PIM; Module That Feels Like You..!
Where To Start ?
It is recommended to understand the OrangeHRM system’s modular architecture and how it counters the most recent HRM problem before going through this article. You can refer to my introductory article to this series named Modern HRM needs and the answer from OrangeHRM for that need.
I’m gonna discuss the needs for an PIM module and how the OrangeHRM cater those needs using some of the main features developed for that module.
Introduction
An organization will employ various employees in the course of its business run. It is the responsibility of the company to profile the details of employees who work under that organization. These maintained details will be important in different scenarios. As an example, an employee can officially proof his/her employment of the company using the details stored by the company such as the employee number, joined data, working department etc. Some of these matters would be important in legal matters such as visa issuing for foreign employment, EPF/ETF payments etc. So we can understand in any of those scenarios company maintaining a clear database of employee details is in great need over the course of the business. But maintaining these tasks against various parameters can be a messy task. So as an HRIS OrangeHRM has developed the PIM module to manage those complex needs. Using the features developed in it, it has the ability to provide HR solutions with higher flexibility.
PIM means personal information management. This module is mainly used for entering the personal details of the employees. There are many functionalities developed to this module and different users used them as follows.
Admin Users :
- Viewing employee details.
- Adding Employees to the HR system.
- Creating employee reports.
- Define reporting methods and termination reasons for an employee.
- Bulk update employee records.
ESS- Supervisor :
- Can view personal details and the details of his/her subordinates.
ESS-Employee :
- ESS users don’t have the access to the PIM module. But they can see their personal information in the “My Info” tab.
- Can edit some of the fields in that tab such as first name,last name, phone number etc.
How these above mentioned features support the HR admins will be justified in the upcoming sections of the article. There are several main tabs defined under this module. They can be listed as follows.
- Configuration
- Employee List
- Add Employee
- Bulk Update
- Reports
Now let’s understand the functionalities of each tab and how it helps the HR admins to do their job.
I) Configuration.
A key aspect of modern businesses is that no two businesses are same. This can happen due to their type of business, cultural differences, geographical differences, legal aspects in different geographical locations etc. So building a general software won’t capture the needs of each of these aspect ever. So building flexible and highly customizable software has become a mandatory requirement for developing HRIS software. OrangeHRM has given the chance to the client to configure the system according to their needs. So target of this subcategory is to provide customizability for profiling personal data
This tab contains various configuration options to configure the forms and subcategories in this module. There are several sub categories under this module as follows
- Optional Fields.
- Custom Fields.
- Data Import.
- Reporting Methods.
- Add Employee Wizards.
- Termination Reasons.
- Document Templates.
Out of them I will discuss about some of the important and subtle features which will help to understand the solutions given.
i) Custom Fields
PIM module will collect data using different types of forms. These forms contain different types of fields such as first name, last name, age, salary and many other. These are called data types. For easy understanding, these appropriate data fields are categorized together. As an example, first name, last name, age will be sectioned together. So can define a section as a group of related data fields. But these sectioning can be varied according to the needs, laws, cultures and business models of the organizations. So to capture those need the HRIS must find a way if it focused on providing more flexible solutions. So OrangeHRM has found a way to customize different forms by providing a way to create and modify new data fields according to company need.
Admin must select a section to add new fields. (The system has also provide way to add new sections.) This can be an existing section or can create a new one. The following figure shows the form for creating a new section.
Admins can also choose the screen which this new section must be shown. In here the screen means a differnt type of form that will capture differnt information of the employees. As an example orangeHRM has differnt screens such as pesonal information screen, salary information screen, job information screen. As the words describe they will hold the appropriate data feilds and sections. So due to high flexibility of OrangeHRM software. it has provided a way to define new sections on screen basis.
ii) Data Import
In the course of business, there are situations where direct data feeding to the system is needed. If the organization had maintained a database without any HRIS support, these data must be inserted into the new system if they start to use the HRIS. So manually transferring data can be highly inefficient and dcan affect the daily workflow of the organization. But OrangHRM has provided a way to feed data into the OangeHRM system.
This tab is dedicated to data importing processes. Admins can import data from a CSV file using the features in this sub category.
Following the guidelines as described in the figure will provide a smooth import of data.
iii) Add Employee Wizards
Add employee wizard is an important feature to configure the add employee tab. This feature will dictate which data fields are available and mandatory when adding an employee to the system. Add employee wizard must be enabled first to activate this feature. This will provide an easy way to reconfigure the add employee form.
This is to increase the efficiency and customize the employee adding processes. When an employee is added to the system the mandatory data that need to be filled can vary due to different business and geographical reasons. This wizard feature is developed to increase the efficiency of that process by defining the mandatory and highly needed data fields. So using this feature, HR admins can enjoy higher customizability and will e able to capture the information with greater efficiency.
If the add employee wizard is enabled as above, it will activate the section below to configure the PIM fields. The following figure shows how it shows after enabling the wizard.
This conclude the description regarding the Configuration tab. Now let’s move on to the other tabs.
2) Employee List
An organization will have to search and analyze their employees based on job, paygrade, subunit etc. As an example, if an HR admin to check upon employees who are on certain paygrade and also work in particular department, a flexible HRIS must cater this. So considering that OrangHRM has provided a search engine over its employee database which can be used to search using many parameters
This tab will list all the employees in the company. It will also provide the filtering mechanism that I described above.
3) Add Employee
As I described earlier, this tab is specifically developed to insert new employees to the system. The HR admins will have to fill various forms in this process. This will occur according to the activation of add employee wizard feature in the configuration.
4) Bulk Update
Bulk Update is a tool built for updating PIM details of a number of employees from a single screen. This can be done by providing details such as location, department, shift etc. This tool is developed to cater a scenario where whole team is assigned to new department or location. So in that kind of scenarios the efficiency of the HR processes won’t decrease by using the Bulk update.
After giving the correct parameters, an admin can select the given fields to update. The update will take place to the every employee defined after clicking the bulk update button.
5) Reports
HR admins will always have the need to develop reports based on their employees. These reasons can be to have an analysis over a certain set of employees. HR admins are responsible for the management and the well-being of the company employees. So to identify needs of the employees and the company from employees higher analytical reports must be developed. So a reporting tool is one of the most important tools in the OrangeHRM system due to its high robustness. It has the ability develop reports in highly analytical manner that HR admins can capture the essence of the situation.
In OrangeHRM system the reports are created using three factors.
- Report Name: Defining the report name
- Selection Criteria: Defining the employees who will be included in the report. This can be provided using the name, subunit, department etc.
- Display Fields: Defining the data fields that will be appeared on the report.
After designing the report admin can use that report as a pdf file or a CSV file.
This concludes the main categories in the PIM module. Now let’s move on to the tabs in the employee profile.
6) Employee Details
The Employee Profile contains all the details about an employee in the company. These feilds are filled when a employee is added to the system. Earlier I said that HR admins can develop custom fields to enter more data. These fields are displayed in these tabs according to the prior definitions. The details about the employee are categorized into various tabs as follows.
- Personal Details
- Job
- Salary
- Contact Details
- Social Media Details
- Emergency Contacts
- Immigrant
- Dependants
- Work Week
- Report To
- Qualifications
- Memberships
- Direct Deposit
Now let’s understand each of the above categories in detail. The following are the forms that used by the system to profile the employees. The information that used in here will be used in every other module.
i) Personal Details
This form in the employee profile holds the all the personal details such as First Name, Last Name, Age etc .
ii) Jobs
This tab contains data fields which will be filled using the details of the employee’s job. This form contains data fields such as job title, sub unit etc.
iii) Salary
This form contains all the details about the employee’s salary. This has the details about how the salary of a particular employee was created, Payment History etc.
iv) Contact Details
This tab contains data fields that need to be filled with the contact information of the employee such as phone number, address, email etc.
v) Social Media Details
This tab is to list the social media interactions of an employee. The OrangHRM system has provided an add button at the upper right corner to enter more social media details accordingly.
vi) Emergency Contacts
This tab contains the details about emergency contacts. The company can be aware whom to call if there is an emergency for a particular employee.
vii) Dependants
This tab contains the details about the marriage status and the children of a particular employee.
viii) Immigration
This tab is to record the details of an employee who arrived to the company on working visa. The details of this page will be used to design email notification as described earlier in email subscriptions. This tab contains the details of the foreign employee’s immigration records.
ix) Work Week
The Static Work Week Feature allows defining the working/non-working days for individual employee as opposed to the standard work week defined based on countries. In Addition, the feature allows to define work hours and lunchtime. The feature would be useful for employees who have different work weeks than the standard work week of the company.
x) Report To
This feature is important to both the supervisors and the ESS employees. This tab is used to define both the subordinates and the supervisor of a particular employee and the reporting process between them. We can assign new supervisors and subordinates using the given add button. The reporting methods that we have defined earlier in the configuration tab will be used here.
xi) Qualifications
This tab is to display and add the qualifications hold by an particular eployee. This tab contains sections such as Work experience, Education, Skills etc.
xii) Memberships.
This tab contains the details about employee’s membership in various organizations.
xii) Direct Deposits
This tab is useful if the employee has stated to transfer the salary directly into a bank account. This tab will hold the details about that.
Summary
This core module maintains all relevant employee-related information, including different types of personal information, detailed qualifications, work experience, job-related information etc. Information captured in this module is utilized by all other modules, thus eliminating data redundancy. Records can be either entered manually one by one or imported from a CSV file. You cannot import all the details but you can edit the remaining fields. The functionality of the PIM Module differs depending on the rights of the user.
This article will provide and overview and a reason for the development of these modules. But to have a better practical understanding download the free OpenSource OrangeHRM system using the following link.
