Position management, also called Position Control, is a way of organizing your workforce by position rather than by employee. This method offers some unique advantages to organizations – especially those that have complex workforce structures such as employees split between different roles, or multiple part-time employees that together represent one full-time equivalent. In situations like these, the traditional employee-based HR and Payroll system is simply inadequate in capturing a complete and accurate picture of your workforce.
Position management works differently because it creates the framework of your workforce by position. If you think of your organization like a stadium, each seat represents a position. These seats are organized into different groups, similar to how positions are organized into departments, cost centers, locations, and so on. Over time, you’ll see different people come in and occupy those seats at different times, filling a position. They may stay in that position for many years, be promoted to a box seat, or choose to leave your stadium.
These constant fluctuations and employee movements are difficult to track when your workforce is organized by those constantly moving employees. Position management fixes that problem by looking at position first, which provides your organization with a stable organizational method for better visibility, workforce optimization, and financial sustainability.
Recruitment Without Over-hiring
Position management gives you the information you need to recruit top talent while never over-hiring. All positions, whether open or filled, can be viewed in an organizational chart that creates a complete picture of your organization. With Position Control, an open position must be approved-to-fill before recruiting can begin, ensuring that the position is budgeted for and the appropriate decision-makers have reviewed and approved it.
Because all of your positions are mapped out whether open or filled, comparing budgeted versus actual costs is easily accomplished. Further, our position-based system enables you to run reports on revenue-generating positions to determine the cost of daily lost revenue for open positions at your organization. What this means is that you’ll be able to recruit more strategically, by prioritizing your recruitment efforts based on real numbers rather than guessing.
Additionally, position management enables all applications to be tied to the position itself. This helps organize your candidates in one place so that all decision makers can review each applicant’s resume, check on interview notes, and provide their input before a final decision is made. With position first, this recruiting method also enables you to easily collect and view data on important recruiting statistics for your organization, including cost to fill, time to fill, and number of applicants needed to fill a position. These details, along with information like daily lost revenue for open positions, can help you prioritize effectively and build an evidence-based recruiting strategy to fill key positions faster and more efficiently.
Inheritable Attributes for Better Talent Management
With position management, various attributes can be tied to the position itself. These may include things like department, salary range, funding source, and so on, depending on how your organization is set up. Because these attributes are tied to the position rather than the employee, any employee who fills that position can automatically inherit all of the position attributes. What this means for you is a lot less manual data entry and less risk of human error. Remember how the application is already tied to the position in the recruiting phase? Once you’ve made an offer and your candidate has accepted, their personal information can flow directly from the applicant tracking system into their employee file. And as an employee filling that position, they simply inherit the attributes of that position automatically, including salary range, department, cost center, and any other attributes that your organization wants to designate for a given position. This pattern continues any time you bring a new hire on board or an employee moves from one position to another. Each time, they’ll simply inherit the attributes of the position they’re filling, which allows for a seamless transition and a lot less paperwork. And that adds up to significant time savings when it comes to manual data entry that is now fully automated.
The Administrative Chain of Command Never Breaks
If you’ve ever had a manager leave the company, you know this can put an entire team of direct reports in limbo. With position management, the chain of command is never broken. Any requests or approvals simply flow up from the now vacant position to the next position in the chain of command. The position remains in place no matter how long it takes to fill again, ensuring no employees end up “orphaned” in the organizational chart. This enables workflows to proceed smoothly, so that your entire organization can maintain continuity of care. With positions used as the framework, your organization maintains stability even as your workforce is constantly changing and evolving.
Ensure Payroll Compliance Every Time
For Health and Human Services organizations, payroll compliance can be highly complex. You may have workers split between different programs, receiving various pay rates based on the roles they’re filling, or funded through multiple cost centers. These complexities are made simple when you have position management in place. Employees can allot their time based on the cost center or program they’re working in, allowing for the system to automatically calculate their appropriate pay rate. Even shift differentials and secondary pay rates can be automated to accommodate your modern and mobile workforce.
Budget and Forecast Labor Costs Accurately
As we saw with recruiting and budgeting for open positions, position management can make a huge difference in being able to budget and forecast accurately. The budgeting benefits go well beyond simply filling open positions and enables you to get a bird’s eye view of your entire workforce. Information is no longer fragmented or siloed within individual teams or departments. Instead, you can look across programs, evaluate cost centers, and report back to funders. With all of the data in front of you, position management enables you to gain the visibility you need into your entire workforce. And this allows you to spot problem areas at a glance and proactively solve issues to keep your organization running in a financially sustainable manner.
Our HR and Payroll software provides you with the reporting capabilities you need to make sense of all the data in front of you. Our system enables access to big-picture analytics as well as drill-down details that give you exactly the information you need – whether that’s deciding whether to approve a position to fill, a programming report requested by a specific funding source, or some details needed to justify your costs to the board. Position Control puts you in control.
Position Management Works Best as a Foundation
Many HR and Payroll software providers claim to offer position management – often as an add-on module with a separate price tag attached to it. This isn’t true Position Control and will do a poor job of offering you the many benefits just discussed. That’s because these systems are still, at their core, employee-based systems. Anything added to those platforms or built around those platforms exist separately, and may or may not be able to function properly.
Modular systems also tend to fragment your information. Data may need to be entered separately into different modules, as they all work independently of each other. While modular systems appear to provide greater flexibility, they can cause problems when different modules have conflicting information or are not able to integrate effectively. However, when position management forms the basis of a unified system, it creates a single source of truth for your workforce, budgeting, and reporting needs.
True Position Control Available from DATIS
At DATIS, we’ve built our platform with Position Control as the very foundation of our software. All of the features and functionality of our unified system, including payroll, time and attendance, benefits, talent management, and more, are built with Position Control at its core. For Health and Human Services organizations with complex workforce structures and dynamic employee groups, having a unified HR and Payroll system in place with a solid foundation in Position Control is essential for effective workforce management and planning ahead to ensure the organization’s financial sustainability.
If you’d like to learn more about how our unified HR and Payroll software provides a strategic advantage for Health and Human Services organizations, contact us today to see our solution in action.
