HR Primer Wp

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Page 1 of HR Primer JD GS.Doc as at 3 November 2006

Understanding Oracle HR: a Primer for Oracle Financials Users.

By Jeannie Dobney & Greg Sutton

Introduction

This paper provides a high level overview of the Oracle HR suite. It is written for users who

are already familiar with Oracle Financials, and this is reflected in the topics covered and the

issues which are highlighted. Its objective is to assist Oracle Financials users to better

understand HR implementation issues.

Business Background

The role which HR plays in organisations has changed radically in the last 20 years.

Understanding that transformation will help understand the business drivers now likely to be

encountered in an HR implementation. The change has been from a focus on activities and

processes to an expert support role for activities which have been devolved to line managers

and focusing on results that enrich the organisations value to employees and customers. The

HR Department is now:

Partner in Strategic Execution

Agent of Continuous Transformation

Administrative Expert

These changes have been underpinned by the following factors:

During the 1980s economic pressures across the western world drove mostorganisations to remove non value adding activities. Administrative and process

oriented functions like personnel management were down-sized, outsourced or

abolished (line managers were expected to absorb many remaining functions).

At the same time senior management were looking for new sources ofcompetitiveadvantage and decided their own staff might provide such advantage. Even thoughpeople are our most important asset is now cynically regarded as the biggest lie told

by most organisations, its widespread use indicates how thoroughly this view has

become part of the normative management model.

These two trends gave rise to Human Resource Management (of which Dave Ulrichis a leading proponent, see References section). It covered the same functions as

Personnel Management had, but it had a different emphasis, namely:

Strategic focus

Integration of the various people management activities around strategic businessobjectives

People are viewed as assets to be leveraged to create value rather than variablecosts

A commitment-oriented model of labour management rather than thetraditional control oriented model

Line managers becoming the delivery point of employment policies

A new focus on explicit management of organisational culture.

Research suggests that business has embraced HRM but in a piecemeal andopportunistic fashion, based on where they saw value-adding potential. Nevertheless,


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empirical evidence now reveals that this evolution in people management practices

to the HRM model is delivering bottom line results.

Factors which impeded organisations moving to an Ulrich-like model of HRMincluded the recessionary economic climate of the 1990s which has favoured

managerial short-termism. Some authors suggest that it is HRs role to be the

advocate of the long term perspective and as the focus in the 00s shifts towards

dealing with an aging workforce and the pressures of globalisation, HRM is now

increasingly relevant.

For the implementation of HRM principles to succeed, the enterprise requires an

Information System capable of minimising administrative costs, of supporting activities

being devolved to end-users and line managers and of evaluating the cost effectiveness of

specific policies targeted at e.g. retaining talented individuals. Oracle HR is such a

system.

HR Suite Overview

Oracle Human Resources Management System (HRMS) is part of the Oracle E-Business

Suite of applications and includes:

Oracle Human Resources (HR)

Oracle Payroll

Oracle Self-Service Human Resources (SSHR)

Oracle iRecruitment

Oracle Time & Labor (OTL)

Oracle Learning Management

Oracle Advanced Benefits (OAB)

Business Intelligence for Oracle HRMS (HRMSi)

The key core Applications are:

Oracle Human Resources (HR) enables the efficient management of workforce dataand supports all standard HR activities, and

Oracle Payroll enabling timely payment of all employees according to yourcompensation rules.

Oracle Human Resources and Oracle Payroll are separately licensed products and may be

implemented separately.

In addition there are a number of self-service applications which support additional

functionality:

Oracle Self-Service Human Resources (SSHR) enables your workforce to use a webbrowser to access and optionally maintain HR information and perform personnel

actions. The self-service functions you can access depend on your licensing

arrangements for other HRMS products. For example, you can use the self-service

functions in Oracle Advanced Benefits only if you have licensed OAB.

Oracle iRecruitment is a self-service module that enables managers, recruiters, andcandidates to manage all phases of recruitment, from vacancy definition through

recruiting and hiring new employees. Oracle iRecruitment supports both internal and

external users.


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Oracle Time & Labor (OTL) is a web-enabled time-recording application thatreduces administration costs associated with time and attendance record keeping.

Oracle Learning Management (LMS) is a web-based Application which enablesyou to manage, deliver, and monitor your online and classroom-based training as well

as measure the effectiveness of your training initiatives. In Oracle Learning

Management, self-service access is available not only to the learner but also to those

responsible for administration and content management, lowering the cost of

organisational learning.

Oracle Advanced Benefits (OAB) is a self-service Application that enables you todefine and manage benefits programs, and comply with governmental regulations

(e.g. FBT). The core HR Application offers a more limited set of benefit

administration features so OAB appeals to organisations which rely more heavily on

special perks to attract and retain talented staff. The web-based self-service

functionality is designed to reduce the cost of administering these benefits. OAB also

provides analytical tools to evaluate the effectiveness of your benefits programs.

Oracle HRMS Intelligence (HRMSi) is part of the Business Intelligence suite and

provides both a configurable analysis tool and a set of predefined reports that enableyou to analyse budgets, view employee development and performance data, analyse

salary trends, and monitor vacancies and recruitment.

Here is one view of how these work together:

HR Payroll

iRecruitment

Oracle TrainingAdministration

Oracle Time &Labour

Oracle LearningManagement

Oracle AdvancedBenefits

BusinessIntelligence forOracle Human

Resources

Oracle Self-Service Human

Resources

coreHR Applications

additional HRfunctionality via web

Applications

web Applicationsleveraging HR data

and functionality

Oracle HR Applications

Financial information sentto Oracle General Ledgerand Cash Management

Data shared with:* Oracle Purchasing* Oracle Payables* Oracle Projects* Oracle Receivables* Oracle Assets


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Oracle Documentation

The extensive documentation includes the following manuals:

User and implementation manuals for each of the applications listed in the previous section:

Oracle HRMS Implementation Guide

Oracle HRMS Payroll Processing Management Guide

Oracle Self-Service Human Resources Deploy Self-Service Capability Guide(i.e. Implementing HRSS)

Oracle iRecruitment Implementation Guide

Oracle Learning Management Implementation Guide

Oracle Learning Management User Guide

Implementing Oracle Training Administration

Using Oracle Training Administration

Oracle Time & Labor Implementation and User Guide

4 manuals on implementing and using Business Intelligence for HRMS (HRIntelligence)

Additional documentation, which addresses cross application implementation issues:

Oracle HRMS Compensation and Benefits Management Guidei.e. Compensation elements etc (described below)

Oracle HRMS Configuring, Reporting, and System Administration Guidei.e System Administration topics

Oracle HRMS Enterprise and Workforce Management Guidei.e. Organisation structures e.g. jobs etc

Oracle HRMS FastFormula User Guidei.e. formulas used to derive values (described below)

Using Application Data ExchangeApplication Data Exchange (ADE) links Oracle HRMS and Oracle Training

Administration (OTA) to desktop tools such as word processors, spreadsheets and

data query tools. This enables HR professionals to manipulate HR information, withfamiliar desktop tools, then upload the data back to HRMS and OTA.

Oracle HRMS Workforce Sourcing, Deployment, and Talent Management Guidei.e. Recruitment concepts using the core HR Application, iRecruitment and HR Self-

Service

A suite of specific manuals for various countries, which address local compliance and

implementation issues:

HRMS Documentation Set for the United Kingdom

HRMS Documentation Set for the United States

HRMS Documentation Set for US Federal

HRMS Documentation Set for Canada

HRMS Documentation Set for Australia HRMS Documentation Set for New Zealand

The Documentation set or Australia (as an example) consists of the following:

Oracle HRMS Enterprise and Workforce Management Guide (Australia)

Oracle HRMS Workforce Sourcing, Deployment, and Talent Management Guide(Australia)

Oracle HRMS Compensation and Benefits Management Guide (Australia)

Oracle HRMS Payroll Processing Management Guide (Australia)


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Oracle HRMS FastFormula User Guide

Oracle HRMS Configuring, Reporting, and System Administration GuideThe scope of this documentation indicates something of the scope of the HR Implementation

challenge.

Similarities and Differences

This section provides an overview of what is similar between the Oracle HR suite and theOracle Financial Applications, what is unique to the Oracle HR suite and the implications of

these similarities and differences.

Key Similarities

The Applications are built in the same technologies:- The core Applications are built in Oracle Forms

although observant Financials users may notice some different iconic buttons on

the toolbar and other small differences

- The Web-Applications use the Applications Framework (OAF),although many Financials implementers may be surprised at the degree of reliance

on OAF personalisation which Self Service HR requires

- Use of Key Flexfields (KFFs) to hold key data.

In addition to sharing some KFFs (e.g. Job & Position), there are some HR

specific Key Flexfields including the Cost Analysis and Personal Analysis

Flexfields.

- Use of Descriptive Flexfields to hold site specific fields,although many Financials users may be surprised at how extensively these are

used, e.g. for Extra Information Types (EIT)

- Extensive use of workflow technology.- The same underlying technology e.g. database, use of SQL and PL/SQL etc

Shared data,The following table is reproduced from an earlier conference paper by ASSIST Pty

Ltd (see reference section for details). It displays the Financials modules which use

HR data and provides an indication of the need for careful co-ordination in a shared

implementation.

Functionality Purchasing Payables Projects Receivables Assets

Organisations

Locations

Jobs

Positions

Employees &

Assignments

Shared System Administration.The same System Administration functionality is used by both HR and Financials, for

example to assign responsibilities and profile option values. This can be especially

challenging, when one profile option may have impacts for both sets of functionality.

Once again careful co-ordination is required in a shared implementation.


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Unique HR Functionality

A more detailed overview of functionality and implementation issues related to the HR Suite

is included later in this paper, however, here is some HR specific functionality which Finance

users will encounter in the Oracle HR suite.

It could be argued that the ultimatebusiness driver is common across the entireeBusiness suite, i.e. Financials, HR, CRM etc, i.e. the need for competitive advantage.

However, how this competitive advantage is realised is often quite different for HR

and Finance. In addition to reducing the costs of administration, HR is likely to be

concerned with legislative compliance and attracting and retaining talent.

The degree of emphasis on legislative compliance is reflected in the need for countrylocalisations (or globalisations as they are also known). Such legislation includes

HECS liability, PAYG, Privacy legislation, Superannuation etc and will put a

premium on having implementation team members who really understand these

issues.

Industrial Relations can also be a factor in an HR implementation in the sense thatsome of the changes introduced by the implementation may have widespread

workforce impacts and thus the risk of active resistance is probably higher than in a

Financials Implementation where the impacts may be largely confined to centralfinance staff.

Whilst data security is an issue across the entire eBusiness suite, thesensitivity ofspecific data is unique to HR. The flow-on effects of this will be felt during data

migration and cloning the Production database (where payroll details will probably

need to be scrambled before Developers are allowed system access).

There are someprofile options that deal with these security requirements within HR.For example display of some fields in windows share by both HR and Payroll is

controlled by the use of theHR: User Type profile option. The three valid values are:

- HR with Payroll User

- HR User

- Payroll UserTheHR: Security Profile can be set to View All to give super-users access to all the

records in the Business Group

It may come as a surprise to some Finance users that Payroll does not use Payables toproducepayments. Implementing Payroll provides a parallel mechanism for

organisational payments and only relatively recently have these payments been

integrated with Cash Management to simplify bank account reconciliation.

There is obviously a whole range ofspecific HR functionality, some of which will bediscussed in more detail later in the paper. One of the most immediately apparent

features to Finance users logging into HR is theEffective Date feature, which enables

both forward dating of specific transactions and retention of full transaction history.

Oracle HR makes extensive use ofOracle Approvals Management (AME)technology (OAM). Whilst AME is used with the Financials Applications, e.g. by the

Payables Invoice Approval process, this use is not central to the Financials

Applications and thus this technology should be essentially classed as HR specific.

In addition, some of the morefamiliar functionality has HR specific features . Forexample, Organisations which are discussed below, have some additional

classifications which are quite crucial to the way Oracle HR operates.


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Shared Challenges

As the above has suggested, a successful joint implementation of Oracle Financials and

Oracle Human Resources may be able to leverage some of the same resources, e.g. Database

Administration and Developers, however it will require:

Careful co-ordination of implementation of shared functionality - and awareness ofwhat those issues are will be the starting point for this.

Co-ordination of Application specific implementation and / or ongoing maintenancetasks into a roadmap which is feasible for all stakeholders.

Both of these tasks are facilitated by open and frequent communication in a spirit ofperceived mutual respect for one anothers skills and challenges.

The following details are provided to help the rest of us understand the challenges faced by

Oracle HR Practitioners. The authors believe that a better appreciation of one anothers

challenges will help to facilitate successful communication on shared implementations.

Key HR Implementation Concepts

This section provides an overview of key HR concepts which may be helpful for all

Applications implementers and users.

Key Data Stored in Oracle HRMS

Oracle represents the key data required to administer HR in the following model. It

effectively summarises the scope of Oracle core HR and Payroll.

Assignment

Compensation &Benefits

People

WorkStructures

EmployeeCompensation &Benefits History

Employee Applicant &Contractor

Assignment History

CompensationEntitlement Rules

and Conditions

People Data

This is information about current and former employees, applicants, contingentworkers (contractors), and contacts such as dependents. Standard information stored

includes addresses, nationality, interview records, qualifications, hours of work and

work choices and absence information. Descriptive Flexfields can be used to store

medical history, previous employment, or outside interests.

Work StructuresWork structures provide the framework for defining the work assignments of your

workforce. The Business Group is the largest unit and represents your enterprise as a


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Oracle HR uses Organisations, however in slightly different ways and understanding this is

crucial to a successful shared implementation. The following provides an overview of

organisation concepts.

Business GroupAt business group level the legislative rules and terms of employment rules necessary

for paying employees and regulating their work are set up. Generally the laws are so

different in each country that to be compliant, there must be a different business group

for each country in which an enterprise has employees.

Legal Entity/Employer / Government Reporting Entities (GREs)HR implementations use this classification to represent a legal employer for all

employment-related activities. Employees can only be attached to organisations at or

below this classification in the organisation hierarchy. In Australia this is the level at

which you enter PAYG information. It is therefore likely that you may have one or

more of these types of organisation within a Business Group.

Below the level of the Legal Entity, organisations are usually used to represent internal

structures like Cost Centres or Divisions or external third parties with which HR deals.

You can use the Organisation Type field to distinguish a Division from a Department etc.

Here are some of the classifications which will be new to Financials users but may be

important in an HR implementation.

Payee Organisation: Used to define an external organisation that is the recipient of athird party payment from an employee, for example Superannuation Funds.

Employer or Bargaining Association: Used when defining an organisation that isinvolved in negotiating a collective agreement for example a trade union.

Representative Body: Used for example when defining a Social Club.


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Disability Organisation: Used when defining an external organisation with whichemployee disabilities are registered.

Medical Service Provider: Used when defining an organisation that provides anymedical services, such as medical assessments, to the people in your enterprise.

Constituency: Used to define a constituency to group together workers eligible to

vote for particular elections. Company Cost Center: Used to represent Oracle GL.

Professional Body Information: Used to define a professional body which attestsemployee qualifications.

When defining each of these, specific additional information is required via the others button

on the Organisation form. These Otherfields are like context sensitive Description flexfield.

i.e. the segments displayed depend on the classification value selected. It is also possible to

set up additional segments displayed as Extra Information Types (EITs). Multiple instances

of an EIT may be defined for each of the six main entities in HRMS: Jobs, Positions, People,

Assignments, Locations and Organisations. This allows you to set up unlimited amounts of

extra information.

EIT information is viewed and entered on a separate form (except for organisations). Foreach EIT you can have up to 30 fully validated segments (or 20 for organisations). EITs also

allow you to restrict access at responsibility level. Each EIT has its own form so you can

restrict certain users access to certain EIT forms if required. For example, you may define

EITs to hold medical details and certain security information. You can then restrict access to

the EIT form so that only certain responsibilities, eg senior managers can access the

information. You may require technical assistance to set up these EITs, as you have to insert

a row for each EIT into the relevant Information Type table using SQL.

We will return now to the topic of organisational set-up. Much of the challenge of

implementing Oracle HR comes in understanding the complex flow on effects each option

has. For example, you must set up your Business Group first, and once you classify an

organisation as a business group, it is not reversible; but in order to be able to subsequentlyuse Oracle iRecruitment you must select automatic applicant numbering when you set up

your Business group.

The implication for shared implementations of Oracle HR and Financials is that because of

the significant impacts for both groups of implementers, the design of your organisation

hierarchy must be a collaborative exercise. A win-lose solution is not possible it will be

either win-win or lose-lose.

This is more important and critical than ever, now that Daily Business Intelligence

encourages the use of AutoOrg, which automatically creates an HR organisation for each

Cost Centre. This may present special challenges if your financial cost centres are different

to your HR organisations.

If you choose not to use the AutoOrg process to automatically co-ordinate your Cost Centres

and HR organisations, you will need to implement a business process to have your GL team

notify the HR team when changes are made.

Organisation Hierarchies

As well as constructing hierarchies to reflect reporting lines, you can also use hierarchies to

control access to information. For example, you might want to give each regional manager

access to the records of the employees in the organisations in their region. When you run


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some of the Oracle HRMS standard reports, you can specify an organisation hierarchy to

determine which organisations and employees the report covers. You can also use this

approach in your own standard or ad hoc reports. You can create additional organisation

hierarchies just for analysis and inquiry purposes.

Locations

Organisation records also specify location information. This location data including

addresses and telephone numbers is also shared with other Oracle applications, for example

Inventory and Purchasing.

Modelling Your Workforce: Jobs, Positions, Grades etc

Jobs and Positions flexfields will be familiar to procurement or projects users. You use them

to define the roles people have within your organisation.

A Job is a generic role, which is independent of any single organisation, eg Manager.

A Position is a specific occurrence of one job, fixed within an organisation, eg Finance

Manager.

You can choose to use job or positions, or both, to define the roles of your employees within

your organisation. If you choose to use positions, you can also define position hierarchies to

represent your reporting structures. You can also use position hierarchies to control access to

information.

Note that creating and maintaining positions can be very labour intensive because each

position is linked to a job and organisation. If a position needs to be linked to a different

organisation, you have to end the existing position and create a new position against the new

organisation. If you require positions and position hierarchies, you should try to keep the

definitions of organisations and jobs as broad as possible to help reduce the maintenance of

positions during reorganisations, which could cause high resource overheads.

You use the Grade Name Flexfield to define the way you record the relative status ofemployee assignments and to determine compensation and benefits, such as salary, overtime

rates, or company assets. You can define one or more valid grades for each job or position.

For example you may define senior and junior grades, or you may have more complex

grading.

The People Group flexfield is used to define any other special groupings of employees that

your business requires. You can use these groups, for example to define eligibility for

compensation and benefits, to segregate them for their access through the Self Service HR

Application or to identify their workplace agreement. It is different to all other key Flexfields

in that you can have as many instances of it as you require.


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Modelling Your Workforce: Employees and Assignments

One of the most obviously necessary elements of an HRMS system is the effective

management of employee records. Oracle HRMS uses the People window, (which may be

familiar to some Financials users), to enter all information for employees, contractors,

applicants and external people. An employee must have a current assignment at all times.

The assignment is the way you relates the people you employ to the structures in which they

work and the compensation and benefits for which they are eligible.

Modelling Your Compensation and Benefits

The primary function of Oracle Payroll is the management of compensation, thus much of

what is discussed here concerns Oracle Payroll. Even if you do not produce your employee

payments using Oracle Payroll, however, you must still set up payroll information. You

require a payroll in order to give an employee a salary. A Payroll is defined as a set of

employees whose pay is processed at the same, regular intervals, for example, weekly or

monthly. You can define as many payrolls as your organisation requires.

Payroll costs are linked to the General Ledger using information in the Cost Allocation Key

Flexfield. Just as Oracle Payables interfaces information to GL and a concurrent process

which will transmit details regularly. And just as Payables produces remittance advice for

suppliers, Oracle can produce a payslip (or format data for employees to access via HR Self

Service). As mentioned above, Payroll now also interfaces to Cash Management.

Oracle use Elements to represent your types of compensation and benefits. Elements are

essentially the building blocks for payroll processing. Some of the types of elements you

would usually define would be: earnings, such as salaries, wages, bonuses; absences, non-

payroll payments such as employee reimbursements; assets provided to employees such as

tools, mobile phones, computer; voluntary and involuntary deductions; employer taxes; and

other employer liabilities such as superannuation. Some elements are supplied by the system,

others are generated by the system when you define certain types of compensation and

benefits, and others you can define yourself to suit the needs of your organisation. The

Australian HR localisation also provides elements to support PAYG information andSuperannuation Guarantee Information.


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In order to give an employee an earning or deduction, you have to make an element entry. An

entry can contain up to fifteen items of information, which you define when you create the

element. For example, for a mobile phone element, you may want to record the make, model,

phone number, date of issue etc. These items of information are called input values. You

decide what validation to apply to these values, whether they are required, and the type of

information they can accept i.e. money, time, date.

The input values are used as the basis for calculations performed by Payroll. During a payroll

run, so-called fast-formulas process the input values and other database information to

produce run results. For example, if you make overtime payments, you might need to write a

formula to calculate the payment amounts for each assignment from inputs of the overtime

rate and the hours worked for the period. Note that not all input values are used in

calculations for payroll some input values may record information for reporting and

analysis purposes only eg mobile phone information.

Many elements are only available to certain groups of employees. For example only the sales

executive staff may be eligible for a company car. To determine which employees are eligible

for an element, you have to build links to the assignment components that employees must

have in order to receive entries of the element. For example you would define a link between

the company car element and the job of sales executive in order for sales executive staff to be

eligible for the company car benefit. The assignment components to which you can link

elements are: payroll, salary basis, employment category, organisation, location, job, grade,people groups, and position.

When you define elements, you can also define qualifying conditions, such as a minimum

age. You also specify rules about entries when you define an element, such as default values,

minimum / maximum values, lookup values. Some element entries are valid for one pay eg a

bonus, whereas others occur every pay. When you define an element, you select a processing

type of recurring or nonrecurring. Employees must be assigned to a payroll to receive

nonrecurring elements.


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If an element is defined as recurring with standard links, the system makes an entry

automatically for all eligible assignments. If an element is non-recurring, you cannot define

standard links. This means that you have to enter the element manually. You can make

entries individually or in a batch for faster data entry using Batch Element Entry (BEE). The

BEE function allows you to rapidly enter batches of element entry information into a

temporary table. You can then validate, correct and update the information before you

transfer the information to the database.

Note that theFast Formulas referred to above can be used for a wide variety of purposes and

are not restricted to payroll processing. Oracle provides an entire manual on the creation and

use of Fast Formulas; the following list provides an indication of the scope of their use:

Check the validity of various data entered into Oracle HR

Create rules for benefits administration, such as eligibility determination

Select the database information you want to display in a QuickPaint report, andperform calculations for the report.

Perform legislative checks during a payroll run.

Specify the rules for Paid Time Off accrual plans, such as how much time is accrued

and over what period, when new starters are eligible to begin accruing time, and howmuch time can be carried over to the next accrual term.

Calculate the duration of an absence, given the start and end dates and times.

Generate custom global person number sequences for employees, applicants, andcontingent workers.

Configure the people management templates in a number of ways, includingsupplying additional information to be available from fields on the template, and

validating field entries.

Validate forms by calling formulas from the Custom Library. Calling formulas fromthe Custom Library also allows you to easily create and maintain business rules.

Set up business rules and call them from other PL/SQL applications Define Oracle Business Intelligence Systems reports

As this image of a Formula shows,

there is a significant body of

knowledge which must be

mastered to leverage this tool

effectively just as there is skill

required for other non-trivial

aspects of an implementation.


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Oracle Advanced Benefits

If the standard benefits functionality provided within the core functionality of HR is not

adequate for your organisation, Oracle Advanced Benefits (OAB) enables the administration

of a more complex mix of employee benefits

Your organisation is likely to require or benefit from OAB if the following are true:

Do you need to offer benefit programs that are funded by flex credits

Is the automatic flagging and management of life events integral to your process? Arethere many different types of life events that the benefits department has to process?

Is the ability to define automatic and default enrolments, when a change occurs to anemployee record required?

Is there a requirement to perform What-if analysis based on a Life Event anddetermines a participants eligibility, electable choices and associated costs.

In a high volume transaction environment, is there a requirement for batch processingof all eligibility, choice and enrolment activities?

If there are a large number of employees, is there a need for a Service Centre concept

for employee information updates? Do you require certifications or actions to be completed for completion of enrolment?

Do you require benefits information in multiple languages?

Are there Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) that you would like to automaticallyreimburse through payroll?

Do you require certifications or actions to be completed for completion of enrolment?Would you like to suspend an enrolment if a certification was not received in time by

an automated process?

For further detail refer to the OAUG conference paper Oracle Benefits: Standard or

Advanced which is right for you? By Lynda Tollefson, available from the OAUG

Conference database.

Additional Application Functionality

This section provides an overview of the functionality provided by the web-based HR

Applications, which have not yet been covered.

iRecruitment

Oracle iRecruitment gives you flexible control over your entire recruitment cycle, from the

stage where a vacancy is first identified, through to the rejection or appointment of an

applicant.

Competency is a central concept in Oracle iRecruitment. If a company uses its core

competencies to be competitive, it is likely that the recruiting piece of competencies will be akey aspect of its overall competency strategy, because one way to build competency is to

acquire new talent. This is not to say that those implementing iRecruitment must be

completely strategic with their intentions, but the product is there to provide that capability.

Functionality provided includes the following:

Advertise vacancies internally and / or externally (although the implication of placingpart of the eBusiness Suite outside your organisations firewall should not be

underestimated).


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Schedule interviews and to update the assignment status of applicants.

Produce a report on applicants and their interview schedules.

Record both the competencies required for a position and those held by an applicant.Using the web-based Suitability Matching tool, you can then identify which

applicants are most suited to the position by making a comparison between the

competencies required and the competencies held by each applicant. Create standard letters and link them to assignment statuses. For example, you can set

up a standard letter that is triggered when an applicants assignment status changes to

Rejected.

Compose a job offer on the web and route it to the appropriate managers for approval.If approval is given, you can generate an offer letter and track the candidates

response.

Convert your applicants or ex-employees to new employees with the minimum ofeffort. In addition, the hiring process supports a wide range of other business needs,

such as back-to-back employment. It also provides you with validation. For example,

you places limits on the rehiring of an ex-employee.

Implicit in all of this is extensive use of Workflow and Oracle Approvals Management (AME)technology. As mentioned earlier, whilst Workflow is used across the entire eBusiness Suite, it is

very likely that AME skills will only be required

Self-Service Human Resources

It may be helpful to think of Self-Service HR less as an application that provides additional

functionality, but more as a set of tools with which one can create self-service access to

existing core HR functionality.

SSHR functionality is put together during the implementation using building blocks called

modules. The following are examples of these modules:

Enter Process i.e. Select a person from a list

Manager Actions - enables the user to select the function, or action, to be performed Document Manager - enables you to automatically generate business documents.

These are combined with workflow activities and controls from the Oracle Approvals

Management (AME) application to manage approval logic.

Oracle provide the following example which illustrates the broad mix of skills required to

create such self service processes

1. The user chooses the Personal Information function from the usermenu.

2. The application calls the Personal Information workflow process

3. The FNDdata security is checked to make sure that this function is permitted for thelegislation code of the current users business group.

4. Oracle Workflow runs theMaintain Personal Information activity5. A page is displayed based on the definition of the document in the MDS Repository.

The page is influenced by anycontext-sensitive flexfields and the cumulative effect of

anyPersonalization Framework configurations that relate to this document (see

below).

6. The user selects an action. Depending on the choice the user makes, different pagesare displayed in sequence i.e.different flows.


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7. When the user has entered the information (or is ready to complete the transaction),they click the Continue link at the bottom of the page. Any field-related errors (bad

formatting, missing fields, and so on) are flagged by aJavaScript procedure stored on

the client and the user is asked to correct this information.

8. Web page data is sent from the client to the server and server-side validation isperformed byHR Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

9. When the changes are complete, the user returns to the Review page and clicks theSubmit Information link to save the changes.

10.The number of approval levels and approvers is determined by the configuration ofDynamic Approvals (via Oracle Approvals Management).

11.The workflow item is routed for approval according to the configuration of theApprovals process.

12.When the approver approves or rejects the transaction, the user is notified of thetransaction status and the transaction details are deleted from the transaction tables. If

the transaction is approved, the data is loaded into the HR tables.

As this quick overview illustrates, the configuration of Oracle Self-Service functionality will

require the collaboration of both HR functional expertise and a broad range of fairly technicalskills. Some of those skills are probably common to Financials implementations, however

some of them especially Oracle Approvals Management, may be almost uniquely required

for HR implementations.

Oracle Learning Management (OLM)

Implementing OLM is a significant additional implementation task, unlike Self-Service HR

which essentially extends core HR functionality, OLM provides the additional functionality

to support the administration and delivery of an on-demand learning solution. This includes

the following functionality:

Content management, (content is defined as any piece of web-playable learningmaterial available to learners)

Scheduling and administration of learning resources like trainers, classes and trainingrooms.

Learner administration, including self-registration, enrolment for events and progresstracking

Creation of assessment instruments and tracking of the outcomes of learnerassessment.

Integration of price lists and interfacing of cost information to Oracle General Ledger(using Oracle Training Administration (OTA), which involves the implementation of

that Application as well).

The implementation of OLM and OTA require the implementation of 2 additional keyFlexfields:

The Training Resources key flexfield is an essential feature of the application.

The optional Personal Analysis key flexfield enables you to define and trackinformation about the people in your system.

The Personal Analysis flexfield is different from all other key flexfields because you can

define an unlimited number of instances. Once you define your structures, you then assign

each instance to the required business group. Each instance is referred to as a Special


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Information Type (SIT). Each SIT can have up to thirty fields, where each field is a segment

of the flexfield. You can also set up cross validation if you need to ensure users enter correct

combinations.

SITs are usually used to capture groups of related data that is not provided by the main

system, that your organisation needs to hold about people, jobs and positions. For example

you may need to record medical details or Occupational Health and Safety information. You

determine where you can view each instance: in the job, position or personal information

windows. You can use the Personal Analysis flexfield for form level security on certain

forms and restrict the segments (special information types) that the user can see.

There are some considerations that need to be taken into account when determining the setup

of your Personal Analysis flexfield. You cannot link SITs, so you should not base your SITs

on compensation. All descriptive and key flexfields produce database items for use in

FastFormulas, except for special information types. Therefore, if you need data in a

FastFormula, you need to plan for it to be in a database item and not in a SIT.

Further Detail on HR Specific Concepts

Transaction Type Wizard

The Transaction Type Wizard is an HR specific tool which guides the user step by step

through processing a group of like transactions like position changes, reallocations etc,

including the routing and approval of these transactions.

Position Control

Public sector organisations (and others which are more bureaucratic or rules-based) typically

have strict control over organisational roles. Oracle HRMS position control providesmechanisms to address these needs. These enable you to:

- Maintain strict control over the creation or modification of positions- Keep position-related costs in line with available funds

(e.g. the application triggers warnings or errors when entering an assignment that

would put you over budget)

- Meet legislation-mandated funding and reporting requirements- Route business transactions for approval automatically


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DateTrack

In contrast to work structures, which are simply dated, other key dynamic information in

Oracle HRMS is date-tracked. This includes information on workers, assignments, and

compensation and benefits. DateTrack allows you to maintain a continuous history of the

information over time.

When you set an effective date for your work, DateTrack ensures that only informationeffective on that day is used for any processing, validation, and reporting you carry out.

When you make a change, you can choose whether it is a correction to the last update or a

new update to be recorded in the history of the record. You can use DateTrack History to

view a report of every update ever made to a record. You can identify windows containing

datetracked, rather than dated, information by the presence of a region labelled Effective

Dates.

When you are new to DateTrack, you may find it useful to be reminded of your effective date

whenever you open a window where you can enter or change datetracked information. The

reminder appears in a Decision window and asks whether you want to change your effective

date. If you choose Yes, theAlter Effective Date window displays.

There is a user profile option calledDateTrack:Reminderthat determines when the Decisionwindow appears. There are three possible values for this profile option:

- Always- Never- Not Today

TheNot Today value causes the reminder to appear when you navigate to a window where

you can change datetracked information and your effective date is not todays date.

You can set the value of this profile option in the Personal Profile Values window.

To find out whether the assignment existed before 1 January 1999, you should use DateTrack

History.

There is also aDateTrack: Date Security user profile option, which determines whether you

can change your effective date. Your system administrator sets this profile option. There arefour possible values:

- All: You can change to any other effective date.- Future: You can change between todays date and any future dates.- Past: You can change between todays date and any past dates.- Present: You cannot change to a date other than today.

When you delete datetracked information, Oracle HRMS prompts you with the following

options:

End Date: This ends the record on your effective date. When you re-query the record, this

end date displays in the To field.

Purge: This totally removes the record from your database.

If there are any future updates to the record after your effective date, Oracle HRMS mayprompt you with another two options:

All: This removes all future updates to the record. The current snapshot is valid until you

make another change.

Next: This removes the next future update to the record. It then resets the current

snapshots end date to the end date of the deleted update.

You do not always see all of these options when you choose to delete. Some windows do not

allow all four operations.


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To see all the changes made to a date-tracked record over time, use DateTrack History.

1. Choose the DateTrack History icon from the Toolbar.

The DateTrack History Change Field Summary window opens. Each row shows

which fields were changed on the From date.

2. Choose the Full History button if you want to open a DateTrack History folder

showing the value of each field between the effective dates. The row for the current

snapshot (corresponding to your effective date) is highlighted.. You can use theFolder menu to select the fields to view in the folder. Note: It is possible to customize

the information displayed in the Folder by modifying the DateTrack History view for

the underlying

Conclusion

The Oracle HR suite is a suite of powerful Applications which can be used to support the

move by an organisation from administrative to strategic HR Management. A successful

shared implementation requires open communication and an understanding that some careful

co-ordination of shared functionality will be required.

References

Oracle Human Resources Management Systems Enterprise and Workforce ManagementGuide (Australia), Release 11i

Ulrich, D., 1998, A New Mandate for Human Resources inHarvard Business Review,

January -February 1998 pp. 124 134

Re AME, see:Implementing Oracle Approvals Management, available on MetaLink

Oracle HR the Australian Way by ASSIST Pty Ltd, an OAUG conference paper in

2000 (also available from ASG Ltd)

(The ASSIST paper was designed to explain the use of the Australian HR

localisation but provides an excellent introduction to Oracle HR for Finance users;

unfortunately it is now hard to obtain.

This paper has built heavily on the work already done by ASSIST and the authorswish to acknowledge that.)

Various other conference papers from the OAUG database:

Oracle Benefits: Standard or Advanced which is right for you? By Lynda Tollefson

Customizing HRMS using Fast Formulas By Jerry Bulla and Ajay Arigala

The Scoop on I-recruitment! Implementing, Managing, I-Recruitmentby Lisa

Palermo

Oracle iLearning and You! By Melissa Sider

Demystifying OTM And OTL by Tony Tella

About the Authors of this Paper:

Jeannie Dobney is an independent consultant specialising in Oracle Financials. She has over

a decades experience with Oracle Application and can be contacted by email at

[email protected]

Greg Sutton is Australias most experienced Oracle HR implementer and is currently

principal of Presence of ITs Oracle Applications practice. Greg can be contacted by email at

[email protected]

HR Primer Wp

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