A key requirement for any enterprise is the ability to manage change confidently and effectively. Typical enterprise changes include corporate restructuring, departmental reorganization, mergers and de-mergers of companies, centralization or decentralization of control and decision making, employee development and turnover.
In Oracle HRMS, you can change each of the major parts of your enterprise model without having to redefine the other parts.
To manage the changes to your enterprise, information within your enterprise is either dated or datetracked.
Work structures are an example of information that is dated. You can attach dates to your work structures to manage different versions over time. You retain previous versions for historical information and you can create future-dated versions to prepare for reorganization in advance.
You can also set up in advance the business rules, including compensation and benefits, associated with the new structures. These become effective on the date you specify, avoiding a workload peak.
The information in Oracle HRMS about your locations, organizations, jobs, positions, grades, payrolls and other work structures is also dated information. All dated information has From and To dates, that is, dates from and to which it is in effect in your enterprise. For example, when defining a position, you enter a date from which it starts. To close it down, you give it a date to which it remains valid.
Oracle HRMS does not permit you to assign your workers to structures on dates earlier than their Date From, or later than their Date To. Similarly, the system protects you from building eligibility rules for compensation and benefits based on work structures that have not yet gone into effect, or are out of date.
Consider using a fixed date, such as 01-JAN-1901 as the start date for all your initial work structures. By choosing a date like this you can immediately identify all of your implementation definitions. You should use accurate dates for all subsequent definitions.
You can structure the organizations and positions you enter in Oracle HRMS into organization or position hierarchies that serve various purposes. Reporting hierarchies, for example, reflect reporting lines within your enterprise.
You maintain both dates and version numbers for these hierarchies, to keep a history of your hierarchies as they change over time.
To build a new version of a hierarchy, you can copy an existing one and make the necessary changes to it. When you save the new version the system automatically gives the previous version an end date.
In contrast to work structures, which are simply dated, other key dynamic information in Oracle HRMS is datetracked. This includes information on workers, assignments, and compensation and benefits. DateTrack allows you to maintain a continuous history of the information over time.
You can enter datetracked information or make changes to it at any time. When you set an effective date for your work, DateTrack ensures that only information effective 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, the Alter Effective Date window displays.
There is a user profile option called DateTrack:Reminder that determines when the Decision window appears. There are three possible values for this profile option:
Always
Never
Not Today
The Not 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 today's date.
You can set the value of this profile option in the Personal Profile Values window.
Oracle HRMS maintains a continuous record of changes made to datetracked information. When you view a record in a datetracked window, it shows you a snapshot of the information on your effective date. The Effective Dates region on the datetracked window shows you the dates between which the snapshot is valid.
Suppose you are viewing an assignment with an effective start date of 01-JAN-1999 and no effective end date. This means that the assignment was created or last changed on 1 January 1999, and the snapshot information you are viewing is still valid. There have been no changes to the assignment since 1 January 1999, and there are no future dated changes.
To find out whether the assignment existed before 1 January 1999, you should use DateTrack History.
If there is an effective end date, you know that the record was either deleted or changed on the next day. To find out whether the record continues to exist, you can set your effective date to the day after this end date, or use DateTrack History.
When you update datetracked information, you are prompted to choose between Update and Correction.
If you choose Update, Oracle HRMS changes the record as from your effective date, but preserves the previous information. If you choose Correction, Oracle HRMS overrides the previous information with your new changes. The start and end dates of the snapshot you have corrected remain the same.
Suppose you hire two new employees, Jack Lee and Julie Summers. A few weeks later Julie gets married. At the same time you discover an error in Jack's record relating to his nationality.
You update Julie's information by setting your effective date to the date of her wedding and entering her new married status, her change of name, and new next of kin information. Her previous personal information, which was valid until her wedding, remains in her record.
You correct Jack's wrong nationality by setting your effective date to his hire date and entering the correct nationality. By choosing Correction, you put the record right, from the beginning. You should check whether there is an end date in the Effective Dates region of Jack's record. If there is, you have only corrected the first snapshot of the record. Set your effective date to the day after the end date, and make the correction again. Continue in this way until the To field is blank, indicating that you have reached the last snapshot of this record.
You cannot create a record and then update it on the same day. If you try to do this, Oracle HRMS warns you that the old record will be overridden, and then changes Update to Correction. This is because DateTrack maintains records for a minimum of a day at a time.
Using DateTrack, you can make future updates. For example, suppose you are relocating an employee, with six months notice. You decide to enter the relocation on the system straight away. So you set your effective date to the first day when the employee will be at the new location, and change the location on the assignment.
Later that month you promote the employee to a new grade. So you set your effective date to today's date and change the grade on the assignment. Oracle HRMS checks to see whether the record has a future update scheduled. It finds that the location changes in the future and prompts you for the type of update you now want to make. You have two choices:
Insert: This simply inserts the change before the next scheduled change. This is the correct choice for the example. The employee would be promoted from today. The future-dated relocation still takes place in six months time.
Replace: This change replaces all future-dated changes. In the example, the employee would be promoted from today. However, the record of the relocation would be completely removed from the system.
There is a DateTrack:Date Security user profile option, which determines whether you can change your effective date. Your system administrator sets this profile option. You can check its value on the Personal Profile Values window. There are four possible values:
All: You can change to any other effective date.
Future: You can change between today's date and any future dates.
Past: You can change between today's 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 may prompt 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 snapshot's 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.