HRMS

Oracle Applications for Human Resources enable an organization to hire, train, and deploy, assess, motivate and reward its people more effectively than ever before, turning HR into astrategic-level function and key contributor to an organization's success. By automating its administrative duties, providing self-service for non-HR professionals, and managing information more efficiently, HR professionals can devote their energy and creativity to delivering the maximum value for the organization's investment in people.

Oracle Human Resources (HR) is a proactive management solution that helps control costs whiledeveloping and supporting an effective workforce. Among the many features of Oracle HR is the ability to:

·                     Manage the entire recruitment cycle.

·                     Design organizational models that match current and future business strategies and objectives.

·                     Perform position management by defining and recording required skills, competencies, experience and qualifications for positions, jobs and organizations.

·                     Perform career management functions relating to the definition of competencies, assessments, suitability matching, graphical ranking, and succession planning.

·                     Administer and maintain benefits plans, coverage levels, and contribution allocations.

·                     Manage salary proposals, and approve these by component.

·                     Use spreadsheets to export compensation and benefit details for comparison with external survey figures.

Oracle Human Resources provides the shortest route to fast, smart human resource management. Oracle HRMS is an integrated suite of applications that supports all aspects of the HR function. It includes:

·                     Oracle Human Resources (HR)

·                     Oracle Payroll

·                     Oracle Self-Service Human Resources (SSHR)

·                     Oracle Performance Management

·                     Oracle iRecruitment

·                     Oracle Time & Labor (OTL)

·                     Oracle Learning Management

·                     Oracle Advanced Benefits (OAB)

·                     Oracle HRMS Intelligence (HRMSi)

  

Human Resources Management: Human Resources Management is used for addressing the employees’ aspect of this continuous improvement. It helps the enterprises in reviewing and improving their business functions related to the personnel management.

Salient features

·                     Manage the entire recruitment cycle

·                     Design organizational models that match current and future business strategies and objectives

·                     Perform position management by defining and recording required skills, competencies, experience and qualifications for positions, jobs and organizations

·                     Perform career management functions relating to the definition of competencies, assessments, suitability matching, graphical ranking and succession planning

·                     Administer and maintain benefits plans, coverage levels and contribution allocations

·                     Manage salary proposals and approve these by component

Work Structures

Work structures represent the different ways in which employees can work within the enterprise. These are the frameworks for defining the assignments for the employees. These can be also understood as the representation of the units within the enterprise. The Business Group is the largest unit and represents the enterprise as a whole.

Work structures include internal organizations (e.g. departments, divisions etc.), payrolls, jobs, positions, grades, grading structures and the employee grouping used in the enterprise.

People

People are the nucleus of any enterprise. Oracle HRMS gives the ability to hold information about the current employees, ex-employees, applicants, contacts and contingent workers. Along with the standard information, the system can store the information about the addresses, phones, nationality, qualifications, absence history, interview records etc. Special information can defined to store any other information for the employees. E.g. special information could be languages known or hobbies. Work related information such as preference of working hours (shifts), hours of work could also be maintained.

Assignments

Assignment for an employee is nothing but the employee’s place within the enterprise. The assignment gives information about the organization for which the employee works. The details about the employee’s location, job, role, position, grade, location, payroll, supervisor, working hours and loads of other information can also be obtained from assignment data. As and when the information about the employee assignment is changed, a work history is automatically built up for the employee.

Assignments are also used to group people for reporting, managing and costing purposes. Compensation, benefits planning and administration could also be done with the help of the assignments.

Date Tracking

Typical data that changes for any enterprise includes corporate restructuring, employee development related changes, departmental changes etc. Using Oracle HRMS, the changes can be effectively managed without the need of redefining of the parts.

These changes could be either Dated or Date Tracked.

Dated

Work Structures related data is dated. Dates can be attached to a work structure to maintain the versions ad the structure changes. The previous structure can be maintained as historical data and a new version can be created with the future dates. In Oracle HRMS, the information related to organizations, jobs, grades, locations is dated. The work structure is active as of a Date From, which is entered while defining it. It remains valid till the Date To. A work structure cannot be assigned to an employee before the Date From or after the Date To.

Date Tracked

The dynamic information related to the employees, employee assignments, compensations and benefits is date tracked. Date tracking is a feature available in HRMS, which is useful in maintaining history of the data when any changes are made. To view the date tracked data from the front end, effective start date needs to be set. The setting of effective date ensures that the data effective only of that date is available for the users to view, change, validate or report. When any changes are done to the data, the user can choose whether the change would be a correction to the last changes or a new update that needs to be recorded in the history. The Set effective date option is available on the screens which deal with the date tracked data. This is discussed in details in the technical section for date tracking.

Organization

Navigation: Work Structures --> Organization --> Description

Business Group

In Oracle HRMS, the enterprise needs to be represented as an employer. This can be done by creating Business Group. Business Group is the largest organizational unit that is set up. Depending on the need, a single business group or multiple business groups can be set up. The defaults entered for a business group are the information that will generally apply to the people entered for that particular business group. These defaults can be overridden.

While setting up the business group, following information needs to be set up:

·                     Employee Number Generation for Employees and Applicants (Manual/Automatic)

·                     National Identifier Generation only for Employees (Manual/Automatic)

·                     Key flexfield structures that would be used in the business group.

·                     Legislation code and default currency

·                     Government Reporting Entity

This is available for selected legislations e.g. US. One more GREs can be set up within a business group. GRE organization is recognized as an employer by the government.

Representing Organizations

All the levels of an enterprise can be represented using Internal Organizations and External Organizations.

·                     Internal Organizations are the departments, divisions or branches where the employees work.

·                     External Organizations could be the hiring agencies, contractors, training institutes etc.

Location

The locations need to be set up before an organization can be defined. This is the exact location of the organization along with the address and phone number.

Navigation: Work Structures --> Location

Organization Classifications

This describes the purpose and use of the organization. The organization must be classified as an HR Organization to assign employees.

Tables

HR_LOCATIONS_ALL

HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS – LOCATION_ID is linked with HR_LOCATIONS_ALL.LOCATION_ID

HR_ORGANIZATION_INFORMATION – Stores the classification and the business group details. ORGANIZATION_ID is linked with HR_ALL_ORGANIZATION_UNITS.ORGANIZATION_ID

Jobs

Navigation: Work Structures --> Job --> Description

An employee’s primary role is set up using a job. It is a generic role within the business group that is independent of the organization. E.g. manager job can be present in any organizations.

Job Name is a key flexfield. Each job is held in a job group. A job group stores the jobs of similar types. All the jobs defined in HRMS for employees must be a part of the default HR 

Job Group.

Job Group Navigation: Work Structures --> Job --> Job Group

Tables

PER_JOB_DEFINITIONS – Stores the segment of the KFF. This is linked to fnd tables  that store the KFF structure details.

PER_JOB_GROUPS

PER_JOBS – JOB_DEFINITION_ID is linked with PER_JOB_DEFINITIONS.JOB_DEFINITION_ID. JOB_GROUP_ID is linked with PER_JOB_GROUPS.JOB_GROUP_ID.

Position

Navigation: Work Structures --> Position --> Description

Position is a specific occurrence of a job. Position is fixed within an organization. E.g. Sales Manager is an occurrence of the job Manager in the Sales Organization. Similarly, HR Manager will be one more occurrence of the same job in the HR Organization. There could be one or many holders of the position in an organization. This is a key flexfield.

A Position is defined for an Organization and a Job. Positions data is date tracked.

Grade

Navigation: Work Structures --> Grade --> Description

Grades are used to decide the relative status of employee assignments. Compensation and Benefits are also decided based on the grades. E.g. Salary, company cell phone, company car – decided based on the grades. This is a key flexfield.

Valid grades could be defined for a job or for a position. A grade could be a valid grade either for a job or for a position. A single grade cannot be valid one for both a job and a position.

Employees/ Applicants

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain

Employees and Applicants are entered through a single screen. To identify the records person type is used. For am employee the person type is Employee, for an applicant the person type is Applicant, for a contact the person type is Other. Along with the personal details like name, gender, hiring date, marital status, birth details, social security number (For US, National Identifier – for UK), and information about the contacts, phones, addressed can also be stored. People data is date tracked. Other information stored is schools/colleges attended, absences, Bookings, competence, qualifications, disabilities work preferences etc.

Personal Details

Address

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain --> Address

The address style can be used to store addresses in country specific formats. Only one address can be stored as a primary address

Phone

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain --> Others --> Phones

Multiple phone numbers can be stored. Phone type is used to identify the phone numbers. e.g. Home, Work etc.

Periods of service

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain --> Others --> End Employment

Termination related information about the ex-employees is stored in periods of service information.

Contacts

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain --> Others --> Contact

Contacts for an employee play an important role in benefits. Based on the contacts, the employee becomes eligible for benefits such as spouse life insurance, dependent life insurance, employee plus family vision, employee plus spouse dental etc. Addresses and phones for a contact can also be maintained.

Tables

PER_CONTACT_RELATIONSHIPS

PER_ALL_PEOPLE_F – PERSON_ID is linked with PER_CONTACT_RELATIONSHIPS.PERSON_ID

Note: The data stored in above details is for a business group. In case of a Global implementation, data for all the business groups will be stored in these tables. The field business_group_id stores the id of the business group.

Assignments

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain --> Assignment

Assignment data for an employee/applicant is date tracked. Assignment gives information about the person’s place within the organization. Organization, location, job, grade, position, supervisor, salary basis, payroll, assignment status etc.

People Group

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain --> Assignment (Group field on the screen)

This is a key flexfield, which is used for grouping the people together based on certain criteria. To access the assignment screen, at least one segment of the People Group KFF needs to be enabled.

Salary

Navigation: People --> Enter and Maintain --> Assignment --> Salary

Salary details for an employee can be stored. The screen shows details of the new salary details and previous proposal details. 

Payroll

Navigation: Payroll --> Description

For faster pay processing, a group of employees are sorted using Payroll, whose pay processing can be done with a single frequency. The payroll frequency could be monthly, semi-monthly, weekly, daily etc. An employee is put on a payroll by assigning the payroll to the employee assignment. Payroll data is date tracked. To assign a payroll to an employee assignment, the payroll needs to be effective as of the effective date of the assignment.

Tables

PAY_ALL_PAYROLLS_F – PAYROLL_ID is linked with PER_ALL_ASSIGNMENTS_F.PAYROLL_ID

Payment Methods

Navigation: Payroll --> Payment Methods

Payment method is the way by which the employee would prefer to receive the pay. Payment method could be check, cash or NACHA.

Tables

PAY_PERSONAL_PAYMENT_METHODS_F – ASSIGNMENT_ID is linked with PER_ALL_ASSIGNMENTS_F.ASSIGNMENT_ID

PAY_ORG_PAYMENT_METHODS_F – PAYMENT_TYPE_ID is linked with PAY_PAYMENT_TYPES.PAYMENT_TYPE_ID

Consolidation Set

Navigation: Payroll --> Consolidation

A consolidation set must be selected before starting a payroll run. The consolidation set provides essential labeling for each payroll run.

Benefits and Compensation

Compensation and benefits for the employees are the integral part for any enterprise. The compensations and benefits can be setup in Oracle HRMS. All types of compensation and benefits and the rules that determine who will be paid what benefits, when and how often could be set up. With the date track option available, future dated changes can be done to take care of policy changes. Compensation heads such as earnings, deductions and other items set ups is discussed here. Please, refer the Appendix – A for benefits set ups. These heads are set up using elements.

Element

Navigation: Total Compensation --> Basic --> Element Description

This data is date tracked. The effective date for an element could be selected such that any historical entries could be made. Reporting name of the element is the name that appears on the reports. Primary classification states the purpose of the element. E.g. earnings, information, Employer liabilities, voluntary deductions etc.

Type of the element could be recurring (occurring periodically) or nonrecurring (occurring just once). Termination rule would be the rule when the element entries need to be stopped for an employee. Generally, Actual Termination is selected. Multiple Entries Allowed should be checked to receive more than one entry.

INPUT AND Output currencies will be based on the legislation. Additional information is stored in the Further Information field.

Input Value

Navigation: Total Compensation --> Basic --> Element Description --> Input Values

Up to 12 input values can be defined for an element. This data is date tracked. The name should be entered and the units. Units could be Hours, Money etc. To hold the payroll run results, the input value needs to be defined as Pay Value. The element input value could be required or optional. Default, minimum and maximum values could be entered. Minimum and Maximum value will help in validation.

Element Link

Navigation: Total Compensation --> Basic --> Link

Element links are used to determine which group of people is eligible for which elements.

The element, for which the link has to be created, needs to be selected in the window. In the eligibility criteria, the element can be linked to an organization, Job, Grade, People Group, Location, Position, Payroll, Employment Category and Salary Basis. The check box ‘Link To All Payrolls’ will link the element to all the employees.

Tables

PAY_ELEMENT_TYPES_F

PAY_ELEMENT_ENTIRES_F

PAY_INPUT_VALUES_F

PAY_ELEMENT_LINKS_F

Date Tracking

Functional aspects of date tracking have been explained before.

Date tracking enables to restore history after any changes have been done. Not all data in HRMS is date tracked. Technically, the tables ending with a ‘_f’ store the date tracked information. The primary key for such table comprises of an id field (e.g. person_id in per_all_people_f), effective_start_date and effective_end_date.

A condition needs to be put in every query to check for the effective start date and effective end date in order to fetch a single record.

Different Date track modes while updating the data are as follows:

Consider a small example. An assignment has start date 1-Jan-2001 and no effective end date (End of time 31-Dec-4712). The record is being viewed on 1-Jan-2005 from the application. Some changes are done to this assignment and these need to be saved. The system gives two options, Correction and Update

Correct

If Correction is selected, the current record with effective start date 1-Jan-2001 is updated with the new changes. i.e. there remains just one record after Correction is done.

Update

If Update is selected, a new record is created from 1-Jan-2005 till 31-Dec-4712 with the latest changes that are done. The existing record is end dated on 31-Dec-2004 and has the previous details. Thus, a history record is created that has the historical data.

If a record is updated on the same day when it was created and Update mode is selected, the mode is automatically changes to Correction.

Future Dated Changes

Consider the above assignment.

There are two records:

Start Date --> End Date

 31-Dec-2004à1-Jan-2001

 31-Dec-4712à1-Jan-2005

Effective date is set to 1-Jan-2004, displaying the first assignment record. Some changes are done and saved. Now, as of 1-Jan-2004, future dated change exists, which will become effective from 1-Jan-2005.

In such cases the system prompts for two options when the changes are saved:

Insert and Replace.

Insert

This will insert a new record before the next scheduled change. The change in future will be effective as of the start date of the change.

i.e. the new assignment records will be:

Start Date --> End Date

1-Jan-2001 -->31-Dec-2003

1-Jan-2004 --> 31-Dec-2004

1-Jan-2005 --> 31-Dec-4712

Replace

This option will replace the next future change with the current change. The future change will not exist anymore. i.e. the new assignment records will be:

Start Date --> End Date

1-Jan-2001 --> 31-Dec-2003

1-Jan-2004 --> 31-Dec-4712

Date Track Delete

When any date tracked data needs to be deleted, following options are available:

End Date

The record will be end dated and will not be visible on the screen after the end date.

Purge

The record will be totally removed from the database

In case of future dated records existing, following options are available:

All

All future updates are removed.

Next

Next applicable change is deleted. End date of the current record is set to the end date of the next change.

  

APIs

Application Programmatic Interface: API is nothing but a logical grouping of PL/SQL packaged procedures and functions, which acts as an interface to the database.

APIs are used extensively in Oracle HRMS. For every insert/update or delete to any of the base tables, an API is available.

APIs are primarily used to validate the data being inserted into the base tables and also for inserting or updating the data on deleting the data from the base tables.

Object Version Number

In Oracle HRMS, every row in the database table has an object version number. When a new row is created, the object version number for the row is 1. When the row is changed, the object version number is incremented by one. When a user queries a record, the object version number is also fetched along with the other information.

Consider, two users A and B query the same record having Object Version Number 1 simultaneously. If user A makes changes to the records and saves the changes, the current object version number (in this case 1) is compared with the object version number of the record in the database (in this case 1). Since, these values are same, the changes are valid and so the changes are saved and the object version number of the record is incremented by 1. It will become 2.

If user B also does changes and tries to save them, the object version number in the database is 2 against the object version number of the record sent to client (in this case 1). Since, the object version numbers are different, it is evident that the record is already changed by another user and so the changes done by user B are not valid as they may override changes done by user A.

The user B will get an error message:”Record has been modified by another user”. He/she will have to re-query the record to do the changes.

This is one of the important parameters for an API.

Parameters

Every API has a number of parameters. Not all parameters are mandatory. Generally, the optional parameters are followed by a default value, e.g. p_email_address in varchar2 default null.

Control Parameters

Control parameters are the mandatory parameters common across all the APIs.

p_object_version_number

This is one of the control parameters. For insert APIs, p_object_version_number is an OUT parameter. For update APIs, p_object_version_number is an IN OUT parameter.

p_validate

This is an IN parameter. The parameter decides that the record needs to be saved to the database or not Default value for p_validate is FALSE. If TRUE value is passed, the data is only validated and not saved to the database.

p_effective_date

APIs that are used to insert/update/delete the date tracked data have this control parameter. This is a mandatory IN parameter that defines the date from which the current change needs to be applied.

p_datetrack_update_mode

APIs used to update the date tracked data have this control parameter. Valid values for this parameter are: UPDATE, CORRECTION, UPDATE_OVERRIDE and UPDATE_CHANGE_INSERT

p_datetrack_delete_mode

APIs used to delete date track data have this control parameter. Valid values for this parameter are: ZAP, DELETE, FUTURE_CHANGE, and DELETE_NEXT_CHANGE

List of Important APIs

Work Structures

HR_ORGANIZATION_API

HR_JOB_API

HR_POSITION_API

HR_GRADE_API

HR_VALID_GRADES_API

HR_LOCATION_API

People

HR_EMPLOYEE_API

HR_PERSON_API

HR_ASSIGNMENT_API

HR_PERSON_ADDRESS_API

HR_PHONE_API

HR_UPLOAD_PROPOSAL_API

HR_APPLICANT_API

HR_CONTACT_API

HR_CONTACT_REL_API

HR_PERIODS_OF_SERVICE_API

Payroll

PAY_ACTION_INFORMATION_API

PAY_BATCH_ELEMENT_ENTRY_API

PAY_COST_ALLOCATION_API

PAY_ELEMENT_ENTRY_API

PAY_ELEMENT_LINK_API

PAY_ELEMENT_TYPES_API

PAY_INPUT_VALUE_API

SIT

SIT stands for Special Information Types.

This is nothing but the Personal Analysis Key Flexfield. This can be used to define any special information that cannot be stored with the help of the main system. Any number of instances can be defined of the Personal Analysis KFF. Each instance is knows as Special Information Type. Each SIT can have up to thirty fields. Each field is a segment of the KFF.

When a new segment combinations is created, the system will first check to see whether that combination already exists in the table before creating a row. If the combination does exist, the system only retrieves the ID of the row it found. The system therefore has to scan through the whole SIT combinations table.

SITs are primarily attached to people. They can also be used with Jobs, Positions, and Activities (in OTA), but with skill meaning (competencies).

EIT

EIT stands for Extra Information Types.

EITs are a type of Descriptive Flexfield. When a new segment combinations is created, the row is just inserted into the appropriate table (without checking whether the combination already exists). There is now full scan of the underlying table and so performance shouldn't be affected by the size of the table.

EIT's can be attached to People, Assignment, Job, Position, Location and Organization.

Oracle Advanced Benefits

The compensation management using Oracle HRMS is explained in the earlier part of the document. In addition to the compensation and benefit functionality, Oracle offers Oracle Advanced Benefits module.

In an enterprise every employee is eligible for certain benefits. These benefits could be Dental insurance, Medical insurance, Life Insurance, Pension Plans and various other benefits. Certain benefits are provided by the employer and for certain benefits the employee needs to contribute. This entire advanced benefits administration can be handled effectively with the use of OAB.

The OAB structure contains of benefits programs, plans, plan types, options, enrollments, enrollment rates and beneficiaries.

E.g. a program could be a Retiree Program. Only, retired people (Ex-employees) could be enrolled under this program.

Plans are the benefits plans which are available under a program.

A person enrolled under the retiree program will be eligible for the plans which are in the program.

Plan types are medical, dental, vision, spouse life, dependent life, 401K etc.

Options available for the employees to choose from could be Employee Only, Employee plus family, Employee plus Spouse, Employee plus dependents etc. The contacts entered for an employee play an important roles when it comes to opting for options such as employee plus family. The dependents eligible for benefits are termed as covered dependents or beneficiaries.

With the help of eligibility criteria set up in the system, the system determines which employee becomes eligible under which benefit program. Life events are set up in the system which helps the employee to opt for enrollment changes. e.g. a single employee when married can opt for employee plus spouse benefits.

The rates are defined in the system, which are linked with the programs, plans and options chosen by the employee.

SSHR

SSHR stands for self service human resources. The module provides self service management for both the managers as well as employees.

This is a web based module. With the help of intranet and a web browser the employees and their managers can access personal data and career management functionality.

SSHR uses Oracle Workflow extensively. Workflow helps in managing the information flow between the employees and the management. Decision making can be routed through proper channels with the usage of Workflow.

Following functionalities are available with SSHR:

·                     Matching a person to a job or position by competence and planning succession.

·                     Candidate offers enables you to perform web–based recruitment.

·                     Access/Modify personal data

Oracle payroll is nothing 

1) Group of employees
2) Assignment Sets
3) Consolidation Sets

Payrolls are about grouping employees into categories how they are paid in oracle.
Assignment sets to process employees in sub-groups Ex: Monthly pay, Weekly Pay
Consolidation set is used to group results for post-Processing

Processing:
Batch Submission and Quick pay options for processing pay for a group of employees or individual. Quick pay option  used when en employee Terminated.

Quick Pay:

Quick pay option is used when employee leaving organization , and need to process separately from the remaining payroll, You can use quick pay to make simple calculations and rollback the process for that employee .

Retro Pay:
Allows you to back pay employees in the current  payroll run 

Advanced Pay:
Allows you to pay employees in advance in the current payroll run. Both advance pay and Retro pay must be run before process the payroll.