Creating an ARC account is not the same as clearing someone to work. ARC holds those apart on purpose: an account without a complete safer-recruitment record cannot open a single home route. Every page sends the person back to a screen explaining what is still missing.

That gate is the reason this wizard exists, and the reason most of it is filled in by you rather than by them.

Sections A and B are the gate

Two blocks of the employment record have to be on file before the person can use the system:

Section A — personal and employment details. Date of birth, address, town, postcode, photograph, National Insurance number, emergency contact (name, relationship, phone), job title, employment status, contract type, contracted hours, start date and line manager. Plus a full employment history, with a written explanation of any gap longer than a month. Employed staff also need a probation end date — bank, agency and student placements do not.
Section B — safer recruitment. Proof of identity (document seen, date verified, who verified it). Right to work (same three). A criminal offences self-declaration and a health and fitness declaration. Whether the person has lived outside the UK — answered either way, and if yes, the countries and an overseas police check. An enhanced DBS check with a certificate number and issue date. And two written references received.

Leaving details — end date, reason for leaving — are excluded, for obvious reasons.

Most of Section B is verified by someone and recorded about the person. That is precisely why they cannot clear it themselves.

Working through the wizard

Add staff member, top right of Staff HR, opens a nine-step wizard.

Step	What it covers
Account	Who they are and how they sign in
Identity & contact	Personal details and next of kin
Employment	Role, contract and start date
Employment history	Full history, with any gaps explained
Identity & right to work	Documents seen and verified
Declarations	Criminal record and health
DBS	Certificate and Update Service
References	Two written references
Review	What is still outstanding

Each step saves as you advance. Walking away halfway leaves a real, resumable record rather than nothing — come back through Staff HR and pick up where you stopped. The step rail across the top lets you jump straight to any step once the account exists.

A few things worth knowing as you go:

The Account step creates the user and fixes their name, email and role; once created, those fields lock and ARC confirms "Account created. Continue filling in their record."
The photograph is an upload — JPEG, PNG or WebP. The field notes it is "Required by Schedule 2."
The probation end date must be in the future.
Conditional questions appear only when they apply: the overseas countries and police check when you answer yes to having lived abroad, the disclosure detail when anything is declared, the Update Service subscription number when the person is subscribed.
On the DBS step only Enhanced and Enhanced with barred list are offered, noted as "Regulated activity requires an enhanced check."
References takes a referee name, relationship and received date, with Add another referee for more. Two are required, "one of them from the most recent employer."

The Review step is the honest one

The last step reads the outstanding list from the server's own gate rules, not from a copy of them — so what it shows is exactly what the gate enforces.

If anything is missing you get "N items outstanding" and the list, above the line "This person cannot use the system until these are recorded. Their record is saved — you can come back and finish it."

When it is clear: "Record complete — Sections A and B are on file. This person can use the system."

What the person sees while it's incomplete

They are redirected to a page listing what is outstanding, with "Your staff profile is incomplete. A company admin or HR needs to finish it before you can use the system." Company admins and the HR role are never gated themselves — they are the people who fix it. See I'm stuck on "complete your profile".

Two things are worth knowing so you are not surprised:

Staff who already had an account are exempt. Turning the gate on did not lock out a live service; existing accounts carry an exemption.
Someone with no profile at all is not gated. The gate bites on an incomplete profile. Every route that creates a staff member opens a profile for them, so an account with none predates the feature.