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Interpreters for Employee Onboarding and Benefits Enrollment

A new employee who does not read English well is asked, in their first week, to sign an I-9, choose a health plan, name a beneficiary and learn the pay rules. Several of those steps have language rules of their own. Here is which ones, who has to provide the help, and how an employer books an interpreter for orientation or open enrollment.

Does an employer have to provide an interpreter for onboarding?

Not for onboarding as a whole: we found no rule that requires one. But several pieces of onboarding have language rules, and some of them put the duty on someone other than the employer. Required safety training must be given in a language workers understand (see interpreters for workplace safety training). The rest are below.

Form I-9. USCIS says preparers and translators can help employees complete Section 1; the employee still signs, and each preparer or translator must give their name and address and sign a certification on Supplement A, which the employer keeps with the form. Only employers in Puerto Rico may use the Spanish-language I-9 instead of the English one, but any employer may use the Spanish form and instructions as a translation tool.

Benefit plans. Under ERISA, a plan where enough participants are literate only in the same non-English language — 25% of a plan with fewer than 100 participants, or the lesser of 500 people or 10% of a larger plan — must put a notice in that language in the summary plan description offering assistance, and the assistance must be given in that language, though it need not involve written materials (29 CFR 2520.102-2(c)). Group health plans and insurers must provide the summary of benefits and coverage in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner, which means, for addresses in counties where 10% or more of residents are literate only in the same non-English language, oral language services such as a telephone hotline and written notices in that language on request (29 CFR 2590.715-2719(e)). If the plan or the insurer has to provide that help, use it: employees should not be paying for it, and the employer should not either. Employers book us for the meeting itself — the orientation, the enrollment session, the one-on-one with the benefits team — which those rules do not cover.

Form I-9 with an interpreter

An interpreter can render Section 1 aloud in the employee's language and the employee's answers back, and the Spanish-language form can sit on the table as a guide while the English form is completed. Two practical points follow from the USCIS rule. First, the person helping is a translator for Supplement A purposes and has to complete and sign a certification block with their name and address, dated the same day the employee signs; tell us in the request if the interpreter will help with Section 1, so they know to expect it. Second, the employee signs their own attestation: the interpreter renders the attestation, including the penalty warning, in full, and does not sign anything for the employee.

Section 2 is the employer's. The interpreter renders what the employer says about the documents the employee has brought; questions about which documents are acceptable go to the employer, who should answer them from the USCIS instructions, not to the interpreter.

What a benefits enrollment session asks of the interpreter

Benefits vocabulary is technical and often has no exact equivalent in the employee's language or health system: premium, deductible, copayment, coinsurance, out-of-pocket maximum, in-network, HSA and FSA, dependent eligibility, waiting period, vesting, employer match, beneficiary designation. The federal rule on the summary of benefits and coverage requires plans to make available a uniform glossary of many of these terms; send it to the interpreter with the plan summaries a few days before, and the session will be faster and more precise.

The interpreter renders the benefits representative's explanation; they do not recommend a plan, compare options of their own accord, or tell an employee which box to tick. If the enrollment is online and the portal is in English, share the screen and have the interpreter read each screen aloud in the employee's language as the employee completes it. Beneficiary designations and opt-outs should be confirmed back aloud before submission: they are the choices people discover too late that they did not mean.

Day one: pay, schedules and workplace rules

• Pay notices. Some states require written pay notices in the employee's language. New York, for example, requires a notice of pay rate at hiring, given in English and in the employee's primary language where the state offers a template in it (New York State Department of Labor). The interpreter can explain the notice; the written notice itself is the employer's to provide.
• English-only rules. If the employer has a rule that employees speak English at certain times, the EEOC says the employer should tell employees when it applies and the consequences of breaking it, and treats failure to notify effectively as evidence of discrimination (29 CFR 1606.7(c)). Telling them in a language they do not understand is not effective notice.
• Timekeeping, breaks, overtime and how pay is calculated are worth going through with the interpreter, with the actual timeclock and pay stub in front of the employee.
• The handbook and policies should exist in writing in the language if employees will need to consult them; an interpreted meeting is remembered for a week, a document stays.

Booking orientation and open enrollment

In person is $110 per interpreter per hour with a two-hour minimum. A new-hire orientation from 8 to 12 for a group of Spanish-speaking hires is 4 × $110 = $440, plus travel at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, confirmed before you book; if some of the group speaks Haitian Creole, that is a second interpreter, $880 in all. Three one-hour open enrollment sessions held back to back from 9 to 12 are $330; the same three sessions on three different days are three two-hour minimums, $660, so group them. One-on-one enrollment calls by phone or video are $80 for the first hour, with no travel.

Send with the request the dates, the number of employees in each language, the agenda, the plan summaries and glossary, the enrollment portal screens if possible, and whether the interpreter will help with Form I-9. Handbooks, policies and benefit summaries needed in writing are a separate translation service.

By video, by phone or in person

Virtual interpreting runs on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, or over the telephone. It is quicker to arrange, costs less and carries no travel charge, and it suits appointments, calls and most meetings.

In person is what venues with their own rules tend to expect, and the right choice when documents are being signed or several people are speaking at once. Tell us the platform, or the city and the venue, when you send the request.

Languages

The standard-availability languages are: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Polish, Italian, German, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Serbian, Bosnian, Somali and Nepali. Every other language we offer carries the 25–30% limited-availability rate. If a language is not on that list it is not because we cannot do it — it is because the pool of qualified interpreters in the United States is small enough that we will not promise a date without checking.

Each language has its own page on what to watch for — dialects, names, dates, who the speakers usually are: see interpreters by language.

What it costs

Rates are per interpreter, per hour, and billed from the scheduled start time rather than from when everyone actually arrives.

• Virtual — $80 per hour, one-hour minimum. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or telephone.
• In person — $110 per hour, two-hour minimum.
• Limited-availability languages — add 25–30%. Which languages those are is listed below rather than left vague.
• Travel for in-person work — $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location.

How the travel charge works out

Travel is charged at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, which means you can work it out rather than wait for a quote: a 20-mile round trip is $14, a 60-mile round trip is $42, a 150-mile round trip is $105. There is no separate call-out fee on top.

We will not pretend to know in advance where the interpreter will be coming from — that depends on the language, the date and the venue. What we do is confirm the interpreter and the exact travel figure before you book, so it is never a surprise on the invoice. Virtual assignments carry no travel charge at all, which is one reason most of what we do is virtual.

How booking an interpreter works

• You send the request with the form below: the language, the setting, the format, the date and how long it should last.
• We confirm before you commit: the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one. We reply the same business day, and no payment is taken at this stage.
• You confirm, and the interpreter is booked for your date.

What to have ready

The more of this comes in the first message, the fewer exchanges before you have a price:

• The language, the date, the start time and how long it should run.
• Virtual or in person: the platform, or the city and the venue.
• The setting and the subject matter.
• How many people need interpreting for.
• Any credential the venue requires of the interpreter.

Request an interpreter

Tell us the date, the language and the setting and we will come back with the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one — before you commit to anything.

Sources

What this page says about the rules was checked against these official sources on October 28, 2026. Rules change; the source is always the authority.

• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — I-9 Central: Completing Section 1, Employee Information and Attestation
• U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification (Spanish version and special instructions)
• 29 CFR 2520.102-2 — Style and format of summary plan description, (c) foreign languages (eCFR)
• 29 CFR 2590.715-2715 — Summary of benefits and coverage and uniform glossary (eCFR)
• 29 CFR 2590.715-2719(e) — Notices in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner (eCFR)
• 29 CFR 1606.7 — EEOC Guidelines on Discrimination Because of National Origin: speak-English-only rules (eCFR)
• New York State Department of Labor — Notice of Pay Rate (Wage Theft Prevention Act forms)

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