Aligning Employee Position Management for HR and Payroll

It's easy to identify the many benefits of integrating HR and Payroll technology. From ending duplicate data to no longer requiring complex data transfers between systems, and being able to produce reports from a single data source, the list of advantages is long.

However, what often gets overlooked is that it takes a great deal of communication and collaboration between HR and Payroll teams to successfully implement an integrated people management solution.

Over the next 4 blog posts I am going to share some of the challenges we see when we migrate companies from disparate HR and Payroll solutions into the world of integration, and how we help them start conversations that ensure both sides will realize the outcomes they need.

So let’s get started with the first item that is key for both teams to talk about – position management.

Getting Aligned

Positions (like the stars!) must align for both HR and Payroll to achieve the right end results for both departments.

Position Management for HR

From an HR perspective positions require full job descriptions, compensation ratios, effective and expiry dates, and the number of FTE positions budgeted for. They also need positions to populate turnover reports, vacancy reports, organization charts, and more.

Position Management for Payroll

For the Payroll team, positions often represent rates of pay, cost centres for labour distribution, union association, and more.

Diving Deeper

And a further consideration for position definition is how it will impact a manager's Self-Service access to information. Position management is an effective way to define “reports to” relationships – ensuring that when an employee or manager leaves, there is no administration or reassignment required.

The next employee or manager assigned to a position automatically inherits all of the assigned permissions and access.

When implementing our people management solutions, our initial discussions often uncover that there are discrepancies in the position naming conventions between HR and Payroll, or worse yet that they have a single position in Payroll but multiple positions for the same identifier in HR to ease building org charts.

Better by Design

Here are a few helpful questions you can ask when designing positions for an integrated people management solution:

1. How will positions be used for HR reporting?
2. How will positions be used for Payroll and Finance reporting?
3. How will position data drive labour cost reports?
4. Are rates of pay tied to positions?
5. Are different unions tied to different positions?
6. Will position management be used for manager access or security?

Knowing You Made the Right Decision

The benefits of taking time to plan your position management strategy are important in gaining efficiency across all departments.  With the right pieces in place you will be able to add a position to a new hire that will automatically populate all of the characteristics of that position – which means less data entry for both HR and Payroll team members.

When both HR and Payroll share their position needs and required outputs before the implementation setup begins, you will achieve the great business results your executives had hoped for when they decided to move to an integrated Human Capital Management solution.

About the Author

Marlo Hertling has worked with leading HCM organizations and has been helping Canadian companies implement HCM solutions for more than 15 years. She is the Vice President of People & Culture at Avanti Software Inc and serves as Avanti's HCM subject matter expert.