First steps of HR manager

Welcome to Aptien. We'll guide you through the basics of HR work in Aptien so you can quickly work on your own and collaborate with others. So that you know what is possible in the system and what is not, what you can do and how you can do it, where it will help you, what it will make easier and where its limits are!

Aptien will help you in HR:

• keep HR information and documentation around your employees
• facilitate onboarding and offboarding
• it also makes it easier to plan and develop employees and organize training
• have an active relationship with your employees - facilitate and direct communication with them
• make it easier to work with candidates
• maintaining information around job roles and job requirements
• maintain an organizational structure in the form of an organigram

Aptien will help you keep HR information, but it's not a payroll system - so it won't help you with payroll processing and payroll. It does allow you to keep HR records around people, making it easier to onboard them, communicate with them, and live in the company.

How will you work as an HR manager in Aptien?

Aptien will help you maintain HR information securely and for the long term, but it will also help you communicate within the company with individual employees and them with you. In self-service, each employee will see their personal information and can update selected ones. You, of course, will always know about it. 

As the person responsible for HR, you will work mainly with personnel Organizers. But in addition to these, your workspace will also consist of other Organizers in which you share information across the company. 

As an HR manager and the top management of the company, you have access to the personnel Organizers. Because they contain sensitive information, other employees do not have access to them. These two Organizers are the foundation of HR work:

• Employees - this is where all employee information is kept
• Applicants - a summary of information and communications from job applicants to your company

Each employee only sees their selected information in their personal self-service, where they can also update their personal information to facilitate communication with you.

In addition to the basic personnel Organizers, you have additional Organizers that you can use according to your company's needs.

• Job Positions - This is where you keep track of the job positions in your company and information about them
• Organigram (organizational structure) - which allows you to display your organizational chart graphically
• Job Requirement Catalog - designed to create all sorts of requirements you need to track and manage for each job and person
• Training Dates - an Organizer of specific training sessions within the company or that you book for your employees. The training sessions that your people are attending are listed here, and you will be able to keep track of their attendance

Other shared Organizers that you can see and use as an HR manager are:

• Assets - used to keep a list of assets that employees can use. This Organizer is usually shared with other people in the company. Staff responsible for property maintain a list of assets here.  A specific piece of property is then assigned to a specific employee. So here, the company maintains a list of assets (for example, work equipment) which can then be linked to the Organizers of the workers who are responsible for it or have been issued it
• Companies - a shared Organizer where you keep track of your suppliers of HR services or training. This Organizer is usually shared with other people in the company
• Contacts - an Organizer where your firm keeps contacts that need to be shared across the company. It is a company-wide directory of contacts
• Process Descriptions - is another shared Organizer that helps you describe, manage or improve processes in your company. You can describe each process here, attach suggestions for improvement and - importantly for you - use the list in job descriptions

Have an active relationship with your employees

Aptien also allows you to maintain an active relationship with your employees with its intranet and employee portal. You'll get two-way communication between you and your staff that you can control and not get lost in email ping-pong.

Each employee only sees their personal information in the employee self-service portal, where they can also update their personal information to facilitate communication with you.

Where - what can you find? Get to know your workspace

Everything necessary can be found in the left menu, which takes you to virtually everything you need to do your job. At the top right, you'll see colored tabs - this is a list of the organizers you have available for your work. These are the ones you see as an HR manager.

Your HR workspace

This is where you will find all the essential organizers for keeping your HR records. Organizers are your electronic folders where you store information about employees, candidates, employment contracts, training or even assets.

Your tasks and daily activities

Here you will find an overview of all your tasks, alerts, notes and other activities that you do as a user in the system or that are related to the activities of other users and concern you. Notifications can also come automatically from the system - as soon as you set some watchdogs or a task deadline is approaching, the system will alert you.

All messages and alerts are collected in your INBOX, where you can find any messages from other users or alerts and other information sent to you by the system.

In tasks you will see all the tasks you are in charge of and also tasks where you are copied in as a follower.

Your company

Wall or company noticeboard is the perfect place for information to be shared and communicated across the company. Information on the wall is easily accessible to everyone in the company. It's much better than sending emails to all the people in the company. In addition to the wall, there is also a directory of all employees where each person in the company can easily find contact information for other colleagues. It works similarly to a very simple intra-company Facebook. In the employee directory, you can see your colleagues and their contact details.

Communicate and chat with colleagues

On the far right, you can see other users, your colleagues in the company, who work in Aptien together with you. You can communicate with each of them via chat.

How and where you keep basic personal information

The core of your work as an HR manager will be the details and information around employees, employment contracts and applicants. Employees organizer, employee personnel card and all necessary documents.

You will find and keep information about your employees in the Employees organizer. For each of them, you keep the data on the employee's personal card, where all their basic information, i.e. personal and contact details, job equipment, financial evaluation, salary development, their benefits, training, identity or health information and other related information you need to keep for your employees. You also have information relevant to their onboarding, company life and termination. Also included is a job description or its job classification. You will find here:

• Employee contact details
• Personal information including residence, insurance companies and other necessary information for payroll accountants such as health insurance or account number for sending payroll
• Information about the job, its description and other information about the job title
• Employee's work equipment, where you keep track of what the employee is assigned
• Wage, remuneration and employment contract information, you can attach the employment contract, its attachments and amendments
• Information on qualifications, education and career history
• Details of the employee's health, medical examinations and work restrictions
• Details of the employee's identity
• Records of medical examinations
• Other personal documents

Edit your employee information if you need to

By default, Aptien HR is designed and set up to suit most companies and organizations to help them manage their HR processes and keep HR records. But every business is a little different and Aptien is ready for that. You are free to customize the information yourself. 

How you will work and communicate in the system

Communication with other employees in the company is similar to email. All the messages and discussions from your colleagues and all the notifications from the system will gather in one place in your inbox, where they can't get stuck, lost or fall into spam.

• The vast majority of your communication will take place in tasks, where you will use discussions to communicate with your colleagues and solve work tasks.
• The calendar will also be important, where you will see all your events and entries. If you need Aptien to keep track of important deadlines or tasks for you, you will set up a watchdog for that.
• In the system, you will therefore see both information that only concerns you (tasks, notifications, etc.) and information that arises from your work as an HR manager.

What HR processes will the system make easier for you

Keeping track of various HR deadlines and events

Keeping track of various deadlines, such as medical appointments, expiration dates of employment contracts, amendments, start and end dates of deputation or mandatory training dates is a breeze with us. All of this is taken care of for you by our watchdogs, which you set up to suit your needs.

Let's take a look at how it works when it comes to looking after the end of probationary periods. Go to the employee card. Expand the "Occupational info and compensation" information, where you'll find the "End of the trial period" field, with the watchdog icon at the end of the line. Click on it and set up a new watchdog.

1. Enter a name - for example, I am watching the end of probationary periods
2. When will I be notified - in the My watchdog watches for, select By detail value, select "Occurs in number of days" and enter how many days in advance you want to be notified in the box
3. My watchdog watches over - select on all records (this will make the system watch on all employees) or this item only (if you want a reminder only on one specific employee)

This will set you up to watch for the end of the probationary period on records.

Updating employee personal data and change requests

Employees can update their personal and contact details via self-service without having to bring paperwork or send emails to HR. As soon as an employee makes a change, the system automatically alerts you and you can check the information and contact the employee if you are unsure or need to clarify or pass the information on.

1. If the situation or your processes require it, employees can make requests through Aptien that won't get lost anywhere.
2. You will see any messages, alerts or requests in your INBOX.

This will simplify HR and communication between employees and the company. You will especially appreciate this in those companies that have departments or workplaces spread over multiple locations.

Job description

Describing the job description is not easy. To do this, you need to create a list of activities or processes that the worker is expected to perform in a particular job.

You create a job description in the Job Description field. Here you have the option of either describing the job in plain text or supplementing this text with a list of processes and activities that you have described in your process catalogue.

If you have one in your company, go to the Job settings and simply create a link to the Process Catalogue in the Job description block.

Participation of people in training

Many companies deal with intensive education, training and certification of their employees. You need to keep track of who has attended what training. You can ensure this process with the help of two organizers we have already introduced. You will link information from the Employees organizer and Training Dates.

When you book or organize a training course - it doesn't matter if it is internal or external if it is paid or free - you will set up the training in the Training Dates organizer - you will enter the basic information, the location and date of the training and select who attended the training in the list of participants. The system will automatically link the information to the participating employees and you will have an overview of who attended which training and when.

What else can you do?

What else can you find and use in your workspace besides:

• Business Process catalog - is another shared organizer that helps you describe, manage or improve processes in your company. You can describe each process here, add suggestions for improvement and - importantly for you - use the list in your job descriptions.
• Assets - used to maintain a list of assets that employees can use. This organizer is usually shared with other people in the company. The staff responsible for property maintain the property list here. A specific piece of property is then assigned to a specific worker. So here the company maintains a list of assets (for example, work equipment), which can then be linked to the records of the workers who are responsible for it or have been issued it
• Companies - another shared organizer where you keep track of your suppliers of HR services or training. This organizer is usually shared with other people in the company
• Contacts - another shared organizer where your company keeps contacts that need to be shared across the company. It is a company-wide directory of contacts

In addition to the basic personnel records, you have other organizers that you can use depending on your company's needs:

• Job positions - here you keep track of the jobs in your company and information about them.
• Organigram (organizational structure) - which allows you to graphically display your organizational chart
• Job Requirements Catalog - designed to create all the different requirements you need to track and manage for each job and people

What is Aptien?

It is an application for collaboration and communication of people within the company, keeping various operational company records, company administration, task and work management. It's not just a personnel system, but it's a kind of electronic filing system beyond the scope of regular HR. Aptien is also a company intranet where people can communicate with each other, a company bulletin board and a desk for people in the offices. Something like combining Facebook with software for managing orders, projects, contracts or assets. Information from different areas is linked and traceable from one single application.

Unlike traditional applications, Aptien is very flexible, customizable, and can connect the records where your daily tasks take place. It allows you to attach notes and other information so you no longer have to write them on different sticky notes and papers. All in one convenient environment.