Friday Feature – HRA Packages

Previously, we discussed how HRAs work and what an HRA item is. Now, we are going to put that together into HRA packages. Since I like to cook, I will use that as an analogy for HRA packages. It’s like this — your HRA package is your meal, your items are the meat and potatoes, and your To Dos are the spices that go on each of your Items.
Check it out. Let’s use a typical HRA Employee Separation package for our meal. For an employee to separate, you need to change their assignment, pay, and create a vacancy. Those items are our meat, potatoes and vegetable. Then there are several To Dos that are required when an employee separates, like gathering their assets, turning off their network access, and conducting an exit interview. Those To Dos are the spices on the meat.

In addition, the package has its own status, as does each item. So, just because you finished eating your potatoes, your meal is not complete, mister. In other words, the package does not change to the Complete status, until every item and To Do has been completed.

Ok. Enough of the analogy. Let’s look at a real Employee Separation Package. There are three items in the package: Emp Separation, Emp Pay Separation, and Vacancy.

The Emp Separation ends the employee’s assignment, sets the termination date, rehire flag and other demographic information.

The Emp Pay Separation ends all of the employee’s payroll records, including setting the last paycheck date. This item is created automatically when you submit the Emp Separation item.

The Vacancy item is created based on the question, “What do you want to do with the assignment?” asked in the Emp Separation item. Depending on the answer, different types of items are created. In this case, the assignment is now vacant, but it could have been an End Position item.

Now, I have to admit that we haven’t really discussed To Dos, but we will have a taste today and then gorge on the details next week. When the Emp Separation was submitted, three tasks were created (due to the workflow definition). Whenever an employee terminates employment with this district, three things must happen:

• Technology group must retrieve the employee’s district assets
• Technology group must remove all access points to district networks and services
• HR group must conduct an exit interview, including all of the paperwork related to the termination.

As you can see, To Dos do not have approvals.  They are simple tasks that must be performed.  The workflow definition notifies the appropriate roles and when the work is complete, the person sets the Complete flag (last column) to YES. In this example, you can see that the Technology group has gathered the assets, but not yet removed all access points, nor has the HR group done the exit interview.

Another interesting point is that To Dos are associated with a single item (first column). All of these To Dos are tied to the Emp Separation item.

Next week, we will dive deeper into To Dos, their setup and how to create them manually. Bon Appétit!