Personnel Actions (SAP Library - Personnel Administration (PA-PA))

Personnel Actions

In the standard system, different types of employee data are stored in individual infotypes. Rather than accessing each infotype individually and entering data into them, the system can group together the most important infotypes into personnel actions and lead you through processing the employee data.

Personnel actions

Personnel procedures, such as hiring an employee, organizational reassignment, or an employee leaving the enterprise are represented by individual personnel actions in Personnel Administration. Each personnel action contains the infotypes that you must maintain to record the personnel action at hand. The infotypes are retrieved in succession so that you can maintain them. For example, all the fields in which you need to make entries to hire an employee will be offered to you for maintenance automatically by the system in the personnel action Hiring.

This ensures that all the core data is entered into the system. This function also facilitates entering data as you do not need to access each infotype within the personnel action individually.

Customizing enables you to adapt the Hiring personnel action type so that it meets your enterprise’s exact requirements:

In the standard system, the Organizational reassignment personnel action groups logically related infotypes together to form an infotype group. These sequence in which these infotypes are presented guarantees that you can carry out all personnel procedures in logical order for an employee. If you want to display all of the infotype records that are valid for an employee on the start date of a personnel action, choose Scrolling Through an Infotype Group.

If you want to enter additional employee data using the hiring action, you can change these infotype groups by customizing the standard system settings. You can also change the infotype group temporarily by using the Change Infotype Group Temporarily function.

Changes made to an infotype or infotype fields often affect field entries in other infotypes. You can set up dynamic personnel actions in the system settings to deal with situations like this.

Employees are often in possession of objects on loan, company ID cards, or system users that must be returned when, for example, they become subject to an organizational reassignment or leave the enterprise. In such cases, it is a good idea to inform the appropriate administrator of the Organizational Reassignment, or of the fact that an employee has left the company, so that he or she can initiate the necessary steps. In Customizing, you can set an automatic mail connection so that the administrator responsible automatically receives a mail via SAPOffice if an infotype record is edited.

In the standard SAP System, the following basic personnel procedures are represented as personnel actions in the HR master data system:

Hiring
Organizational reassignment (for employees who are promoted, for example, or demoted, or transferred to an equivalent work center)
Early retirement/retirement
Leaving
Reentry into company

Based on the advantages given above, SAP recommends that you always use the Personnel action function to perform these business procedures.

See also:

Performing a Personnel Action

For more information on the Hiring, Organizational Reassignment, and Leaving actions, see:

Hiring a New Employee

Organizational Reassignment of an Employee

Leaving The Enterprise

Fast entry of personnel actions

The Fast Entry of Personnel Actions function is available for some actions. This function enables you to carry out a personnel action for one employee. There are several required entry fields that you must fill on the Fast Entry screen in order to carry out a personnel action. You can enter all the important data for the individual employee that is not derived from the default values. Using these entries as a basis, the system will fill all the other fields with default values (for example, if you make an entry in the required entry field Position, the system will automatically suggest a default value for the field Payroll accounting area).

When you use the Fast Entry of Personnel Actions function, the system does not display the fields for which default values are suggested automatically. The advantage of this function is that you can maintain all the required entry fields for all the infotypes belonging to a particular personnel action on one screen. This prevents you from having to maintain all of the fields included in the infotypes assigned to the personnel action.

In the standard system, you can only use the Fast Entry of Personnel Actions function for the following actions:

Hiring
Organizational reassignment

In the Implementation Guide for Personnel Administration, you have the option of customizing the Fast Entry of Personnel Actions function to suit your company-specific requirements. You can set up your own fast entry screens for all the personnel action types you require by determining the content and layout of the screens.