Setting Up Your Categories
In HR Partner, Categories are the 'major' options that apply to each and every Employee. Editing your Categories is an easy way to begin customizing HR Partner so that the vernacular and lingo used is familiar to your organization!
Here are a few of the most popular Categories:
- Departments
- Positions
- Employment Statuses
- Locations
- Tags
To get to your categories, you can click on 'Setup' then 'Configure' then 'Categories.'
The Categories screen contains all of the major options that are pertinent to each Employee on staff and can be edited with a few simple clicks of your mouse!
Each section represents an individual Category. You can add, change or delete items in each Category. There is no real limit to the number of individual items in each Category.
Notice that once you have any Employee data entered, you will see a small number next to some Categories - that denotes the number of Employees that belong to this Category.
You can click on the Category name to be taken to another screen that shows you the actual Employee names and a snapshot of their contact details. Click on Send Message in the top right side to either email or SMS that group of Employees.
Notice
You cannot delete a Category that has employees attached to it. You can easily tell if a category has employees by the number next to it (showing the number of employees belonging to that category). You need to either reassign all those employees to another category, OR delete those employees before you can delete the category.
The categories are explained in more detail below.
Departments
Departments can equate to the actual departmental hierarchy within your business. Some people use them as Location indicators, but as you can see below, we have another category specifically for that.
Departments are quite important in that a lot of the internal HR Partner security is tied to the Department. You can restrict access for an Admin User and allow that Admin User to only see employees that belong to certain department(s) if you wish. This enables you to give department or section managers access to view ONLY their own employees. You can also choose to restrict a Company Library folder by a Department, so you want to create your Departments carefully!
Note
Think about the security implications above when creating your departments.
Employment Status
These are designations for your employees statuses. Usually these are matched to your payroll system, but they don't have to be. Generally they indicate whether the employee is full time, part time, casual, volunteer, contractor etc.
Location
If you run a larger company, chances are that your team is scattered across multiple Locations. Of course, if this is not the case, you can have just one Location called 'Main Office' or 'HQ' or something similar.
However, if you have many Locations, you can create multiple locations and assign employees to each.
Note
Locations are a little different from other categories in that they don't just have a name, they have a time zone as well. This enables your employees to see the local time in each location on the employee portal, so they know when it is best to contact someone in another office.
Best Practice Idea: Don't forget about your remote employees! You can choose to set up a Location specifically for those that Work from Home and call it Remote.
Positions
These are simply the position names or job titles within your organization. Feel free to add as many as you like.
Tags
Tags are another interesting way to group employees together. They are different in that while employees may only have ONE of any other category attached to them, employees can have MANY tags attached to them.
Generally these are used to tag employees who are working on certain projects, or employees who belong to particular committees. But you can use them for anything you like, such as languages your employees speak, or whether or not they are a smoker or a trainee etc.
Note
Tags can also be tied to Leave Policies and can restrict employees from being eligible for certain Leave Policies. Read more about how to restrict Leave Policies here.