Core HR Basic Concepts

What is Human Resources Management?

Any successful enterprise needs to search for new ways to streamline the processes. One of the important aspects for any enterprise is Workforce. This is nothing but the labor force or personnel.

Human Resources Management is used for addressing the employees’ aspect of this continuous improvement. It helps the enterprises in reviewing and improving their business functions related to the personnel management.

Oracle Human Resources – Salient features

·         Manage the entire recruitment cycle

·         Design organizational models that match current and future business strategies and objectives

·         Perform position management by defining and recording required skills, competencies, experience and qualifications for positions, jobs and organizations

·         Perform career management functions relating to the definition of competencies, assessments, suitability matching, graphical ranking and succession planning

·         Administer and maintain benefits plans, coverage levels and contribution allocations

·         Manage salary proposals and approve these by component

Work Structures

Work structures represent the different ways in which employees can work within the enterprise. These are the frameworks for defining the assignments for the employees. These can be also understood as the representation of the units within the enterprise. The Business Group is the largest unit and represents the enterprise as a whole.

Work structures include internal organizations (e.g. departments, divisions etc.), payrolls, jobs, positions, grades, grading structures and the employee grouping used in the enterprise.

People

People are the nucleus of any enterprise. Oracle HRMS gives the ability to hold information about the current employees, ex-employees, applicants, contacts and contingent workers. Along with the standard information, the system can store the information about the addresses, phones, nationality, qualifications, absence history, interview records etc. Special information can defined to store any other information for the employees. E.g. special information could be languages known or hobbies. Work related information such as preference of working hours (shifts), hours of work could also be maintained.

Assignments

Assignment for an employee is nothing but the employee’s place within the enterprise. The assignment gives information about the organization for which the employee works. The details about the employee’s location, job, role, position, grade, location, payroll, supervisor, working hours and loads of other information can also be obtained from assignment data. As and when the information about the employee assignment is changed, a work history is automatically built up for the employee.

Assignments are also used to group people for reporting, managing and costing purposes. Compensation, benefits planning and administration could also be done with the help of the assignments.

Date Tracking

Typical data that changes for any enterprise includes corporate restructuring, employee development related changes, departmental changes etc. Using Oracle HRMS, the changes can be effectively managed without the need of redefining of the parts.

These changes could be either Dated or Date Tracked.

Dated

Work Structures related data is dated. Dates can be attached to a work structure to maintain the versions ad the structure changes. The previous structure can be maintained as historical data and a new version can be created with the future dates. In Oracle HRMS, the information related to organizations, jobs, grades, locations is dated. The work structure is active as of a Date From, which is entered while defining it. It remains valid till the Date To. A work structure cannot be assigned to an employee before the Date From or after the Date To.

Date Tracked

The dynamic information related to the employees, employee assignments, compensations and benefits is date tracked. Date tracking is a feature available in HRMS, which is useful in maintaining history of the data when any changes are made. To view the date tracked data from the front end, effective start date needs to be set. The setting of effective date ensures that the data effective only of that date is available for the users to view, change, validate or report. When any changes are done to the data, the user can choose whether the change would be a correction to the last changes or a new update that needs to be recorded in the history. The Set effective date option is available on the screens which deal with the date tracked data. This is discussed in details in the technical section for date tracking.

Organization

Navigation: Work Structures à Organization à Description

Business Group

In Oracle HRMS, the enterprise needs to be represented as an employer. This can be done by creating Business Group. Business Group is the largest organizational unit that is set up. Depending on the need, a single business group or multiple business groups can be set up. The defaults entered for a business group are the information that will generally apply to the people entered for that particular business group. These defaults can be overridden.

While setting up the business group, following information needs to be set up:

·         Employee Number Generation for Employees and Applicants (Manual/Automatic)

·         National Identifier Generation only for Employees (Manual/Automatic)

·         Key flexfield structures that would be used in the business group.

·         Legislation code and default currency

Government Reporting Entity

This is available for selected legislations e.g. US. One more GREs can be set up within a business group. GRE organization is recognized as an employer by the government.

Representing Organizations

All the levels of an enterprise can be represented using Internal Organizations and External Organizations.

Internal Organizations are the departments, divisions or branches where the employees work.

External Organizations could be the hiring agencies, contractors, training institutes etc.

Location

The locations need to be set up before an organization can be defined. This is the exact location of the organization along with the address and phone number.

Navigation: Work Structures à Location

Organization Classifications

This describes the purpose and use of the organization. The organization must be classified as an HR Organization to assign employees. 

Tables

·         HR_LOCATIONS_ALL

·         HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS – LOCATION_ID is linked with HR_LOCATIONS_ALL.LOCATION_ID

·         HR_ORGANIZATION_INFORMATION – Stores the classification and the business group details. ORGANIZATION_ID is linked with HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS.ORGANIZATION_ID

Note: The data stored in above details is for a business group. In case of a Global implementation, data for all the business groups will be stored in these tables.

The field business_group_id stores the id of the business group.

Jobs

Navigation: Work Structures à Job à Description

An employee’s primary role is set up using a job. It is a generic role within the business group that is independent of the organization. E.g. manager job can be present in any organizations.

Job Name is a key flexfield. Each job is held in a job group. A job group stores the jobs of similar types. All the jobs defined in HRMS for employees must be a part of the default HR Job Group.

Job Group Navigation: Work Structures à Job à Job Group

Tables

·         PER_JOB_DEFINITIONS – Stores the segment of the KFF. This is linked to fnd tables that store the KFF structure details.

·         PER_JOB_GROUPS

·         PER_JOBS – JOB_DEFINITION_ID is linked with PER_JOB_DEFINITIONS.JOB_DEFINITION_ID. JOB_GROUP_ID is linked with PER_JOB_GROUPS.JOB_GROUP_ID.

Note: The data stored in above details is for a business group. In case of a Global implementation, data for all the business groups will be stored in these tables.

The field business_group_id stores the id of the business group.

Position

Navigation: Work Structures à Position à Description

Position is a specific occurrence of a job. Position is fixed within an organization. E.g. Sales Manager is an occurrence of the job Manager in the Sales Organization. Similarly, HR Manager will be one more occurrence of the same job in the HR Organization. There could be one or many holders of the position in an organization. This is a key flexfield.

A Position is defined for an Organization and a Job. Positions data is date tracked.

Note: The data stored in above details is for a business group. In case of a Global implementation, data for all the business groups will be stored in these tables.

The field business_group_id stores the id of the business group.

Grade

Navigation: Work Structures à Grade à Description

Grades are used to decide the relative status of employee assignments. Compensation and Benefits are also decided based on the grades. E.g. Salary, company cell phone, company car – decided based on the grades. This is a key flexfield.

Valid grades could be defined for a job or for a position. A grade could be a valid grade either for a job or for a position. A single grade cannot be valid one for both a job and a position.