Creating Personnel Actions

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

Set up personnel actions to meet master data administration requirements
Verify the status indicators of a personnel action
Identify the reasons for using personnel action types

Personnel Actions

Personnel procedures, such as recruitment of an employee, organizational reassignment, or the procedure followed when an employee leaves the enterprise are represented by individual personnel actions.

Actions facilitate the processing of complex personnel processes. The system displays all relevant infotypes in a sequence that has already been defined, so that you can maintain the necessary data.

Default Values for Infotypes

The (DFINF) feature controls the determination of field values when you copy a record. Default values are usually copied from the previous record. However, in some cases, values should be re-determined using the Customizing settings.

Following are the infotypes for which values should be re-determined using the Customizing settings:

Organizational Assignment (0001):: The Organizational Assignment infotype displays the default value for the payroll area.
Planned Working Time (0007):: The Planned Working Time infotype displays the default value for the work schedule rule (SCHKZ).
Basic Pay (0008):: The Basic Pay infotype displays the default values for the pay scale type and area; it also displays the default values for the capacity utilization level and working hours per period from infotype 0007.

Configuration of Personnel Actions

Through configuration of personnel actions, you can carry out the following:

Change the sequence of the infotypes in existing actions
Create new actions

To create a sequence or to change the sequence of infotypes, you need to define user groups for the actions that are used in user profiles. This will allow users to view and execute the actions defined for their user group.

In this step, you define the infogroups processed when actions are executed. This is a preparation for the next activity. You need to determine the worklist for each personnel action that is to be completed, namely the infogroup. You can define the infogroup based on the user group or user parameter (UGR).

You can also specify that the infogroup is dependent on an employee’s organizational data – for example, the company code, personnel area, personnel subarea, employee group, and employee subgroup – by maintaining the Infogroup Modifier activity (IGMOD) feature.

In the Operation field, you can specify the operation that is executed with the infotype. When you perform an action and create infotype records, the system checks whether an infotype record already exists. If it does, the system switches from Create to Change.

Therefore, it generally makes sense to use the Create (INS) operation for a hiring action. For all other actions, you need to use the Copy (COP) function code. When you copy infotype records, the system suggests the start date of the action for the existing records. If no records exist for the infotype, the system switches to Create.

If a new record is to be created independently of existing records, choose the Create for Actions(INSS) operation. In this case, the system does not switch to the Change operation (MOD).

Determining Personnel Action Types

To create new actions, you need to perform the following steps:

Assign a unique number and define a name for your personnel action.
Use a function character to distinguish hiring actions from all other actions. Choose the function character 1 for initial hiring, 7 for initial hiring with data transfer from recruitment and 0 for all other actions. For global employment, there are also function characters for transferring an employee to the host country and for transferring an employee to the home country.
Maintain the customer-specific, employment, and special payment statuses using the status indicator.
You can only use certain actions to change the organizational assignment of an employee. In this case, you can set the indicators for the position, personnel area, employee group, and employee subgroup to represent these as ready for input in the Personnel Actions initial screen.
Use the Date field to define whether the date entered on the initial screen of the personnel action should be the start date of new records or the end date of old records; this is particularly useful for leaving actions.
Specify whether your new action should create a new Actions infotype record (0000).
Use the U0302 indicator to determine whether personnel actions are stored in the Additional Actions (0302) infotype.

Status Indicators

You can maintain the customer-specific, employment, and special payment statuses using the status indicator . The status indicators in the Actions infotype are automatically maintained by the system if you execute an action.

Customer-specific status:

You can determine your own specific employee status.

Employment status:

Value 0:: This value indicates that the employee has left the company and should no longer be included in the payroll run. An individual retroactive run is permitted for the employee in the system.
Value 1:: This value indicates that the employee belongs to the company, but is granted leave for military service, maternity leave, or other absence reasons. In reality, most inactive contracts are not entered in the system as status changes but as absences. A payroll is run for inactive employees, but their pay can be reduced according to special factoring rules.
Value 2:: This value indicates that the employee has retired. If this person is entitled to a company pension, the system still includes this employee in the payroll run. If not, the system assigns specification 0 to this employee.
Value 3:: This value indicates that the employee belongs to the company and is active.

Special payment status:

This status is used for wage-type decisions.

Checking Status Indicators When Executing Actions

When you execute a new action, the system checks whether the attributes of the new action match those of the previous action.

This check is controlled by the following features:

MSN20 for leaving
MSN21 for hiring
MSN32 for early retirement or retirement

These features check the old actions against the new, proposed action. For example, if you want to execute an action to retire an employee, the action checks for the MSN32 feature.

The old action can be checked by the following status indicators:

STAT2 = 0: It indicates that there is an error because the employee has already left the company.
STAT2 = 2: It indicates that there is an error because the employee has already retired.
STAT2 = 3: It indicates that the processing continues because the employee is active.

Reasons for Personnel Action Types

The reason for action indicates why the action was triggered. You can use this information to evaluate why employees leave or why they are transferred.

You must always enter at least one reason for each action, even if the entry is just a blank space.

Actions Menu

You need to include the personnel actions that you have just defined in the Personnel Actions menu. You can also define this menu so that it is dependent on a user group or user parameter ( UGR ).

If there is no entry in the table for your user’s user group or if you have not maintained your user group, the system displays the menu for the reference user group.

User Group Dependency of Actions Menu

You need to specify whether menu 01 for personnel actions should be dependent on the user group. You also need to specify how the system responds if the user has not maintained the user group and a reference user group so that the menu can be created.

Actions in the Actions Menu

You need to enter the new action for the user group and define the location where the action will appear in the menu (and the specific sequence number).

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