Locations, Departments, and Roles (LDR) are the key structural elements of Humanforce. LDR affects rostering, clocking, access visibility, and more, so therefore should be carefully considered. In many new implementation projects, your Humanforce consultant will assist you in developing this structure. However, familiarising yourself with the terminology and considerations in advance can help facilitate this process.
Considerations
When building your company's structure, the main things to consider include:
- Rostering structure
- Allocation and visibility by Locations or Departments (or both) to determine which employees a manager can see, roster, and approve leave for
- Reporting requirements
- Payroll configuration
- Cost account mapping
- Public Holidays
- Control of different pay rates against roles
Location
A location is usually a physical location or site address, such as an office. These can reflect countries, states, cities, or suburbs depending on the scope of the company.
- Each clocking device may be linked to a location
- Rosters, reports, and user access are defined by location and department
- Public holidays can be linked at this level
Note: Public Holidays can also be associated at a Regional level if several
locations share the same holidays
Department
A department represents the groups used for rostering and timesheets.
- Departments in Humanforce do not necessarily have to align with departments in your organisation or financial structure
- Rosters, reports, and user access are defined by location and department
- A Location has Departments
Role
Roles in Humanforce are more generic than position titles defined in a HRIS - each shift on a roster is defined by role.
- Roles can be linked to compliance requirements such as qualifications or minimum age
- The colours on a roster are determined by the role
- Pay rates are assigned to an employee for working a role (i.e. a role does not have to associate directly to a specific pay rate, as the rate is attached to that role for a particular employee, but each role for an individual employee may have different pay rates)
Other Elements
In addition to Location, Department, and Role, other elements like Region, Location Type, Location Group, and Area can be used for more complex structures.
Relationship
Here is a diagram showing the relationship between Locations, Departments, and Roles:
And here is a simple example of what this could look like for one industry:
Linking to Employees
Each employee will be associated with the Location(s), Department(s), and Role(s), he/she can work in. There are no issues with an employee being associated with multiple elements, but there will need to be a default value at each level. Different pay rates can also be associated with different roles, if needed.
Configuration
To learn how to configure you Locations, Departments, and Roles, the following articles will be useful.
From the Back Office:
How do I create a new Location?
How do I create a new Department and add it to a Location?
From Humanforce Web:
How do I create a new Location?
How do I create a new Department and add it to a Location?