Position management thought leadership series

© 2012 Presence of IT – Confidential & Proprietary

Human Capital ServicesThought leadership series

Determining the value and contribution impacts to HR management by using “Position Management” techniques and tools

June 2012

© 2012 Presence of IT – Confidential & Proprietary2

What is “Position Management” rom a non-system perspective, Position Management

is the HR administrative function of defining a role

within an organisation structure, and determining the associated attributes of that particular role. In the pure sense, the role description is not associated with an employee or group of employees, but rather based on the requirements of the organisation or business unit.

Traditionally the role would be written up based on a standard template or guideline, and would pass through a form of grading or assessment to determine its relative worth against other roles or positions. The outcome of the assessment would allow for other data such as salary bands, benefits, reporting relationships and working conditions to be associated with that particular role.

An important aspect of defining these roles would be the application of consistent ‘rules’ and definitions to support the typical HR reporting and analytical requirements, alignment with internal or external job survey data and more importantly, the ability to ensure equality across the organisation where the management of the ‘hire-to-retire’ processes is decentralised across functions and/or geographies.

In highly structured organisations, where people costs are budgeted and strongly controlled, the standardised role management activity plays a significant part in controlling and managing the budgets. In highly unionised

environments, the ability to have consistency across roles reduces the risk of having the organisation exposed. In organisation that are unstructured and continually recreating new roles, the traditional form of Position Management may stifle the operating approach and tends to be viewed as non value adding by line managers.

In deciding to use the concept of Position Management, one should be aware that it will be an influential instrument across the HR administrative function, and will require a high level of acceptance and commitment to particular processes from HR staff as well as line management, employees and employee representative bodies to remain effective and be of benefit to the organisation.

F


Position Management in HR systems odern day HR systems provide the ability to

store the information derived from a role

definition so that it can be used to better manage HR processes such as:

• Recruitment

• Budgets

• Vacancy management

• Strategic workforce planning

• Performance reviews

• Organisational structures

• Workflow actions

• Automation of events

• Mass adjustments

At its full strength, Position Management is regarded as the “Heart” of the HR system in many respects. Its influence across the HR and Talent modules in the HRIS is typically significant, however, on the counter-side, the mismanagement of this system tool is likely to have severe consequences for the effectiveness of HR management and the respect and trust of the HR function and systems.

The HR system “position” should be viewed as an empty chair. The chair has attributes such as a job

title, job code, salary band, grade and benefits which are inherited by the employee who occupies the chair. The advantage of setting up a position is that you don’t need an employee at the time of setting it up. It also means that if an employee leaves or moves to a different position, you don’t need to redefine those attributes for the replacement employee.

Typically most HR Position Management tools do provide levels of flexibility to users, and in most cases allow you to run the HR system without Position Management, use it partially, or use it fully. The decision behind the degree of use will be driven by a number of critical attributes:

• The stability of the organisational structures

• Security and workflow requirements

• Employees holding multiple positions

• The need to act spontaneously

• The extent of financial control required

• The level of unionisation

• The consistency of people and compensation policy

One should note that if Position Management is only partially used, the main benefits around headcount and budget controls are lost, and the key benefit becomes the ability to store relevant information on position to support reporting.

M


Positions, jobs and job families n managing positions within your HR system, it’s

important to understand the relationship and differencebetween two other system attributes; jobs and job families. The graphic below provides a simple understanding of the three elements.

In simple terms, jobs and job families are optional attributes that can be associated with the position, assuming that your HRIS has this capability. These attributes can be powerful instruments for reporting and analytics, but can also house

data that is inherited by the position. For example, if you set up a job called “Engineer” and store attributes that are common to all engineering jobs, such as grade, training and professional association, then these attributes will be inherited by any position that is created and linked to that job. In most modern systems, the attributes stored in the job level are able to be overwritten at the position level if

required. The job association is attractive for organisations who run reports and analytics around categories of positions (e.g. workforce planning), and this attribute reduces the risk of missing out key positions in that search. In highly regulated organisations, the ability to do mass changes to employees via changes at the job level is a powerful administration tool. We would however advise that you fully understand the risks within your own system around job attributes and ensure you have sufficient skill and knowledge to manage actions such as anomalies at

the position or employee level. The job family is a simple grouping of like-type jobs, that again mainly support reporting and analytics. Normally, a job can belong to more than one family, however this can lead to ‘double-counting’ if not managed carefully.

I


Making the initial decision here are essentially three options around using

Position Management in your system. Each of these are discussed in some more detail below.

No Position Management

If your organisation is fluid, a broader grouping of employees is utilised, you have a highly contingent workforce, and new jobs are often created—then driving the system by employee would be the optimum choice. This method is useful for organisations expanding rapidly, or for organisations that often have new projects requiring the creation of new jobs or job types regularly. Forcing Position Management into this environment will frustrate line management and create process bottlenecks.

Implement full Position Management

If your organisation is fairly static, jobs and job descriptions are mostly fixed, and people move in and out of them—then driving your HR system by position would be the optimum choice. For example, government agencies, hospitals and hierarchically structured organisations who typically budget by position and FTE’s, often well in advance of filling them, find this method very useful.

Implementing partial Position Management

In order to utilise the structure and rules inherent in Position Management, but still have the need for an unstructured approach, many HR systems can be set to

optimise partial position management. In some areas of the organisation, driving the system by employee is preferred, while in other areas of the organisation, the business process requires driving the system by position. For example, you might find that driving the system by position serves well for only some departments or management levels in the company, and that driving the system by employee works well for others.

If you decide to use a partial approach, then you should also be aware of the limitations around reporting, budgeting and headcount management. You will need to introduce secondary and perhaps manual steps to produce accurate system outputs, as well as higher system maintenance requirements as people move between roles.

T

?


One-to-one or many-to-one position management nce you have made your decision to use Position

management, the next critical upfront decision to make is whether to link every employee to a

unique position or to link many employees to one position. While most HR system vendors will promote the use of a one-to-one relationships, it’s more common to find both methods in use. It’s important to note that the less standardised your HR policies and procedures are, and the greater degree of flexibility that your line managers have over employee job, benefits and compensation decision, the more likely you will benefit from a one-to-one Position Management approach.

You will recall the concept of inheritance discussed earlier in this document, where employees inherit data from a position when they are hired into that particular role. Every time a change is made to position data (or job data, if this is also used), then all the employees linked to that position will automatically inherit those changes into their personal data records. In theory this may be fine, but the realities are that people in similar or the same roles often have personal differences that could be historic in nature or purposefully agreed to by a manager. These differences could range from simple job title differences, reporting line anomalies, hours of work, cost splitting, work locations, to more complex issues around salary banding.

Another reason that supports the one-to-one approach is the way your particular HR system makes use of system

positions to manage workflow and messaging, reporting structures and organograms, as well as access to employee and manager tools such as ESS and MSS.

Strong consideration should be given to other system which are interfaced to your HR system. The requirements and limitations of those systems are often dealt with easier from a technology perspective with a one-to-one approach.

A many-to-one approach is useful for employees who are contingent and don’t have the same needs as permanent employees. In many contingent workforce situation, the payment to those individuals is via the accounts payable system and the need to build full job and position definitions is not required. If the HR system is the provider of data to other critical systems, and the nature of your business is to bring on contingent resources without reasonable notice, then the many-to-one option can be utilised to reduce or eliminate process bottlenecks and negative impacts on people getting access to a business site and / or required tools and systems.

O


Business value he value derived from using Position Management

should be seen in the context of good HR practices. There are two matters we highlight in this section;

namely HR maturity, and alignment of HR strategies to the overall business strategy.

HR MaturityYour organisations ability to execute effective HR management and solutions is directly related to the level of HR maturity in the organisation. This maturity level should not be confused with competence of individuals in the HR department, but rather talks to how senior and executive management position and support the HR function. If the maturity level is low, the requirements and behaviours of the business to ensure Position Management will be successful will be difficult to implement and maintain.

We advise organisations to be on a minimum level of 2 on the maturity scale (see graphic), with intentions and programmes in place to shift to a level 3. The key reason

for this advise, is that it’s only at a score closer to 3 that we see line managers making conscious connections between HR professional practices and people performance.

Alignment to business strategies

The key question that should be answered by HR departments wanting to implement Position Management is what business strategies and goals will be supported and / or achieved by introducing Position Management ? Whilst it can be viewed as simply an administrative tool for HR system users, the need to create “line of sight” between the tool and business objectives will be critical in obtaining the support of business leaders.

Consideration should also be given to how the introduction of Position Management will require adjustments to other HR and talent processes, systems, forms, documentation and approaches. We recommend a landscape and impact assessment is conducted to highlight risks, issues and opportunities that Position Management will have on existing people, process and technology layers.

T


Typical outputs from using Position Management he expected outputs from using Position

Management will vary depending on the extent of its use in your

organisation (full versus partial). The following list is typical for organisations that implement the tool fully:

• Improved data integrity and reduction of data entry errors• Facilitates FTE budgeting and planning• Accurate tracking of vacancies and the reduction of risks

within the recruitment process• Ability to store job and position data electronically for easy

reuse and access by HR and line managers• Improves data accuracy for job assignments• Reduction of data entry during the hire process• Strong support and association with talent and learning

attributes used in performance management, career and succession planning

• Effective management of compensation structures• Effective management of job codes linked to job and salary

survey data• Supports accuracy of reporting and organogram

development• Ability to do reporting and analytics by groupings such as

‘job’ and ‘job family’ • Richer reporting capability around information linked to

jobs and positions• Reduced risk in inaccurate headcount reporting• Mass changing of data for improved administration

efficiency• Improved integration capability with IT security and

credentialing

Critical success factorsIn our experience the following actions are critical to the successful use of Position Management:

• There are clearly defined business reasons for implementing Position Management, and it is understood and accepted by the executive and line management

• The HR function is operating at a minimum of a level 2 on the HR maturity scale, and there is general acknowledgment that HR administration is of a high delivery standard

• The recruitment, learning, talent and compensation centres of excellence or departments are supportive and involved of the initiative

• Prior to implementing Position Management, a full assessment of the technical and functional landscape is undertaken to ascertain risks, issues and integration requirements

• Set up the initiative as a project and include resources with experience in Position Management and specific HR system experience

• Run a pilot for an appropriate division to build internal learning and experience

• Be prepared to manage negative perceptions and behaviours at the line manager level. Effective change management and learning should be considered

T


About us?About Presence of IT

Presence of IT is Australia’s leading consultancy in the world’s foremost HR/Payroll, Talent and Workforce Management solutions.

We provide thought leadership, process improvement, software implementation and support services in human capital management to Australia’s largest private and public sector organisations.

Our strength is the excellence of our people and our focus is on our clients. This focus has seen us evolve into a global organisation to better support our clients in their respective markets across the world.

Why Excellence in People?

The term Excellence in People reflects what we value as a company. Our focus has always been on employing the very best people and developing close partnerships with our clients, to provide the best possible solutions.

Put simply, we have excellent people who help our clients achieve excellence in the management of their people.

About the author

Rob Scott is the National leader for the Human Capital Services division of Presence of IT. Human Capital Services focus on strategy, process, change management and learning for clients wanting to leverage HR and people related technologies.

Over the last 24 years, Rob has developed expert knowledge and experience in the areas of Human Resources management, HR strategy optimisation, transformation and the leveraging of technology in the broader people environment.

He has played leading consulting roles in people system implementations, large scale project management, business & system requirements, strategic development, strategic workforce planning, talent and learning strategies as well as change leadership activities. He has successfully integrated his business, psychology, technical, and HR background into a broad value adding service to clients. Rob is a challenging consulting professional and is recognised as a thought leader within Presence of IT. Prior to joining Presence of IT Human Capital Services, Rob was an associate director at a global consultancy where he headed up the HR Transformation division.

You can follow Rob on Twitter @robscottinsyd or his blog at http://robertscott.wordpress.com


Thought leadership series

Views expressed in this document are those of Presence of IT based on our broad experiences with local and global clients who use HR, talent and workforce management solutions. Some content may have been derived or used from public domain information.

Whilst we are providing our best-practice views in this document, they should not be construed as professional advise for your organisation or your particular situation. We would recommend that you use this information to increase your understanding and awareness of Position Management, but seek professional assistance to further evaluate your environment and determine your needs.

+61 1300 665 503 +65 6818 6269 +1 404 307 4941 +1 905 441 6343