HR Basics for Projects Analysts

Oracles Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS) consists of the following products: Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle Oracle Human Resources (HR or PER, Product Code 507 for Core HR and 1000 for US HR) Payroll (PAY, Product Code 506 for Core Payroll, 1000 for US Payroll) Advanced Benefits (OAB, Product Code 290) Training Administration (OTA, Product code 937) Time and Labor/Oracle Time Management (OTL,OTM, Product code 833) Self Service HR (SSHR, Product Code 507 with SS Components)

The focus of this document will be on the HR product due to its integration with Projects and other modules. The HR Product provides the ability to enter and maintain data related to employment. From a set up perspective, this includes how a company requires their jobs, grades, or positions to be structured. From an employee perspective, this includes data related to a persons employment: name, address, hire date, etc. Once defined, this information is used for internal and external recruitment, position management and headcount budgeting, career management assessment and planning, compensation and benefit designation and planning, and governmental reporting. Currently there is a product development group located in the UK that handles Core HR issues and a small team in the US that handles US, Canada, and South American legislative issues. Additionally, there are HR teams supporting many of the larger HR localizations world wide including Japan, France and Australia/New Zealand. The Payroll Product is used in conjunction with the HR Product for the purposes of generating valid paychecks to employees, valid pay and tax reports to the state and federal governments and valid and timely W-2s to employees at year end. Due to its mission critical and highly visible nature, the payroll product generates the most P1s and escalated issues for our customers and analysts. Like HR, there is a core Payroll Development team in the UK and a large Development team in the US that handles the many, many legislative issues surrounding US payroll. The US group is also working on the Canadian legislation. Advanced Benefits is a newly released product. It further enhances the base benefit functionality available in the core product by designating benefit plans, programs and options and supports cafeteria-style benefit plans and open enrollment. This year will be the first year with many customers using the product who are going through open enrollment for the first time. This product is still very much in ramp up mode for the HRMS analysts and has recently added a Self Service component. Oracle Training is used to track internal and external training activities, the resources required to support those activities as well as the students and payments related to attending training activities. OTA is widely used in international settings and the Development team is mainly located here in the US. Oracle Time Management is a means to capture employees time required for payroll payments. It is scheduled to be phased out in favor of the newly designed Oracle Time and Labor. OTL is still in early stages of rollout and there is on-going work to use it to replace Self Service Time/Oracle Internet Time. This development group is mainly here in the US. The Self Service HR Product is designed to allow employees to access their employment data and maintain their personal data. In addition, workflows are widely used to allow Supervisory and Management access to their employees employment data and functions to maintain data including employee reviews, promotions, etc. They are beginning to add more components from Payroll and Benefits under the Self Service umbrella. The Development group for this product is mainly here in the US.

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Base Structure of HRMS Data:

Work Structures

Employee Assignment Comp and Benefits People Info

Work Structures
This information represents how a company structures its enterprise data that is independent of employees. This data includes organization, location, job, position, and grade structures.

Compensation and Benefits - Information in this area of HRMS is related to the set up of elements that

represent salary and other pays, deductions and garnishments, and benefit plans. This includes basic data about a person, whether it is an employee, applicant, emergency contact, dependent, or contractor. Once defined all of the above datatypes are integrated into the creation of the employee assignment. The assignment represents, for a person defined as an employee (People Info), which job an employee has (Work Structures) and how much an employee gets paid (Comp and Benefits).

People Information -

Employee Assignment -

This HR module is the base required for the rest of the products under the HRMS suite. Employee and organizational data is widely used by the Financial and Manufacturing products as well.

Work Structures:
Work Structures related to HRMS Jobs, Positions, and Grades are types of work structures that need to be defined based on the structure defined for each in their respective Key Flexfields. Additionally, there are budgeting functionality that can be defined within the work structures. Work Structures of interest to Projects Locations - Locations are used to designate a physical address. Organizations - Organizations are used to represent various entities within a companies hierarchical structure: Departments, cost centers, divisions, store locations, regions, corporate headquarters, etc. Within the applications there are special organizations requiring additional set up that represent business groups, a government reporting entity, etc. There is a significant dependence on the organization information related to Projects at many levels. There is an excellent whitepaper written by Andrew Lumpe related to the organization tables and their technical structure and uses to the Projects module available at:
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http://www-apps.us.oracle.com/pa/collateral/white_paper/organizations_wp.pdf I strongly encourage that you read that document in conjunction with this one.

Organizational Hierarchies Hierarchies are used to specify levels within an organizational structure, most often in pyramid form in HRMS. Usually there is one top organization, the business group organization, that all other organizations report up to. Following the top level, there can be innumerable levels where organizations report to each other. The Organization that another organization reports to is referred to as the parent org for the hierarchy in question. Organizations can report to different parent organizations in different hierarchies. There is an unlimited number of hierarchies that can be established for various purposes, but one is considered Primary. Also within the individual hierarchy, several versions can exist based on organizational changes that occur through the life cycle of the company.

The Organization Hierarchy form takes a little getting used to in that all organizations will appear automatically in Organization Name field regardless of whether they are part of the hierarchy or not. Pay attention to the Exists in Hierarchy indicator to identify those organizations which are specific to a particular hierarchy. Typically youll want to scroll through or query that area for your top most organization in the hierarchy and then identify subordinates for the next level of the hierarchy. To add further levels, click on the Down button following the appropriate subordinate name. That name will now be in the Organization Name field and you can add its subordinates. To move back up through the hierarchy, simply click on the Up button.

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Business Groups: A business group is set up like any organization, but with a classification of Business Group. Business groups are usually used to designate the largest organizational unit within a companys structure. It can represent one or more companies or an entire corporation. One of the first decisions in implementing Oracle Applications is how many business groups are required. Companies that have multiple lines of business, may decide to set up a business group for each line of business. Alternately, a company may decide to create only one business group and use organizational hierarchies and security to separate the data related to separate lines of business. There are many issues requiring consideration before deciding which approach a company will take including security and accounting requirements. There is a significant amount of set up required for each business group. Data from multiple business groups cannot be viewed on-line at the same time due to relationship between a business group and a responsibility. Typically a business group is related to one legislation (US, UK, Canada, etc.), currency, and one set of books. If multiple sets of books are required, companies use the Muli-org functionality. Oracle seeds one defined business group upon install of the product called the Set Up Business Group. Many companies change the name of this organization (business group) while others set up a whole new business group. Those who choose to set up a new business group must also modify their responsibilities to point to the new business group(s).

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Data Required before Setting up a Business Group:

Employee and Applicant Number Generation - This determines if you will be automatically or manually assigning employee numbers to new employees or new applicants. Key Flexfields - The following flexfields need to be created and enabled before setting up a business group: Job Key Flexfield Position Key Flexfield Jobs are used to designate a role that the employee performs for the company. This KFF establishes a structure for naming a job. Like Manager.1001, for example. Positions are also used to designate a role within the organization. They are designed to be used in conjunction with jobs to further define exactly what the role does. It is not required to use positions and most HR companies opt not to use this feature, however it is very heavily tied to the Purchasing module. This KFF establishes a structure for naming a position (if used). Like Product Support Manager, for example. Grades are used to define a salary structure. They can be attached to either the Job or Position, if used. This KFF establishes a structure for naming a grade. Like A1.100 for example. People Groups are defined to identify groups of employees. In union shops there usually is a people group segment related to the union name. Other groups may include Sr. Mgmt indicator, Division or Location indicator, or Benefits group. The People Group KFF is a little different than the others because each segment is treated as an individual entity instead of one string of information. This KFF establishes segments for all groups a company needs to track like Union Name, for example. For most of our HRMS customers, this KFF is a duplicate of the GL Accounting KFF. The segments are usually identical and the value sets are/should be those used for GL. This is used for the Transfer to GL process out of Oracle Payroll. This KFF is new with the Competency Management Module and is used to designate competencies or skills that can be assessed by various means through the new functionality.

Grade Key Flexfield

People Group Key Flex

Cost Allocation KFF

Competence KFF

Oracle seeds a base structure for each of these KFFs. If you generate your own, all HR KFFs require that you to set Dynamic Inserts to Yes (check the box). Legislation Code - This is required to be set to the legislation that was determined upon applying the post install steps. Here in the US, it is typically set to US. Note that there can only be one legislation code per business group. Currency - This relates to the Legislative Code. Enter the currency type related to the Legislative Code that is defined. Fiscal Year Start - Start of the Fiscal Year. For Payroll balances, this date needs to be changed every year. Minimum and Maximum Working Age - Enter the appropriate values for validation to occur upon entering a new hire. Upon saving a Business Group, make sure that any affected responsibilities are modified to point to it. Aside from the org_id that is established upon saving the Business Group Organization, the classification of Business Group generates a business_group_id that is the same value as the org_id. All organizations created within the business group will then have the business_group_id/org_id of the business group. Typical problems related to this are companies forgetting to change their responsibility to point to a new business group and then organizations get created with the wrong business group ID which makes them invisible to the user. In this case, please contact an HRMS analyst for assistance.

Responsibility Profile Options

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Once you have an established Business Group youll typically modify or create a responsibility to associate it to begin set up. There are several System Profiles that should be set that are directly related to the business group functions: HR:Business Group Set the appropriate Business Group to the responsibility. There is a one to one relationship between a business group and a responsibility which means you will not be able to see most work structure data from other business groups, unless using the Cross Business Group functionality. See that profile below. If Cross Business Group functionality is used, this value will default from the Security Profile. This should always be set to HR User unless Oracle Payroll is installed. This indicates which set of forms are to be used in HRMS. When not set, it causes problems in the creation of organizations. If a company sets this to HR User and then later on goes live with Payroll, there is no problem with changing this setting to HR with Payroll user.

HR: User Type

HR: Cross Business Group This is always set at the Site level. If a company has multiple business groups and wants to access data between the business groups using the same responsibility, they must set this profile option to Yes. This is a new feature of HRMS with 11I and customers can set this profile option to Yes from No or null, but cannot take it back to No. HR:Security Profile For traditional security (Non Cross Business Group), this represents the security profile that establishes what groups of employees are available to view. For those customers who use Cross Business Group functionality, this value is automatically assigned upon using the Assign Security Profile Form.

Once you have defined your business group, responsibility and set your profile options, you can continue with the remainder of your Projects set up.

HR Oddities
Date Tracked Data
Date Tracking is a feature of HRMS where the view of the data can depend on the date the user enters. This means that if a user sets a datetrack date to the previous year, when they view datetracked data, it will appear as it existed a year ago. There are obvious historical advantages when viewing data in a datetracked mode. There are advantages of datetracking for future dates as well. It is possible, via datetrack, to enter information that will take effect on a particular date in the future. For example, if a user enters a new hire and they know that in 2 months the new hire will be eligible for a life insurance element, it is possible to enter this information at the time of hire but datetrack the life insurance 2 months out. This eliminates the need to go back in two months and adjust the record. This differs from normal date effective records by the fact that when you have future dated changes made in datetrack mode, the forms do not show the effects of those changes until theyve reached that date. If a user changes an employees job effective 3 months out, the employees assignment will still show the current job until that effective date comes into affect or if the user datetracks ahead beyond the effective date. This concept is difficult for new analysts and users to learn because not all data/tables are datetracked. Typically the base person and assignment forms are datetracked. Then, anything that is related to salary or rates are datetracked as well, like Salary Proposals and Element Entries.

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Shared HR/Full HR
Since HR data, specifically employee and work structures, are used by many of the other Oracle products, there is a Shared and Full version of the HR Product. In the Shared version, there is a limited amount of HR forms available to enter and maintain employees, their jobs, hire dates, addresses, as well as organization and hierarchical information. In the Full version of HR, obviously all of the HR forms are available. In addition, the employee related HR forms are automatically made inaccessible from any other products responsibility upon going from Shared to Full HR so that employee data is appropriately maintained by the designated HR users. With release 11I, an enhancement was put forth to add some of the APIs and other functions of the HR product in Shared mode. This is called HR Foundation and it is required for use with PJRM.

Implementation Issues
There are issues in bringing other financial products up before and/or without the involvement of internal HRMS departments. As defined above, there are key flexfield and other issues that need to be defined for HRMS to generate a business group. But, a business group is required for Financials implementation. Ideally, it is better to implement HRMS first or with the first Financials products that a company brings live. There are many situations where changes and possible re-implementations occur due to HRMS not being involved in the organization structure in the initial implementation and their data structure is not usable as it was defined originally.

Legislative Issues
Since countries require different processes and reports surrounding the maintenance and reporting of employee data, there is typically a different set of legislative codes for the HR Product per country. These are loaded via post install steps and are controlled at the business group level. It is possible for companies to have many business groups defined each with a separate legislation. There are many available legislations for the HR product. This includes varying people and assignment forms based on local requirements and varying reports required by the various governments. There are less Payroll legislations available due to the amount of time required to fully support many countries legislative requirements in paying employees.

Security Issues
With 11I, there have been changes to incorporate a global concept within our business group structure. This includes the ability to access multiple business groups using the same log in via HR:Cross Business Group profile, the ability to establish and maintain global hierarchies, and the ability to establish global roles/jobs. With these requirements, our Security model required changes. A big enhancement with release 11 security has been the ability to sql generate additions to the security profile. Instead of simply looking at an organization or position hierarchy, business group or payroll, customers can now extend the profile to use sql based clauses to further detail aspects that are related to a particular security group. Additionally, new security options have been added based on operating units using the HR:Multi-Org profile value. User Profiles related to Security: HR:Query Only - If set to yes, the user or those with access to a responsibility are only able to view the data. HR: Security Profile - Only used with traditional security definitions (Non-Cross Bus. Group). This identifies the groups of employees who can be accessed via the user of the profile. Security can be established on organization(s), organization hierarchies, position hierarchies, and payrolls. HR: Cross Business Group - As discussed above, this allows a user to see multiple business groups using the same responsibility. The user is still required to select the business group (via security group) and responsibility they require upon log in, but this options makes it possible to use the same responsibility over any or all of the business groups. You may also link more than one security profile to the same responsibility as long as the user is different. HR:Enable Security Groups - This enables a customer to link a responsibility, user and business group to a security profile using the Assign Security Profile window. If this option is set to Yes the HR:Security Profile is ignored. This is used in conjunction with the Cross Business Group functionality. If used, there is also an Enable Multiple Security Group process that needs to be run.

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