Effective Job and Position management from an HR perspective is rightly regarded as a practice that represents a well managed HR environment. Yet, when it comes to converting those good practices into an HRIS, we don't see the same level of enthusiasm or understanding of how the HR tool can be better leveraged. This presentation provides some views on the benefits of using HRIS Position Management tools

1. Human Capital Services
Thought leadership series
Determining the value and contribution impacts to HR management by
using ―Position Management‖ techniques and tools
June 2012
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2. What is ―Position Management‖
rom a non-system perspective, Position Management reduces the risk of having the organisation exposed. In
is the HR administrative function of defining a role organisation that are unstructured and continually
within an organisation structure, and determining the recreating new roles, the traditional form of Position
associated attributes of that particular role. In the pure Management may stifle the operating approach and tends
sense, the role description is not associated with an to be viewed as non value adding by line managers.
employee or group of employees, but rather based on the In deciding to use the concept of Position
requirements of the organisation or business unit. Management, one should be aware that it will be an
Traditionally the role would be written up based on a influential instrument across the HR administrative
standard template or guideline, and would pass through a function, and will require a high level of acceptance and
form of grading or assessment to determine its relative commitment to particular processes from HR staff as well
worth against other roles or positions. The outcome of the as line management, employees and employee
assessment would allow for other data such as salary representative bodies to remain effective and be of benefit
bands, benefits, reporting relationships and working to the organisation.
conditions to be associated with that particular role.
An important aspect of defining these roles would be the
application of consistent ‗rules‘ and definitions to support
the typical HR reporting and analytical
requirements, alignment with internal or external job survey
data and more importantly, the ability to ensure equality
across the organisation where the management of the ‗hire-
to-retire‘ processes is decentralised across functions and/or
geographies.
In highly structured organisations, where people costs are
budgeted and strongly controlled, the standardised role
management activity plays a significant part in controlling
and managing the budgets. In highly unionised
environments, the ability to have consistency across roles
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3. Position Management in HR systems
odern day HR systems provide the ability to are inherited by the employee who occupies the chair.
store the information derived from a role The advantage of setting up a position is that you don‘t
definition so that it can be used to better manage HR need an employee at the time of setting it up. It also
processes such as: means that if an employee leaves or moves to a
• Recruitment different position, you don‘t need to redefine those
• Budgets
attributes for the replacement employee.
• Vacancy management Typically most HR Position Management tools do
• Strategic workforce planning provide levels of flexibility to users, and in most cases
• Performance reviews allow you to run the HR system without Position
Management, use it partially, or use it fully. The
• Organisational structures
decision behind the degree of use will be driven by a
• Workflow actions number of critical attributes:
• Automation of events • The stability of the organisational structures
• Mass adjustments • Security and workflow requirements
At its full strength, Position Management is regarded • Employees holding multiple positions
as the ―Heart‖ of the HR system in many respects. Its • The need to act spontaneously
influence across the HR and Talent modules in the • The extent of financial control required
HRIS is typically significant, however, on the counter-
• The level of unionisation
side, the mismanagement of this system tool is likely
to have severe consequences for the effectiveness of • The consistency of people and compensation policy
HR management and the respect and trust of the HR One should note that if Position Management is only
function and systems. partially used, the main benefits around headcount
The HR system ―position‖ should be viewed as an and budget controls are lost, and the key benefit
empty chair. The chair has attributes such as a job becomes the ability to store relevant information on
title, job code, salary band, grade and benefits which position to support reporting.
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4. Positions, jobs and job families
n managing positions within your HR system, it‘s required. The job association is attractive for organisations
important to understand the relationship and difference who run reports and analytics around categories of
between two other system attributes; jobs and job families. positions (e.g. workforce planning), and this attribute
The graphic below provides a simple understanding of the reduces the risk of missing out key positions in that search.
three elements. In highly regulated organisations, the ability to do mass
changes to employees via changes at the job level is a
In simple terms, jobs and job families are optional attributes
powerful administration tool. We would however advise that
that can be associated with the position, assuming that your
you fully understand the risks within your own system
HRIS has this capability. These attributes can be powerful
around job attributes and ensure you have sufficient skill
instruments for reporting and analytics, but can also house
and knowledge to manage actions such as anomalies at
data that is inherited by the position. For example, if you set
the position or employee level. The job family is a simple
up a job called ―Engineer‖ and store attributes that are
grouping of like-type jobs, that again mainly support
common to all engineering jobs, such as grade, training and
reporting and analytics. Normally, a job can belong to more
professional association, then these attributes will be
than one family, however this can lead to ‗double-counting‘
inherited by any position that is created and linked to that
if not managed carefully.
job. In most modern systems, the attributes stored in the
job level are able to be overwritten at the position level if
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5. Making the initial decision
here are essentially three options around using Position position management. In some areas of the
Management in your system. Each of these are organisation, driving the system by employee is
discussed in some more detail below. preferred, while in other areas of the organisation, the
business process requires driving the system by position.
No Position Management
For example, you might find that driving the system by
If your organisation is fluid, a broader grouping of position serves well for only some departments or
employees is utilised, you have a highly contingent management levels in the company, and that driving the
workforce, and new jobs are often created—then driving the system by employee works well for others.
system by employee would be the optimum choice. This
If you decide to use a partial approach, then you should
method is useful for organisations expanding rapidly, or for
also be aware of the limitations around reporting, budgeting
organisations that often have new projects requiring the
and headcount management. You will need to introduce
creation of new jobs or job types regularly. Forcing Position
secondary and perhaps manual steps to produce accurate
Management into this environment will frustrate line
system outputs, as well as higher system maintenance
management and create process bottlenecks.
requirements as people move between roles.
Implement full Position Management
If your organisation is fairly static, jobs and job descriptions
are mostly fixed, and people move in and out of them—then
driving your HR system by position would be the optimum
choice. For example, government agencies, hospitals and
hierarchically structured organisations who typically budget
by position and FTE‘s, often well in advance of filling
them, find this method very useful.
Implementing partial Position Management
In order to utilise the structure and rules inherent in Position
Management, but still have the need for an unstructured
approach, many HR systems can be set to optimise partial
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6. One-to-one or many-to-one position management
nce you have made your decision to use Position positions to manage workflow and messaging, reporting
management, the next critical upfront decision to structures and organograms, as well as access to
make is whether to link every employee to a employee and manager tools such as ESS and MSS.
unique position or to link many employees to one position.
Strong consideration should be given to other system which
While most HR system vendors will promote the use of a
are interfaced to your HR system. The requirements and
one-to-one relationships, it‘s more common to find both
limitations of those systems are often dealt with easier from
methods in use. It‘s important to note that the less
a technology perspective with a one-to-one approach.
standardised your HR policies and procedures are, and the
greater degree of flexibility that your line managers have A many-to-one approach is useful for employees who are
over employee job, benefits and compensation contingent and don‘t have the same needs as permanent
decision, the more likely you will benefit from a one-to-one employees. In many contingent workforce situation, the
Position Management approach. payment to those individuals is via the accounts payable
system and the need to build full job and position definitions
You will recall the concept of inheritance discussed earlier
is not required. If the HR system is the provider of data to
in this document, where employees inherit data from a
other critical systems, and the nature of your business is to
position when they are hired into that particular role. Every
bring on contingent resources without reasonable
time a change is made to position data (or job data, if this is
notice, then the many-to-one option can be utilised to
also used), then all the employees linked to that position
reduce or eliminate process bottlenecks and negative
will automatically inherit those changes into their personal
impacts on people getting access to a business site and /
data records. In theory this may be fine, but the realities are
or required tools and systems.
that people in similar or the same roles often have personal
differences that could be historic in nature or purposefully
agreed to by a manager. These differences could range
from simple job title differences, reporting line
anomalies, hours of work, cost splitting, work locations, to
more complex issues around salary banding.
Another reason that supports the one-to-one approach is
the way your particular HR system makes use of system
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7. Business value
he value derived from using Position Management for this advise, is that it‘s only at a score closer to 3 that we
should be seen in the context of good HR practices. see line managers making conscious connections between
There are two matters we highlight in this section; HR professional practices and people performance.
namely HR maturity, and alignment of HR strategies to the
overall business strategy. Alignment to business strategies
HR Maturity
Your organisations ability to execute effective HR
management and solutions is directly related to the level of
HR maturity in the organisation. This maturity level should
not be confused with competence of individuals in the HR
department, but rather talks to how senior and executive
management position and support the HR function. If the
maturity level is low, the requirements and behaviours of The key question that should be answered by HR
the business to ensure Position Management will be departments wanting to implement Position Management is
successful will be difficult to implement and maintain. what business strategies and goals will be supported and /
or achieved by introducing Position Management ? Whilst it
can be viewed as simply an administrative tool for HR
system users, the need to create ―line of sight‖ between the
tool and business objectives will be critical in obtaining the
support of business leaders.
Consideration should also be given to how the introduction
of Position Management will require adjustments to other
HR and talent processes, systems, forms, documentation
and approaches. We recommend a landscape and impact
assessment is conducted to highlight risks, issues and
We advise organisations to be on a minimum level of 2 on opportunities that Position Management will have on
the maturity scale (see graphic), with intentions and existing people, process and technology layers.
programmes in place to shift to a level 3. The key reason
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8. Typical outputs from using Position Management
he expected outputs from using Position Management Critical success factors
will vary depending on the extent of its use in your In our experience the following actions are critical to the
organisation (full versus partial). The following list is typical successful use of Position Management:
for organisations that implement the tool fully:
• There are clearly defined business reasons for
• Improved data integrity and reduction of data entry errors implementing Position Management, and it is understood
• Facilitates FTE budgeting and planning and accepted by the executive and line management
• Accurate tracking of vacancies and the reduction of risks
within the recruitment process • The HR function is operating at a minimum of a level 2 on
• Ability to store job and position data electronically for easy the HR maturity scale, and there is general
reuse and access by HR and line managers acknowledgment that HR administration is of a high
• Improves data accuracy for job assignments delivery standard
• Reduction of data entry during the hire process • The recruitment, learning, talent and compensation centres
• Strong support and association with talent and learning of excellence or departments are supportive and involved
attributes used in performance management, career and of the initiative
succession planning
• Effective management of compensation structures • Prior to implementing Position Management, a full
• Effective management of job codes linked to job and salary assessment of the technical and functional landscape is
survey data undertaken to ascertain risks, issues and integration
• Supports accuracy of reporting and organogram requirements
development • Set up the initiative as a project and include resources with
• Ability to do reporting and analytics by groupings such as experience in Position Management and specific HR
‗job‘ and ‗job family‘ system experience
• Richer reporting capability around information linked to jobs
and positions • Run a pilot for an appropriate division to build internal
• Reduced risk in inaccurate headcount reporting learning and experience
• Mass changing of data for improved administration • Be prepared to manage negative perceptions and
efficiency behaviours at the line manager level. Effective change
• Improved integration capability with IT security and management and learning should be considered
credentialing
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9. About us?
About Presence of IT Rob Scott is the National leader for the
Human Capital Services division of Presence
Presence of IT is Australia‘s leading consultancy in the
of IT. Human Capital Services focus on
world‘s foremost HR/Payroll, Talent and Workforce
strategy, process, change management and
Management solutions.
learning for clients wanting to leverage HR
We provide thought leadership, process and people related technologies.
improvement, software implementation and support
Over the last 24 years, Rob has developed expert
services in human capital management to Australia‘s
knowledge and experience in the areas of Human
largest private and public sector organisations.
Resources management, HR strategy
Our strength is the excellence of our people and our focus optimisation, transformation and the leveraging of
is on our clients. This focus has seen us evolve into a technology in the broader people environment.
global organisation to better support our clients in their
He has played leading consulting roles in people system
respective markets across the world.
implementations, large scale project
Why Excellence in People? management, business & system requirements, strategic
development, strategic workforce planning, talent and
The term Excellence in People reflects what we value as a learning strategies as well as change leadership activities.
company. Our focus has always been on employing the He has successfully integrated his
very best people and developing close partnerships with business, psychology, technical, and HR background into a
our clients, to provide the best possible solutions. broad value adding service to clients. Rob is a challenging
Put simply, we have excellent people who help our clients consulting professional and is recognised as a thought
achieve excellence in the management of their people. leader within Presence of IT. Prior to joining Presence of IT
Human Capital Services, Rob was an associate director at
a global consultancy where he headed up the HR
Transformation division.
You can follow Rob on Twitter @robscottinsyd or his blog at
http://robertscott.wordpress.com
About the author
9 © 2012 Presence of IT – Confidential & Proprietary

10. Thought leadership series
Views expressed in this document are those of Presence of IT based on our broad experiences with local
and global clients who use HR, talent and workforce management solutions. Some content may have
been derived or used from public domain information.
Whilst we are providing our best-practice views in this document, they should not be construed as
professional advise for your organisation or your particular situation. We would recommend that you use
this information to increase your understanding and awareness of Position Management, but seek
professional assistance to further evaluate your environment and determine your needs.
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