I'm a non-technical HRMS user (involved in MI mainly) trying to understand the how organization structures work in HRMS.
I work for a fluid organization and we constantly seem to be trying to update our organizational structure due to structural changes, and never actually getting to the stage when everything is up to date. Naturally this causes some problems when it comes to reporting headcount etc, as the data is frequently out of date. From my perspective it seems like the process of keeping the organization structure up to date causes much work and returns little value.
I'd appreciate your views about how this works for your organization, and thoughts on effective and efficient ways forward.

I think this is a common problem with no easy solution other than maintaining it..
One option will be to use the diagrammer for making the changes but there are always doubts about its stability... I think it is ok in R12..

Most people use external tools for org structure reporting..

Hi Gareth,

Yes, the main way to maintain the hierarchy is through the hierarchy form or the diagrammer. Alternatively you could use the parent organization form which is under the Organisation definition form...

Not very much help, I'm afraid!

Take care

Marina

If you're thinking of going down the external tool route, take a look at Aquire Solutions. They have a tool that analyzes workforce data using org charts.

Delboy

Orgpublisher?? Are there any tools in the market which have free BETA versions??

Gareth - is it worth looking at the granularity of the Orgs and Org Hierarchy that has been defined? Is it defined at too low a level of detail? How does it relate to the costing structure? To Jobs? Are they using Positions?

You say that the Hierarchy offers 'little value' and yet it is a problem from a reporting point of view - I think it might be worth looking at that as well? If they really need accurate but more summary data, then there might be a way to do that by making the hierarchy simpler?

My current thinking is to use the costing codes to aggregate data. These map through to discrete parts of the organisation, and can be used to map to departments etc. Some people might have more than one costing code, but in these instances we could apportion the FTE by costing code.

If we did it this way what value does the organization hierarcy have?

User security?
I think that's all we use it for. Everything else seems governed/linked by costing.

Is it possible to swing the security around costing codes?

When you say 'costing codes', do you mean code combinations? If so, I think that would be impractical to be honest, given the likely number of combinations of costing segments. Also, the fact that an assignment can have split costing could make for some interesting challenges!

I believe you can already secure by payroll and org (which are costing levels in themselves) and of course by position (which to my knowledge is not a costable entity)

You could do, using custom security.
However, as Clive says, its probably not the way to go. It would be a nightmare to implement, and suspect the custom security invocation would drag the system to its knees.

"If we did it this way what value does the organization hierarcy have?"

Reporting. If it's no good for that either, then it does look like you need to review the decision made on the organisation definitions.

If you were going to secure by the cost code, I imagine you'd only need to do it based on 2 - 3 segments? In which case the performance hit might not be too bad. At BAA (other airports are available) we used to set up Absence Administrators using some quite complex custom security rules (Find the User's Assignment Organisation, find that in the Org Hierarchy and allow those to be seen for example) and found that performance was acceptable and a way of not having to have hundreds of different security profiles littering the system!

If your Security List Maintenance is cripplingly slow, it is worth deleting old and unused security profiles as these are still being processed - takes some effort to detach them from old responsibilities, but we did that at BAA and it was well worth the effort.

Marina

Thanks for this it is useful.

Just picking up on this again as it continues to cause me confusion. If I was to use the diagrammer to change the hierarchy would the changes made then be directly reflected onto the positions attached to assignments?

Best wishes

Gareth

ohhh.... another Q.

How are you guys coping with large scale restructures and making changes in a timely fashion to represent the needs of business reporting.

Hi Gareth,

Yes, if you make the change in the diagrammer it updates the parent organisation that can be viewed on the organisation form.

Take care

Marina