Configuring HR Actions/Events to Improve Reporting CapabilitiesYou can customize the configuration of personnel actions, such as hiring, terminations, and organizational assignments within your SAP R/3 HCM module. You can customize the SAP R/3-delivered actions, also known as personnel events, to your company's needs so that you can collect necessary data and assign specific employment statuses. You can then classify the employee data collected during your actions with reason codes to provide better employee groupings for reporting. Before you configure new actions, however, you need to answer three questions:
The following sections explain why these questions are so important and then show you how to create your own HR actions. What to CollectYou determine which infotypes to include in each event based on what data you want to collect. Take organizational actions, for example. For a simple promotion, you could start with Infotype 0000 (to record the action and its reason code), Infotype 0001 (to record the organizational change), and Infotype 0008 (to record the change in salary). Those are the basics, but you need to think a step further. For example, do you want to collect any other pertinent information along with the promotion? The following is a sample checklist to stimulate your thought process about what infotypes to include in an action:
After you determine what data you want to collect, you need to determine what statuses to assign. It is possible to create an action without using Infotype 0000. For example, if you are creating an action to update an address, you can decide whether you want Infotype 0000 to be recorded for the address change. The system already date-delimits the old address, so history is properly preserved. Therefore, based on your company's administrative guidelines, you may or may not want Infotype 0000 created for every event. What Statuses to AssignYou can use events to change an employee's status (for example, new-hire actions make them active, and terminations make them withdrawn). You have three options for the status to assign for each event:
You use Basic Employment Status to set the status to which you want the employee to be changed. This appears on Infotype 0000 in the Employment Status field. The standard SAP-delivered options are as follows:
For the Special Payment Status, three options can update Infotype 000:
Customer Specific Status is optional. You can use Customer Specific Status to determine your own custom statuses to be assigned during the actions. By using Customer Specific Status, you can really maximize your reporting options. The Reporting Goals Related to ActionsHR actions not only collect information and assign statuses but also provide groupings of employees for reporting purposes. Having reason codes associated with actions is the only way to ensure that you can classify employees into the appropriate groups so that you can obtain the data you need. For example, if you have a termination action without reason codes, you might be able to determine that you had 100 terminations in the past month, but you would have no idea why. Creating reason codes that allow you to distinguish between avoidable (quit for better pay) and unavoidable (death) reasons helps you get a comprehensive look at your workforce. One action for which a reason code is very important is a pay-changerelated action. Employees can have changes in pay for a variety of reasons, the most common being promotions and demotions. Many states require companies to report promotions and demotions. Assigning reason codes to your pay-changerelated actions for promotions and demotions is a good way to ensure that you are collecting the appropriate information. Maximizing the Use of Event Reason CodesUsing reason codes can really make or break you when it is time to evaluate the employees who have undergone events. The termination example mentioned in the preceding section is a good indicator of this. Without a record of why someone was terminated, the actual record of a termination action does not provide much information. A best practice is to determine the reasons you want to track and evaluate your turnover reports to see what your needs really are. After making a list of termination reasons, you can determine whether you want to group them to make them more useful. Table 17.2 provides a list of reason code examples.
These sample codes would allow you to classify termination reason codes into four categories: Unavoidable Termination (A), Employees Who Took Positions at Another Company (B), Employees Who Were Terminated for Cause (C), and Employees Who Quit Because They Were Dissatisfied with the Company (D). Using codes A, B, C, and D enables you to group the codes as needed and simplifies reporting later. You can also maximize the use of the reason codes for pay-changerelated actions. An employee's pay could change for at least a dozen reasons. Only by properly grouping these pay changes into categories can you address your reporting needs. For example, distinguishing which employees were promoted and demoted in a certain period of time is a frequent reporting need to satisfy governmental regulatory reporting, such as affirmative action plan reporting. Creating actions specific to promotions or demotions or having multiple specific reason codes for a single pay-change action is a way to meet that requirement. Creating actions in SAP is an easy task. After you have thought through the three questions presented earlier in this chapter, you can complete the configuration by using the SAP Implementation Guide. The configuration of actions and reason codes is most often performed by the functional person responsible for system configuration. It is important to note that the HR/business side of the organization should dictate what the event and reason codes are. They should not be driven by other departments, such as the Payroll department or the IT organization. |