Every Human Capital Management ERP customer believes that an "Employee Number" would be a base feature of the system, especially when they are putting in a significant amount of money to buy the product. Fusion provides two key features to achieve this:
1. Person Number
Irrespective of what type of person, whether it is an employee, contingent worker, dependent, external person, etc., a person number is generated when the person is created in the system.
- Negatives
- Even non employees get an employee number even when they may be a contingent worker or a dependent, there is no separate sequence. The person type cannot be identified based on the person number, especially if they use this on ID cards for its people.
- The change in terminology of using the term "person number" instead of employee number
- Positives
- Suppose a contingent worker joins the company. Years later, the person has progressed to take over the job of CEO. Fusion gives the feature to ensure the same person number is used throughout the employee lifecycle.
- An employee's dependent decides to join the firm, the person history is maintained, the system would even catch duplications in employee benefits.
One way of looking at the issue of person number is as a change management issue than a technical issue.
Key features
- Person number can be configured at the enterprise level with a starting sequence that can be specified by the user.
- The person number can be generated before the employee is created or after it.
- Available on almost all screens when searching for a person in the system and also shown by default at the top
- Can be set to manual
- Created at enterprise level
- Person number can be manually passed when migrating data
2. Worker Number
Worker number is another number which can be used as an "Employee Number". However, it doesn't quite fit the bill of a full fledged employee number because it has all the negatives of the person number generation and additionally it is not shown on most screens in most modules.
Key Features
- Can be set at legal entity level, complexities can come from overlapping numbers
- Can be set to manual
- Usually used to hold the legacy system employee number
Recommendation
After evaluating the features of both person number and worker number, it is fairly clear that the best option is to go with the "Person Number". Customers often also personalise the person number field in many screens and show it as an "Employee Number". Such personalisations aren't recommended because:
- Not every screen can be modified
- Since the field is used for other person types, using "Employee Number" in screens can create confusion
Note:
This article holds true for Oracle Fusion HCM on Cloud up to Release 11
