HR: what is position management?  

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How are you managing your workforce? 

For many HR professionals, when their business increases in size, various time-drains and challenges arise around determining accurate roles and responsibilities.  

But with HR software, you can use position management to make handling a dynamic workforce much easier and less time-consuming.   

What is position management?  

Essentially, position management creates separation between employees and the positions they hold. 

A recognised approach, position management helps handle the intricacies of job roles within businesses, typically used across sectors such as government and education; however, many commercial organisations can benefit significantly from implementing position management.  

How does position management differ from employee management?  

HR systems generally operate in two ways: employee management and position management.  

Employee management is an individual’s details – they come and go with the employee.  

For example, information such as home addresses and bank details are provided by the employee upon joining the business but are removed once they leave.  

Position management, on the other hand, is fixed information that belongs directly to the role, which can consist of aspects such as salary, FTE or reporting lines.  

In most cases, it’s static information that relates directly to the job rather than the employee.  

Why is position management important?  

As businesses grow, so do the internal teams, bringing more structure to your employees’ day-to-day. 

When your business started, individuals may have been informally responsible for tasks across various functions. 

However, once clear departments and job areas form, position management becomes fundamental to ensuring roles and their associating actions are clearly defined. 

What are the benefits of position management? 

Effective position management can provide your business with a range of benefits, including:  

• Streamlined vacancy and headcount management 
• Simpler career development and succession planning 

• Improved financial/operational planning, budgeting and forecasting 
• Ease data administration and maintenance 

How does position management work for employees with multiple roles? 

Position management solidifies key information about specific roles, as well as helping facilitate structure for employees with multiple responsibilities.  

Position management in the commercial sector 

When recruiting for a new position within your business, you can pre-emptively set up all the role-specific information such as salary and reporting lines. 

While the position remains unfilled, a current employee can be added to that new position on an interim basis as well as maintaining their existing role. 

Once a new person is hired, the position and all its information can be reassigned. 

Position management in the education sector 

In a school, as well as being a teacher, staff can also be special needs coordinators and maybe Heads of Year. 

With position management, you can track and assign multiple roles to members of staff, each with separate information regarding responsibilities, i.e. working patterns, contracted hours and reporting lines.   

How do you implement position management?  

Modern HR software is the key to implementing position management. 

Take, for example, our HR and payroll solution, Staffology HR – we’ve now launched a new position management feature that users can seamlessly integrate into their existing HR processes.  

By having technology that specifically enables position management, you can easily implement the tools within your business.  

For more information on Staffology HR’s new position management feature, click here. 

Anthony Wolny, April 11th, 2022

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