Imagine you are headed to a baseball game on a warm, sunny spring day. You approach your city’s stadium with your ticket in hand, showing exactly what section and seat you’ve purchased. You have no trouble entering the stadium and finding your particular seat. You may have brought a seat cushion to alter your seat to be more comfortable, but the basic characteristics of the seat (fold-down, red, hard plastic) are the same no matter who sits in it. After the game, you leave the seat as-is for the next person attending the next game. If a person doesn’t have a ticket for the baseball game, they will not be allowed into the stadium until a ticket agent confirms that a seat is open and the fan has purchased it.
Position control is a lot like that stadium and seat. It’s a method of setting up seats (positions) in a stadium (your company) that have specific characteristics like hard plastic (HR division), red (job title), and fold-down (salary range). In a position control system, each position has its own unique position number or ID and is separate from those employees currently holding that position. In most cases, a seat (position) has to exist before a person can be brought into the organization.
Information about the position is stored separately from any employee information to allow for ease of movement. One of the most important reasons a company will implement position control is to be able to strictly manage the organization structure, including financial budgeting and headcount. Because the position structure is set up one time (and then updated with additional positions as they are approved), a company can more easily track exactly how many current employees and new hires there should be in a given fiscal year. The alternative to a position control system would be a job-based system, which tracks only the people in the jobs.
Position control systems work best for organizations that are fairly static, where jobs and job descriptions are mostly fixed, the organization is hierarchically structured, and budget by position and FTE often well in advance of filling positions. A prime example of a business type that uses position control is the hospital industry.
Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of using a position control method or system.
ADVANTAGES
- Consistency in application of job information
- Allows control and management of the budget
- Reduces risk of legal exposure due to inconsistent application of job information
- Job association to position allows organizations to run reports and analytics around position categories for workforce planning
- Job association to position reduces the risk of missing key positions in reporting
- Mass changes to employees’ positions (i.e., multiple people in one position) can be done fairly easily
- Allows more accurate reporting and provides better management information about the positions and vacancies in the organization
- Forces a discipline around the process of creating a position; ensures that all of the approvals and information are collected before entering a person onto the system or moving an employee to a position
- When a new employee is hired and position management has been set up, only the employee data and the position number that the person will hold needs to be entered
DISADVANTAGES
- May stifle operating approach if the organization is unstructured and / or continually creating new roles
- May be viewed as non-value-adding by line managers
- Requires a high level of acceptance and commitment to processes from HR and line management
- If it is not managed well, it will hamper effectiveness of HR and cause loss of respect and trust from managers
- Anomalies at the position or employee level can become difficult to manage if they are numerous
- Matrix supervision cannot be managed with position management; if a supervisor needs to manage people outside of the positions they are designated on, it is a security change
- Position creep is common: positions approved and created to ‘get someone in’ and clean-up of the old / inactive position is delayed
- Position management is complicated and few HR software packages have it; those that have it don’t necessarily do it well—there is often a disconnect between recruiting and position management
- Organizations must determine how employees on LTD, employees in transition out of the organization, or non-employees will be managed. Should they have a different position?
Position control is a functionality available with many HR, Payroll technology vendors. Prior to determining that a position control system is needed, it’s a good idea to have a dialog with the appropriate parties in finance, payroll, and HR to discuss the system objectives. If a position control system is desired, it’s helpful to see demonstrations of position control functionality or speak with vendors whose systems have it. It takes some work, but if you do the research and understand the concept, implementation will go much smoother.
How do you currently track information in your organization? Do you have any experience with position control?