Position Structure

Position Structure is the rulebook that says which combinations of Category, Position and Grade are real in your company. A Production Supervisor at grade 7 in direct labour is a line here. A Production Supervisor at grade 2 is not, so nobody can create one. You build the list once and it governs what HR is allowed to assemble.

Where

People Directory › Setup › Position Structure

Who uses it

The implementation consultant, once, then revisited when a new job is added

When

After Position, Position Category and Position Grade, before the first Organization Assignment

Needs first

Position, Position Category, Position Grade, Legal Entity

Shape

One record for the whole company, with many lines

What it is for

By the time you reach this screen you have three independent lists: the jobs, the families they belong to, and the levels they can sit at. Left alone, those three lists multiply. Twelve grades, six categories and eighty positions is five and a half thousand combinations, and almost none of them are real. Nothing stops somebody creating a grade 11 Machine Operator in the sales category except a colleague noticing.

Position Structure is where you write down the combinations that are real. Each line names a legal entity, a category, a position and a grade, and the set of lines is the catalogue of jobs the company actually has. It is one record, not one per job, so the whole catalogue is on one screen and can be read top to bottom in a review meeting.

Why does this screen exist when Position Planning looks the same

They are asked the same two questions and they answer different halves.

Position Structure answers "is this job real". It has no amounts and no dates. It is a validity list, and the same line is true this year and next year.

Position Planning answers "how many of them can we hire, for how much, and between which dates". It is a budget, it carries a value, a quantity and a date range, and it is a separate record per budgeted line rather than one list.

A useful way to hold the difference: the structure is the catalogue, the planning is the order. The catalogue says Production Supervisor at grade 7 exists. The plan says we are funding four of them from July to June at a particular cost.

And why does it exist when there is an Organizational Structure screen

Only the name is similar. Organizational Structure is this company's own settings screen, where a field is made compulsory, hidden or given a default. It says nothing about jobs. Position Structure is the catalogue of which category, position and grade combinations are legal.

And neither of them is the organisation chart. No screen draws the hierarchy: business unit and department are flat lists, and the reporting line is held per person on the Employee Organization Assignment, so the chart is built out of the people rather than out of a structure screen.

Every field, in plain words

Header

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Client	The client this structure belongs to.	Pick your client from the list.	Required. There is one structure record per client, so once you have saved it you reopen the same record to add lines rather than creating a second one.

The header is deliberately thin. The screen is its lines.

Lines

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Line #	The line number.	Fills itself. Leave it.
Legal Entity	The company the combination is valid in.	KHI-MFG - Korangi Manufacturing	Required. Pick it from the list. A group with two legal entities can allow a job in one and not the other by simply not writing the line. See Legal Entity.
Position Category	The family the job belongs to in this entity.	DIRLAB - Direct Labour	Required. Pick it from the list. See Position Category.
Position	The job.	PRDSUP - Production Supervisor	Required. Pick it from the list. See Position.
Position Grade	The level the job may sit at.	G07 - Grade 7 Supervisory	Required. Pick it from the list. If one job legitimately spans two grades, write two lines. See Position Grade.

All four values on a line are required. There is nothing optional on a line, which is the point: a half filled line would not be a rule.

How to configure it

1. Finish Position Grade, Position Category and Position first. This screen can only pick from what those three hold.
2. Open Position Structure and pick your Client in the header. If a record already exists for the client, open that one, do not start a second.
3. Add a line. Pick the Legal Entity, then the Position Category, then the Position, then the Position Grade.
4. Work position by position rather than grade by grade. Take Production Supervisor, write every grade it is allowed at, then move to the next job. It is easier to spot a gap that way.
5. Where a job spans two levels, write both lines. PRDSUP at G07 and PRDSUP at G08 are two lines, not a range.
6. Where the group has more than one legal entity, repeat the lines that apply to each. A job that only exists in the factory gets a line for the factory entity only.
7. Save. Read the list back in one pass and ask the HR lead to confirm it, this is the cheapest review in the whole implementation.
8. When a new job is created later, come back and add its line here before anybody is assigned to it.

Scenarios

We have a factory entity and a trading entity with different job sets

Write the lines per entity. The factory entity gets the production and quality jobs, the trading entity gets the sales jobs, and the shared jobs such as Accounts Officer get a line in both. Anything you do not write down is not available in that entity.

One job is a grade 7 in the factory and a grade 8 in the office

Two lines. Same position, same or different category, different legal entity, different grade. The combination is what is being approved, not the position on its own.

A new job title has been approved mid year

Create it on Position first, then add its line or lines here, then assign somebody to it. Doing it in the other order leaves you with a position nobody is sure is approved.

Do we have to fill this screen at all

You can get an implementation live without it, because the screen requires only the client in its header. The combinations then go unpoliced and HR assembles them freely on each assignment. On a 500 person site that is usually fine for a month and a problem by the annual increment, when the reports group people by combinations nobody meant to create. Fill it.

What it is connected to

• Needs Legal Entity, Position Category, Position and Position Grade to exist first.
• It is the approved catalogue that Employee Organization Assignment is checked against in practice when HR assembles a position, category and grade for an employee.
• It is not the same thing as Organizational Structure, which is the per company field behaviour settings screen, nor Position Planning, which is the headcount budget.
• Removing a line does not touch employees who were already assigned that combination. They keep it, and their history stays readable.

If something looks wrong

• "The lookups on the lines are empty" - the position, category or grade lists have not been built yet, or every entry in them is blocked.
• "It created a second structure record for the same client" - there should be one per client. Open the existing record and add lines to it rather than starting a new one.
• "A combination we approved is not available when assigning an employee" - the line is missing for that legal entity. The same job in a second entity needs its own line.
• "It will not save a line" - all four values are required. A line with no grade, or no category, is not a rule and is refused.