manager, and other terms stated in the offer letter?
We ask for this data because the data, such as salary in the Employee Record, keeps a clear log of salary history. We use data like the employee's manager in multiple places, most notably to generate the company's organizational chart correctly. Every piece of information that we ask for is used somewhere in your account to allow you to better manage your employees.
Does the offer letter grant the employee shares?
Offer letters sometimes include equity as part of the employee's compensation. The number of shares the employee will receive may be stated in the offer letter (usually in the compensation section). However, this does not actually give the employee those shares--it is only a promise of equity. The board must approve the grant, a grant agreement must be executed, and the employee must purchase the shares. If the offer was generated through the platform, the system will remind the user of the promised shares the next time the Grant Shares workflow is run.
How do I add an End Date to an offer letter?
If you are generating an offer letter on the platform and the employee will have a specified end date that needs to appear in his/her offer letter, you can easily specify one. Do this by going all of the way to the Checkpoint screen in the Add Employee workflow and then click the Edit Document button next to the offer letter. You'll find the Include End Date term in the Title section.
Can the initiator of the workflow be notified after the company signatory signs the offer letter?
Many companies have one person who creates the offer letter, and another person (perhaps the company President or CEO) who signs the offer letter. If this is the case for your company, you may find it helpful to set up an alert for the initiator that will let them know when the company signer has signed the offer letter.
You can put the offer letter initiator on the list of people to be notified via email when the offer letter is signed by following these instructions:
- Access the Administration workspace by selecting the gear icon on the lower left-hand side of your Company workspace.
- Click on the Offer Workflows button on the HR Settings panel.
- Find the List of users to receive alert when offer letter released to employee box and list the people you'd like to receive this notification.
What if I have an employee transitioning to a consultant? How can I record that in my account?
- Allowing shares to continue vesting or not. Does your employee have shares or options that are currently vesting? If so, and you'd like to have their shares stop vesting, then you can run the Termination workflow. If so, and you'd like these shares to continue vesting, do not terminate them. If they have no shares to begin with, you can move on to step two.
- Changing their role. If you have an employee in the platform currently, and you'd like to transition them to a consulting role, you'll run the Add Consultant workflow for that person.
Additional Resources
Employee Confidentiality and Assignment Agreements
We now offer advanced HR capabilities for growing teams called HR Plus. The platform automatically links employment offers to equity management, ensures employment documents and IP assignments are complete and ready for diligence, and manages exercise windows and equity repurchase at separation. With HR Plus, you can extend your subscription with a suite of features that make onboarding and managing employees even easier. If you would like to see a demo of HR Plus or have it enabled, please speak with your Customer Success Manager.
Fidelity Private Shares LLC provides cap table management and other administrative services to private companies and their equity compensation plans.
Fidelity Private Shares LLC
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