Different ways to initiate onboarding for an internal hire.

[NathanWilkinson]

When you discuss the onboarding process one of the most complex topics is how to handle internal hire onboarding or crossboarding as it is commonly called.  In this article we will look at the different options available.  We will focus more on the high-level processes rather than the detailed configuration required to achieve each step. 

To discuss this topic, we are going to set the following SuccessFactors landscape.  We are assuming the Employee Central is being used, with position management and event reason derivation. SuccessFactors recruitment and onboarding is being used and operates in three countries:

• Germany has two legal entities.
• United Kingdom has three legal entities
• United States have one legal entity

As internal hire process can be complicated it is imperative that before you discuss it you need to have agreed your ‘New Hire Process’.  This is very useful as it allows you to form the baseline process for all internal hire conversation. Let’s assume the New Hire process is as follows

1. Personal Data Collection including custom MDFs in a hire template
2. Document signature
3. Compliance (if applicable)
4. MPH

There are some tasks, but these are not mandatory

We will talk about lots of different ways you can trigger internal hire onboarding processes, some may not be workable in some organizations but this article will hopefully help customers and partners to discuss the options available and make the best informed decision.

Understanding ‘how’ internal hires can move within the organization.

Before you start to discuss the internal hiring processes you need to confirm with payroll what is the impact of an internal move  on payroll.  In our example it has confirmed that in Germany you can switch between the legal entities without the need to have a termination and a hire record.  What this means if a person can switch positions in different legal entities with a simple ‘transfer’ event reason.  However, in the UK the only way a person can move between two legal entities is to terminate them on one and hire them into another entity.  This is dictated by payroll based on how the legal entities have been set up in UK, (this is just in our example),  In USA there is only one legal entity so this makes things simpler.

We have also confirmed that organization offer one way country transfer and concurrent employment. They don’t offer global assignments.

With this information we now know ‘how’ a person can move within the organization.  Now we can consider how the process is ‘Initiated’

Understand the different ways an internal hire process can be initiated

From SuccessFactors Recruitment.

This is the classic leading practice hiring process.  A job is advertised, an employee applies, they are selected, have an approved offer and ready to be hired.

If an internal hire has ‘Onboarding Initiated’ from recruitment then this will insert a future date row directly on the employee’s job information record in Employee Central.

The event reason will be defined by the event reason derivation logic and should that event reason have an associated workflow, the action will be subject to a pending approval.  Note they do not go into MPH!

Once the workflow is approved then an internal hire onboarding process can be triggered based on the specific process variant.  This process variant can be same as the New Hire process or different.

With this approach the employee central record is updated and this can sometimes create a challenge for some customers, in that do they have all the correct data in recruitment to update the record accurately.  Given that the record is already updated, how much of the ‘New Hire Process’ is relevant for the internal hire.  Can we assume that the persons employee central data is already up to date?  Do they need to sign any forms?  Remember this process can’t be used in UK for people switching legal entities.  This just leave tasks, and how relevant are these?  If someone is moving from one position to another and the manager doesn’t change, do you need any onboarding tasks? Hence it is worth spending time to consider what is needed from a data and process perspective for an internal hire.  Remember you may choose not to initiate an onboarding process.

The main downside of this process is twofold, not everyone applies for a job and some customers want more control before employee central is updated.

From Manage Pending hires

Another option is to send the candidate directly from recruitment to MPH, there is a great article written by my two colleagues on how to do this here .  The result is they are sent from recruitment to MPH.  When you process them from MPH, you can see the full EC record, you can make additional changes subject to RBP if required, validate the data and when comfortable submit the record.  The system will trigger event reason derivation and the associated workflow.  Once the workflow is approved an onboarding process can be triggered just like we described above.  Again, all the questions above about what should be in the onboarding process still apply.

This process is often overlooked but should be considered for customers who may want move control over the data before an onboarding process is triggered.

‘Managed Move’ from Employee central

However, we all know that not all internal moves come from recruitment, people can be promoted, transferred without going through recruitment.

This is what we we call a ‘Managed move’, a person moves from one position to another.  This can be done directly in employee central via ‘Take Action’, based on the event reason derivation, this will trigger a workflow and once this approved it can trigger an internal hire onboarding process. 

Again you need to discuss what in needed in a specific onboarding process for such a move.

Manually starting onboarding

In our example employees in the UK can’t switch between legal entities with a transfer event reason they need to have a hire and termination record.  For those who don’t come from recruitment you do have the option of manually starting onboarding.  This will start an onboarding process and once the rehire check has been conducted (providing they have a future dated termination) the hire can use the employment switcher to complete their data.  This process can be expanded for country transfers, and is particular useful as it allows the employee to have their record tied together and complete whilst employed in their current role.

Concurrent employment.

You can now trigger an onboarding process for concurrent employment, whether sent from recruitment or manually added in Employee Central.  Once the Employee Central record have been saved and approved an onboarding process can we initiated.

Global Assignments

These can also be used to trigger an onboarding process.

In all of the examples above I have talked about event reason derivation and workflow.  The workflow is not required this is just part of the EC process.

Hopefully this article highlights the different ways you can trigger an internal onboarding process and based on this allow you to decide on the what steps are needed in the each specific process.