Oracle HRMS provides flexible work structures to represent the ongoing responsibilities and functions that an organization must carry out in order to meet its goals. Jobs and positions are placeholders in your enterprise model representing roles, which enable you to distinguish between tasks and the individuals who perform those tasks. Oracle HRMS uses jobs to represent the duties people perform and the required skills, for example:
Professor
Developer
Accountant
Positions represent a specific instance of a job, such as:
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Senior Software Developer
Payroll Accountant
A clear conceptual model of your enterprise helps you to optimize your workforce. Jobs and positions are key components of that model. The flexibility of jobs and positions enables you to model your enterprise accurately. Use jobs or positions (in combination with organizations, assignments, grades, salaries, and other HR structures) to manage your workforce in a manner consistent with the way you do business.
As you implement your enterprise model, one of the earliest decisions you face is whether to use jobs, positions, or a combination of both. You can use Oracle HRMS to define required skills and valid grades for either one. Enterprises fall into one of three general categories:
Rule-based
Project-based
Hybrid
If your organization is a rule-based enterprise, you regulate employment, roles, and compensation according to strict policies and procedures. Fixed roles tend to endure over time, surviving multiple incumbents. You manage roles rather than individuals. Examples include government, higher education, and health care. Rule-based industries, where roles continue to exist after individuals leave, typically model the enterprise using positions.
If your organization is a project-based enterprise, such as a construction or software company, you require the flexibility to assign people to new projects or organizations on a regular basis. You manage people and their skill sets, rather than fixed roles. This requires the flexibility to match competencies to tasks quickly and easily. Project-based organizations, where roles end when individuals complete a project, typically model the enterprise using jobs.
If your organization is a hybrid enterprise, you assign some individuals to fixed roles, and others to multiple projects. This is typical of large manufacturing or corporate enterprises. Hybrid enterprises such as these model the enterprise using both jobs and positions.
See: Defining a Job
See: Defining a Position
HRMS provides two key contexts for a role: the primary role and the HRMS role.
Primary role. You set up primary roles using jobs and positions, as described above, to define the key tasks the enterprise employs people to perform.
HRMS role. You set up HRMS roles to grant permission to authorize or approve HR actions, such as creating new positions, recruitment, hiring, or managing expenses. Roles also specify destinations in a routing and approval sequence, such as initiator, classifier, reviewer, or approver. You can associate multiple users with the same role, allowing anyone occupying the role to process a position or budget transaction, or approve other changes, such as promotions or transfers. See Defining HRMS Roles for Transactions
If your organization is a rules-based enterprise (such as a public sector organization), you typically exercise strict control over positions, adhere to budgets, engage in approval processes, or comply with stringent reporting requirements. HRMS position control, budgeting, and workflow features provide many configurable tools to help you address these needs. These tools enable you to:
Maintain strict control over the creation or modification of positions
Keep position-related costs in line with available funds
Meet legislation-mandated funding and reporting requirements
Route business transactions for approval automatically
If you implement control budgeting, the application triggers warnings or errors when entering an assignment that would put you over budget. You can also report on budget statuses and under budgeted line items at any time in the budget cycle. See: People Budgets and Costing Overview
Position and job evaluation features enable you to assess how your employees, contingent workers, and contractors are aligning with the goals of the organization. An evaluation system enables you to define grades and set appropriate compensation levels. See: Creating an Evaluation System
Using Mass Move features, you can reorganize your workforce in a single step. You can transfer a group of employee assignments to another organization, or to new positions within the same organization. See: Reorganize Your Business Group
You can also build hierarchies to model reporting lines and other relationships. If you use positions to define primary roles, you can add positions to a position hierarchy to provide a view of line management reporting across your organization or business group, reorganize your workforce, or route HR actions for approval. You create and maintain hierarchies using the Position Hierarchy window or the Position Hierarchy Diagrammer. See: Creating a Position Hierarchy
Self Service Human Resources (SSHR), available under separate license, provides functions for making changes to roles, assignments, and terms of work. Available features provide user-friendly access to HR actions known as Manage Employment Events in SSHR, and personnel actions in the public sector. See: Overview of Self-Service Actions
To broaden your understanding of Oracle HRMS jobs and positions, see:
Project Based Enterprises Example
Rule Based Enterprises Example
Hybrid Enterprise Structures Example
People Budgets and Costing Overview