You've just got your shiny new learning platform and are eager to get those courses up and running. But hold on! Before heading straight into giving your teams courses, you need to set up your company structure!
This is a crucial first step because all of your learners need a place to belong! Set up carefully, it will allow you to track and record your teams' progress, making your job much easier.
Remember, getting this right from the start is key! It's not just about saving time and making reporting easier; it's also about setting the foundation for success for everyone on your learning platform.
So, let's dive into how you set up your company structure.
The process begins with Organisation … Manage Organisation:
Here are our four levels of company structure:
These levels, which we’ll refer to as organisation (Orgs) from now on, represent:
- Org level 4 - a whole company (or companies)
- Org level 3 - a part of org level 4, a region
- Org level 2 - a part of org level 3, for example, a specific area of that region
- Org level 1 - a part of org level 2, like a store, hotel, or any premises
You can have as many orgs within each level that you need.
As you can see, it’s essentially the company’s hierarchy. For some organisations, you will need to change the descriptions (called ‘labels’) to suit the type of organisation you are, or sector in which you operate.
Let’s take a look at a different example, this time looking at the structure of a construction company. In this case, the labels might read:
- Org level 4 – Head Office
- Org level 3 – General Managers
- Org level 2 – Site Managers
- Org level 1 – Teams
One last thing to remember about the organisation levels is that the different components of one level cannot belong to multiple levels above it. Take the construction example above. Bob, a site manager (from Org2), has one general manager (in Org3), but he can’t belong to more than one general manager.
However, two site managers (Org2), Bob and Jane, can both belong to one general manager (in Org3).
That’s an awful lot of words. Let’s look at a picture instead! Once finished, your completed company structure will be organised something like this:
Editing your company structure
A good business evolves with time, so here’s how to keep track of all those changes!
As you can see from this screen image:
The level you are working on is highlighted in blue, in this case the Location editor, or Org1.
With the Per Page drop down menu, you can adjust how many you can see on screen at any time.
You can select Edit next to an existing component to edit their content. If you want to edit or change your organisation labels (we all change our minds!), then you can do just that in any of the four editor tabs.
You can change which level you are working at with the four menu buttons at the top.
You can also change the organisation names that appear in the menu at the top of the screen, i.e ‘Company editor’ or ‘Region editor’, by selecting Change organisation level names. This can be useful if you want to make it really clear, especially if others are also admin users, exactly what each organisation level refers to in your business.
Once you click on this function, you’ll be taken to a page where you can edit or change the names of any of the four organisation levels.
Now, you might be wondering how the blue Add new… button we’ve highlighted works (it says location here, but will be whatever you have set up). So, let’s have a more detailed look at it in the Region editor (Org3). Please note that this is just an example and the same process works for every level!
Pick the Region editor and Add new region:
You’ll notice that there are two required names: ‘short’ and ‘long’. And there is a difference here! The short name is especially useful when it comes to initially importing your data onto the platform. Whereas the long name is needed as this is the name you’ll see when you gather information for your reports later.
Note – It’s VERY important that the Org short names you input for your new locations exactly match the Org names on your automated payroll data.
Making sure that your Org short names exactly match what’s in your import file will mean the import tool can crossmatch the details correctly and place the information where it needs to go on the platform. If your Org short names don’t match what’s in your import file, then you’ll end up facing errors in your import log!
You can see in the below screenshot that the ‘Parent’ dropdown menu gives you a list to choose from, and the descriptions you see in this dropdown are the long names you inputted initially. The long name is basically what you see here, and what you see later in your reporting tools.
After you’ve given your region two names, use the ‘Parent’ dropdown to assign this new region to a company and leave the email section blank.
And then once all that is filled in, select Add new region.
All levels are built in exactly the same way, save for one small difference in the base level (Org1). When this level is highlighted, you’ll be able to see on the left-hand side of the page a list of the levels to your organisation, showing you where Org1 fits into the grand scheme of your structure.
Note: In the location editor (Org1) you’ll notice an attributes field. You might find this useful: Location attributes and why you need them
Nearly there now, but one last thing to note!
The platform keeps all data you put in, even if any branches of your organisation structure close down. They won’t clutter your searches, but you never know when you might need to check back on information for a team that no longer exists.
If you want to find out more about the data we keep, please take a look at our privacy policy here: https://upskillpeople.com/privacy-and-cookies/
And there you have it! With the structure of your organisation set up, you can start inputting your learners and assigning them to the correct workplace.
“But how do you do that?”, we hear you cry. The next guide in this section is Managing job types and it will show you how.
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