The Employment Status field is a very important part of the personnel record and is used for searching for various groups of personnel. It generally communicates where someone is in the employment cycle. Typical statuses are as follows:
New Hire: hired but not started
Active: working in the organization
On Leave: still employed but out on a leave of absence
Active-Leaving: still active but is leaving in the future
Resigned, Retired, Terminated: not employed
Retire-Rehire: previously retired but rehired and active
You have control over the statuses in your system by using the Admin/Config menu to create them and to set defaults.
To change a person’s status, click on the Change Status button at the bottom of the Personnel screen. The effective date of the change is typically entered as the date the change was made. A history is maintained for each status change.
Certain status changes associated with a person who has left trigger other actions in PeopleWerksHr such as removal of external system integration and removal of system notifications.
Use the Employees, Substitutes or Volunteers section of the Personnel menu to add a new personnel record. You can add a person at any time and do not need to wait until they start in your organization.
Before adding a new person to your system, you should check to make sure there is not already a record for them in your system. To do this, click on Quick Search and use the Universal Search box to enter the name, ID, or SSN.
If they are already in your system, you can edit their personnel record. If they had been in the archive, click on the Reinstate button to move them from the archive to the employee list. Their status will probably also need to be changed.
If the person is not in your system, then click on the Add Personnel button. There may be a lot of data to enter but you can enter it as it is available. .
Depending on your system settings, you may be given an option to execute the universal search at this point. If you have already done it, just click on Continue.
Depending on your external system integrations, you may also be given an option to import information from an Application management system.
Enter the information as needed in each of the sections. The more information you enter, the more capability you will have to search for groups of employees with the same attributes. The following are some tips for entering new personnel records:
Social Security Number
The SSN is encrypted for data security. If you have the special key in My Settings, the SSN will be recognizable. If not, you will see a long encrypted value. Contact your HR person or PeopleWerksHR administrator for the special key, if needed.
Status
Employment Status is very important and useful in searching and processing groups of people in various statuses. For new hires, the default is generally “New Hire” but you can change it as desired. For people hired to start in the future, keeping them in a “New Hire” status allows them to be separated from your “Active” people who you may be processing contracts and other year updates. After you have managed the information for your New Hires, the status can be changed to an active type status. This is only a recommended practice.
Job
You can add the job assignment for the employee. You can have two people showing in the same job assignment during the transition period when people are hired before the school year is over.
Salary
Enter the salary information in the Current Salary Details section. If the salary schedules have not been updated for the new fiscal year but are set up for next year, view the person’s salary data in the Next Year section.
Contract
Enter the contract information in the Current Contract section for new hires even if the fiscal year has not begun. For your contract letter templates, use the merge fields for “current” and not “future”.
If there is a change in your organization where a position is not going to be filled in the near future, you can set the status to “Not Filling” or “Hold” or some other status that will differentiate it from the other positions statuses such as “Open” or “Filled”. By using the position status in this way, you have the ability to search on these types of positions for managing your positions and reporting as needed.
From the Positions menu, edit the position and change the Position Fill Status.
Employee Status Defaults and Settings are set in the Employment Settings section of the System Administration & Functional Settings in the Admin/Config menu.
When entering a new person, the system can be set to default the Employee Status to “Active” or “New Hire” or any of the statuses that you have created in System Data. This setting can be changed at different times of the year. For example, during the spring months as people are being hired to start in the fall, they could be entered with a default status of “New Hire”. However, after the beginning of the fiscal year, you could change the default status for new hires to “Active” such that any new people you add to the system will default to “Active”. Again, this is a default setting used to speed up data entry but that can be overridden when entering a new person.
It is important to select the statuses that indicate “active” people so that the personnel list on the home page includes the people you want and that certain reports will know which people to include. Check the boxes for the “active” statuses.
It is also important to select the end of work statuses since the system performs certain functions when an employee leaves employment. Check the boxes for the “termination-type” statuses.
Use the System Data Management section in the Admin/Config menu to manage your master lists that are used in dropdown lists for data entry. Status-related lists are:
Employee Status
Job Status
Click the button for adding a new option to the list or click on the edit icon for modifying the details of one of the existing options. Before deleting an option, you will want to run a report to see if the option is being used in any of the employee records.
