Workforce Modeling
Workforce Modeling was introduced in release 8 and it is a separate module in oracle fusion. This also requires a separate licence. It is a powerful tool that helps top executives to plan, model, and execute workforce changes using a simple graphical tool. It has many inbuilt analytic that helps manager or the owner to take decision while working on organization restructure (reorg). Using the inbuilt analytic and graphical representation you can predict the behavior and result of any changes you plan to do. In any organization workforce modeling access should only be given to top executives and not all managers as it has seeded approval associated with, which requires minimum three level of approval (including HR specialist)
Workforce Modeling Analytics
Below are the five analytics used by Workforce Modeling which helps to view the impact of proposed changes against headcount, Salary, effectiveness, alerts and changes. They are explained in details below:
1. Changes
This first analytic tells about the number of changes you have done in the model (organization restructure). It counts each and every changes you have proposed. So if you terminated an employee it will count it as one change, if you give salary hike it will count as another change and so on. So in one line it give you the number of changes you have proposed.
2. Alerts
This second analytic comes in to the picture if any assignment change occurs for any employee you have selected for your model. To make it more clear lets assume that you are working on your model today and have selected about 100 employees beneath you. You did some changes and saved the model to work tomorrow (or a week after) remember, you have not submitted your model just saved it. When you resume your work after a week or next an employee was terminated from the population (100) you had selected and another employee moved from one department to another. In this case system will notify these changes to you through alerts. You will not be able to submit your model until you clear these alerts.
3. Projected Headcount
Projected headcount is another analytic that tells the total change in head count. It could be positive or negative. If you decide to hire 2 more employees in your department Headcount will go up by two (+2). If you decide to terminate 1 employee from your model the headcount will go down by one (+1). As soon as you create model system will give you the total headcount you have selected.
4. Projected Worker Cost
Next analytic is Projected Worker Cost. This is also very much similar to projected headcount but it will measure total change in salary. When you create model system will give you the total salary of all employees. If you increase salary of any employee, lets say by 2.5K, Projected Worker cost will go up by 2.5k. If you decide to bring down the salary of any employee, projected worker cost will go down.
5. Predicted Effectiveness
The most interesting and important analytic in the model is Predictive Effectiveness. You will always like it to be positive otherwise there is no point on working on your model and submitting it, although system will not stop you from submitting with negative Predicted Effectiveness. Predicted Effectiveness predicts following two things about an employee.
a. Performance : It predicts what could be the change in employees performance by the proposed changes on his assignment. So for example if you give hike to an employee or transfer him from one department to another whether his performance will go up or down.
b. Voluntary termination : Similarly , if you do any changes on employee’s assignment system will predict the chances of voluntary termination by employee.
Now question might come on your mind how the system will predict the performance of any employee against the proposed changes. For this fusion is tightly integrated with Oracle Data Mining (ODM), which has all necessary inbuilt algorithm with it. The algorithm can not be altered or customized. To get more realistic prediction it is recommended to have more historical data. More the historical data better the prediction would be.
How ODM works? Lets assume you are going to transfer an employee from one department to another and employee was in the organization for 10 years. Now ODM will go back and check employee historical data. It will first check the data of first seven yeas (70%) and see how many transfer this employee had in the past and what was the impact on this performance due to the transfer. Now based on the result ODM will predict what would have been the performance of this employee in next three year (30%) and compare it with actual performabce of employee in those three years to reach predictive effectiveness percentage.
Using Workforce Modeling
Now below steps and screenshots will tell how this module can be used.
1. Select Workforce Modeling from navigator under Workforce Management
2. Click on create Model
If you have created any model before it will show on the screen. To create a new model click on “Create Model” button. This will bring a popup window there you give name to your model and also give the effective date. Effective date is the date when all your proposed changes will be effective when your model is approved.
The check box “Open Model to Top manager” is used if you want to involve any one from your direct reporter, only if you are doing changes under his hierarchy. You can also select Action and Reason from the LOV for information purpose only.
Once you have filled up all details just click on continue it will bring the actual model in-front of you where you can propose various changes.
3. Make changes in your model
Now you propose changes on your model. You can perform various changes against employee like Change Location, Change Manager, Promotion, Transfer, create vacancy etc. While doing the changes you can also see analytics we discussed above, which are Changes, Count of Alerts, Projected Headcount, Projected Worker Cost and Predicted Effectiveness.
If you see any change against the Count of Alerts just click on Actions and select Synchronize. You will not be able to submit model if count against alerts is nit zero.
If you are not satisfied with the view you can change it to tabular form also. You can as well group the view based on Job, Grade, Position, Location and Department. You would also be able to move some employees in to holding area
4. Submit your model
Once you are done with the changes you can submit the model by clicking on submit button. This will trigger approval.
Approvals in Workforce Modeling
Workforce Modeling comes with predefined approvals on which you would be able to add additional approvals but cannot remove any predefined approvals. Once submitted your model will go to HR for approval who can also suggest change on your model. Once approved by HR it will go for two level of supervisor hierarchy approval. Only upon final approval your changes will be applied on application.
Quick Recap
- Introduced with release 8
- Execute workforce changes using a simple graphical tool
- Understand the impact before they are implemented
- Synchronize live changes
- Can also create vacancy
- Seeded approval flow
- HR can also edit model
- Comes to effect only after final approval
Additional Resource
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