Who does what

Four kinds of person use PeopleNest, and almost every implementation that goes badly goes badly because one of them was handed another one's screens.

Read this page before you plan a training session. An HR officer who is shown the pay scale screens on day one will spend the next year afraid of the system, and a consultant who is asked to key in leave requests will never finish the setup.

The implementation consultant

Fills the setup screens once, at the start, and then comes back only when the company changes shape or a policy changes.

This is the person who understands that a wage type must exist before a salary structure can name it. The work is almost entirely one-time, it is mostly lists, and it is nearly all done before the first employee is keyed in.

The screens: Legal Entity, Business Unit, Department, Business Area, Functional Area, Country, State, City, Time Template, Calendar, Calender Date Template, Public Holiday, Approval, Shift Pattern, Attendance Policy, Leave Type, Leave Group, Position Grade, Position Category, Position, Employee Policy Profile, Wage Type Category, Wage Type Group, Wage Type, Pay Scale, Pay Rate, Salary Structure, Payroll Cycle, Payroll Period, Pay Area, Payroll Group, Payroll Setting, Contribution Scheme, Payroll Tax Group, Payroll Tax Slab, and the performance setup chain from KPI through Evaluation Increment Matrix.

Not the consultant's job: keying in employees, processing attendance, running payroll month after month. Set it up, prove it once, hand it over.

The HR officer

Lives in the system. Opens it every working day and will have it open most of the day at month end.

This person owns the employee record and owns leave. He adds the joiner, closes the leaver, keeps the roster right, fixes the attendance a machine got wrong, processes the attendance sheet and runs the payroll.

Every day or most days: Employee Basic Information, Employee Organization Assignment, Employee Address, Employee Contact, Employee Identification, Employee Bank Details, Employee Attandance, Employee Leaves, Employee Leave Entitlement, Shift Roster.

At month end: Payroll Attendance, Payroll, Post Payroll, Employee Overtime, Recurring Payments and Deductions, Employee Additional Payment Or Deduction.

Once a year or on an event: Leave Allocation Run, Resignation, Employee Clearance, Final Settlement, Employee Onboarding.

Not the HR officer's job: building a pay scale, defining a wage type, writing an attendance policy, designing an appraisal form. He will be asked to, because he is the one on the phone. Send it back to the consultant.

The line manager

Approves, and looks at his own team. He does not configure anything and he does not key in other people's records.

What reaches him reaches him as an approval. A leave request from one of his people, an overtime request, a shift change, an expense claim. He opens it, reads it, approves or rejects it.

At appraisal time he also scores his team. That happens on Evaluation Tracker, against the goal sheets the cycle cut for his people.

The screens: the approval inbox, Evaluation Tracker, Employee Goal for his own team's sheets, and whichever request screens the client has routed to him for approval.

A manager's approval is not a formality. A leave request does nothing at all until it is approved: the leave is only written against the person at the moment the approval completes.

The employee

Raises requests about himself and looks at his own record. Nothing else.

The screens: Employee Request Leave, Leave Cancellation, Leave Encashment, Comp Off Request, Employee Attendance Request, On Duty Request, Overtime Request, Shift Change Request, Exemption Request, Employee Request Travel, Request For Expense Reimbursement, Employee Loan Request, Request for Salary Hold, Profile Change Request, Grievance, Rating Appeal.

Note the pattern in those names. A screen called a request is the employee's own; the record it creates when approved is HR's. Employee Request Leave is his, Employee Leaves is HR's, and he never touches the second one.

Who may change what

	Consultant	HR officer	Manager	Employee
The company structure	Yes	No	No	No
Wage types, pay scales, salary structures	Yes	No	No	No
Leave types and leave groups	Yes	No	No	No
An employee's record	Set it up once	Yes	No	Requests a change
An employee's placement in the company	No	Yes	No	No
Roster and attendance	No	Yes	No	Requests a change
Leave taken	No	Yes	Approves	Requests it
The payroll run	Proves it once	Yes	No	No
Appraisal scores	No	No	Yes	Own self appraisal

One thing that page cannot show: who approves what is itself configured, on the Approval screen, per screen and per action. A client who wants the HR manager rather than the line manager to approve leave does not need a code change, only a different approval route.

If something looks wrong

• "HR says they cannot save a change to the salary structure" - correct, and deliberate. Rights to the setup screens belong with the consultant.
• "The manager says he never got the leave request" - the request screen has no approval route configured, so there is nobody to send it to. Check Approval.
• "The employee says he applied for leave but his balance has not moved" - it has not been approved yet. The balance moves when the approval completes, not when he applies.
• "Everybody can see everybody's salary" - that is a rights question, not a screen question, and it is set per role rather than per screen field.