Patent Application
20070162509
The inventive subject mater relates to human resources data processing system and, more particularly, to separation of work agreement and employee in such systems.
Human resource management systems maintain data related to employees. Such information includes information such as employee name, address, salary data, benefit data, vacation balances, tax data, and other data related to employment. This data is stored in databases having one record per employee.
However, storing employee data in a single record prevents human resource management systems from providing data access and processing flexibility. For example, if a payroll batch process is running, the payroll process locks all affected employee records until the payroll batch process is complete to prevent interim updates to the payroll data.
This lack of flexibility causes further issues. For example, if an employee, such as a teacher, has a work agreement covering a nine-month school year and another agreement covering a summer term, current human resource management systems do not provide a simple solution. A work around is used in some such systems by creating multiple employee records. However, this presents other issues such as maintaining redundant data between the two employee records that requires synchronization in the event of an update, such as an update to an employee's home address.
Another issue can arise in a situation where an employer has multiple business units, subsidiaries, or has operations in multiple taxing jurisdictions, such as countries. If an employee in such an organization is employed by more than one business unit, subsidiary, or in multiple taxing jurisdictions, present systems require multiple employee records, one for each business unit, subsidiary, or taxing jurisdiction.
The present subject mater relates to human resources data processing system and, more particularly, to separation of work agreement and employee in such systems. Various embodiments includes systems, software, and methods to maintaining a first set of employee data in an employee object including an employee record for each employee and maintain a second set of employee data in a work agreement object in work agreement records. In some embodiments, one or more work agreement records are relationally associated with each employee record.
In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that form a part hereof, and in which is shown by way of illustration specific embodiments in which the inventive subject matter may be practiced. These embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice them, and it is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and that structural and logical changes can be made without departing from the scope of the inventive subject matter. Such embodiments of the inventive subject matter may be referred to, individually and/or collectively, herein by the term “invention” merely for convenience and without intending to voluntarily limit the scope of this application to any single invention or inventive concept if more than one is in fact disclosed.
The following description is, therefore, not to be taken in a limited sense, and the scope of the inventive subject matter is defined by the appended claims.
The functions or algorithms described herein are implemented in hardware, software or a combination of software and hardware in one embodiment. The software comprises computer executable instructions stored on computer readable media such as memory or other type of storage devices. The term “computer readable media” is also used to represent carrier waves on which the software is transmitted. Further, such functions correspond to modules, which are software, hardware, firmware, or any combination thereof. Multiple functions are performed in one or more modules as desired, and the embodiments described are merely examples. The software is executed on a digital signal processor, ASIC, microprocessor, or other type of processor operating on a system, such as a personal computer, server, a router, or other device capable of processing data including network interconnection devices.
Some embodiments implement the functions in two or more specific interconnected hardware modules or devices with related control and data signals communicated between and through the modules, or as portions of an application-specific integrated circuit. Thus, the exemplary process flow is applicable to software, firmware, and hardware implementations.
The example PERSONNEL data structure of the data diagram 100 has limitations. For example, when an employee hold more than one job and when an employee has more than one pay rate. Another limitation is apparent when column of a PERSONNEL record needs to be updated while another process has the record locked. This can occur, for example, when a PERSONNEL record is locked while a payroll process is running. The payroll process requires data from the SALARY column and updates to that column cannot occur while the payroll process is executing. Thus, the PERSONNEL record is locked until the payroll process is complete. However, while the payroll process is executing, an employee or human resources representative may need to update an employee address in the ADDRESS column or other column not related to the payroll process. These limitations reduce the flexibility of systems including such PERSONNEL data structures.
The employee object EE 204 includes data that describes individual employees. In various embodiments, employee objects include data of one or more of employees, contractors, temporary workers, or other categories of workers. The data of the employee object 204 is data that is valid across one or more other objects, such as objects BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224. The employee object EE 204 further includes methods to obtain data from and provide data to other objects, such as objects BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224. The exchange of data between these objects provides the interface between the applications 202, 208, 212, 216, 220, 222, and 226.
In some embodiments, each object EE 204, BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224 maintains data for which it is responsible. For example, the employee object EE 204 maintains employee data, the benefits object BE 206 maintains benefits data, the tax object TX 210 maintains tax data, the garnishments object GR maintains payroll garnishments data, the work agreement object WA 218 maintains work agreement data such as compensation data and time data, and the organizational management object S 224 maintains organizational management data. In some embodiments, the data of these objects is not valid across all other objects BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224.
In some embodiments, the objects EE 204, BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224 are the sole proprietors of the data that they maintain. In such embodiments, all data create, read, update, and delete actions can only be performed by the proprietor object of the data. In such embodiments, the objects EE 204, BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224 include methods to provide create, read, update, and delete action capabilities to other objects, but the proprietor object of the data performs the methods and provides a return to the object calling the action method.
In some embodiments, the data the objects EE 204, BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224 maintain is stored in a database, such as a relational database. In other embodiments, the data is store in files or other data structures.
In some embodiments, the applications 208, 212, 216, 222, and 226 include processes that require employee data from the personnel administration application 202. The applications 208, 212, 216, 220, 222, and 226 obtain the data from the personnel administration application 202 from there respective objects BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224. These objects BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224 in turn obtain the personnel administration data from the employee object EE 204.
A benefit of the architecture of the system 200 is that when a payroll process of the compensation application 220 is executing and must lock payroll related data, non-payroll data is available for other needed actions within the system while the payroll process executes. There are numerous other benefits of this architecture where the employee object EE 204 data is separated from other application data.
The EMPLOYEE data structure, in some embodiments, includes columns:
The WORK_AGREEMENT data structure, in some embodiments, includes columns:
In the illustrated embodiment, an EMPLOYEE record can be associated with one to many WORK_AGREEMENT records. This allows an employee, such as a teacher, to have more than one work agreement. In the teacher scenario, the teacher can have a school year WORK_AGREEMENT record defining an agreement to teach during the school year. The teach can also have other WORK_AGREEMENT records that define one or more other agreements to teach at other times, such as a summer term, after school, winter term, or an agreement for each semester.
In some such embodiments, the employee object 402 maintains employee data, such as data from the EMPLOYEE data structure of
The data diagram includes an EMPLOYEE data structure as described above with regard to
The EMPLOYMENT data structure, in some embodiments, includes columns:
The WORK_AGREEMENT data structure, in some embodiments, includes columns:
The EMPLOYER data structure, in some embodiments, includes columns:
In the illustrated embodiment, an EMPLOYEE record can be associated with one to many EMPLOYMENT records with the EMPLOYEE_ID to facilitate an employee having employment with more than one employer. One to many WORK_AGREEMENT records can be associated with an EMPLOYMENT record with the EMPLOYMENT_ID to facilitate a single employee having multiple work agreements with a single employer. One EMPLOYER record can be associated with one to many EMPLOYMENT records to facilitate an employer employing one or more employees, wherein each employee can have one or more work agreements with each employer.
The object diagram 600 includes an employee object EE 602 related to a first employment object ET 6041 and a second employment object ET2 606. The first employment object ET 6041 is related to a first work agreement object WA1 608, a second work agreement object WA2 610, and a first employer object ER1 612. The second employment object ET2 606 is related to a third work agreement object WA3 614 and a second employer object ER2 616.
In such embodiments, the employee object EE 602 maintains employee data, such as data from the EMPLOYEE data structure of
In some embodiments, the employer of the first employer object ER1 612 represents a United States subsidiary of a parent corporation and the second employer object ER2 616 represents a German subsidiary of the parent corporation. The first employment object ET1 604 includes United States W4 tax withholding data of the employee represented by the employee object EE 602. The second employment object ET2 606 includes German tax withholding data of the employee represented by the employee object EE 602. Thus, when a payroll process executes, the payroll process can determine all United States withholdings for the employee for the first and second work agreements WA1 608 and WA2 610 based at least in part on the W4 tax withholding data in the first employment object ET1 604. Similarly, the payroll process can determine all German withholding for the employee for the third work agreement WA3 614 based at least in part on the withholding data in the second employment object ET2 606.
The server 706, in the illustrated example system 700, has software 708 including applications, such as the applications 202, 208, 212, 216, 222, and 226 of
In some embodiments, the server 706 includes one or more servers 706 arranged on the network for one or more of various purposes. Some such purposes include load balancing, servers 706 dedicated to perform specific functions or execute certain applications, perform web server or application server duties, and other purposes depending on the specific embodiment.
In some embodiments, the databases 710 include one or more data storage mechanisms. Some such mechanisms can include relational databases, hierarchical databases, file stores, and other data storage mechanisms as needed based on the specific embodiment.
In some embodiments, the business object, such as one or more of the objects BE 206, TX 210, GR 214, WA 218, and S 224 of
In some embodiments, a work agreement record includes a pay rate. In some further embodiments, the work agreement record includes a reference to a template work agreement and data to complete the template work agreement. A work agreement record can also identify an effective period for the work agreement represented by the work agreement record.
Some further embodiments of the method 1000 include maintaining a third set of employee data in a work agreement object in work agreement records, wherein work agreement records define one or more work agreements per employment record.
Yet further embodiments of the method I 000 include maintaining a fourth set of employee data in an employer object in employer records. In some such embodiments, each employer record relationally associates an employer with an employment record and each employment record relationally associates one or more work agreement records with an employer record.
Additional embodiments of the method 1000 include maintaining a fourth set of employee data in an employer object in employer records, wherein each employer record relationally associates an employer with one or more employee records via employment records.
In some embodiments of the method 1000, a process executes as a function of an employer record to obtain an employee salary report. This process identifies all employment records associated with an employer, retrieves at least a portion of each employee record associated with the identified employment records, and retrieves at least a portion of each work agreement record associated with each employment record.
It is emphasized that the Abstract is provided to comply with 37 C.F.R. §1.72(b) requiring an Abstract that will allow the reader to quickly ascertain the nature and gist of the technical disclosure. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims.
In the foregoing Detailed Description, various features are grouped together in a single embodiment to streamline the disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed embodiments of the invention require more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive subject matter lies in less than all features of a single disclosed embodiment. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into the Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separate embodiment.
It will be readily understood to those skilled in the art that various other changes in the details, material, and arrangements of the parts and method stages which have been described and illustrated in order to explain the nature of this invention may be made without departing from the principles and scope of the invention as expressed in the subjoined claims.
