Overview of the Workforce Planning Components

As you know Workforce planning allows you to calculate and track employee expenses to facilitate proper planning and reporting of employee costs, Employee cost calculations in workforce planning are stored separately from other expenses, and employee details are kept in the Workforce Cube.

All other financial data is stored in the Finance Cube. During implementation, both the Finance and Workforce Cubes will be created and operate independently. Once created, the two cubes are linked through Compensation items and the Account dimension, as compensation item data in the Workforce Cube is posted to the Account dimension in the Finance Cube.

The initial configuration will determine how users interact with the Workforce Planning template. Afterward, the Workforce Planning template's design will evolve as Workforce Planning components are created, edited, and so on.

While most templates are designed in the setup phase, where individual rows, columns, and other elements are defined, this is not the case with the Workforce Planning template. The system automatically updates the Workforce Planning template design as Workforce components are modified or created.

The Workforce Planning components include:

• Employees are where the employee details will show for all of the employees in a specific scenario and entity. In the Workforce Planning setup, the employee area is primarily used to view employee information or make changes before rolling out to individual budget owners. Before adding or loading any employees though, the workforce Planning setup must be completed. Learn more about employees here.
• Compensation items are one of the key components in workforce planning as this is where all of the individual employee expenses are identified. Every compensation paid to or on behalf of an employee will be identified in a compensation item, including salaries, benefits, state and federal taxes, etc. As new forms of compensation are created by an organization, they will need to be created as compensation items in workforce planning, in order to be accounted for in the planning process. Learn more about compensation items here.
• Employee types are how employees are categorized into different groups based on compensation. These employee types will simplify the process of assigning compensation items to employees by group, rather than at the individual employee level. Learn more about Employee types here. 
• Pay plans are used to determine the spread method for how compensation is to be paid out. In other words, how the employee costs are to be spread throughout the year will be identified by the pay plan. Learn more about pay plans here.
• Workforce attributes are used to assist in the calculation of compensation items. This works by creating a flag or attribute that can be used to incorporate another factor in the calculation. Learn more about workforce attributes here.
• Workforce defaults are used to identify default members for any dimensions that are identified as a constant. During the configuration, any dimensions that are not to be included for planning employee expenses are identified as a constant. Learn more about workforce defaults here.
• Compensation groups are used to bucket compensation items into different categories for reporting purposes. Common options include benefits, taxes, and salaries. Learn more about compensation groups here.

So How Do These All Tie Together?

Compensation items are the foundation of workforce planning as these are the specific employee-related costs. These comp items are linked to specific finance accounts, which is how the Finance and Workforce cubes are linked. The calculation of compensation items in Workforce planning, results in the same values being posted to the associated accounts in the Finance Cube. These compensation items can be linked to workforce attributes to help in the calculation if needed

Again, workforce attributes are optional and are only used in cases where there is some additional factor that can be incorporated to help identify the calculation of certain compensation items. These compensation items are then mapped to employee types.

Based on the categories of employees and how they differ in compensation, different employee types will be created and only the related compensation items assigned to each employee type. When employees are added into the system, either through a data load rule or manually, they will then be assigned an employee type which will link all of the associated compensation items to that employee.

Similarly, a pay plan will also be assigned to the employee, determining how all of those compensation item values will be spread across the year. If there are any exceptions of compensation items that are to be spread differently, a pay plan can be assigned specifically to those compensation items.

As for compensation groups and workforce defaults, these are rarely revisited after the initial creation. Unless new assumptions are made, these are typically set up initially and not updated thereafter. 

Let's understand this with a use case:

When Jamie is added to Planful, she is assigned as a US full-time employee and has an equal monthly pay plan. This means Jamie will receive all compensation items associated with the US full-time employee type assigned to her, including wages, benefits, taxes, etc. Similarly, all of her costs will be spread evenly throughout the year.

When adding her into the system, if any compensation items use attributes, those attribute values will need to be added along with any other specific values such as her salary. In this case, her work state attribute value would need to be added to ensure that the appropriate state unemployment tax is calculated. 

Similarly, if a new compensation item is created, this compensation item could then be mapped directly to her if this was a one-off situation, or it could be mapped to the employee type if it was to apply to all US full-time employees. When posting the value for Jamie's employee record to the finance cube, the identified members in Workforce defaults will be where data is posted for all other dimensions not accounted for directly in workforce planning. This is how all the components are involved in workforce planning. 

Now that you have got an overview of what is workforce planning and its components, let's see how to navigate to the Workforce Planning Setup, where you will find all these components. Click here to learn more about the Workforce Planning Setup option.