Purpose

This article provides a general overview and guidelines for creating roles in JIE, and how to enable JIE for your team.

Audience

Talent admins, HRBPs

Overview

Roles are crucial for designing, building, and maintaining a skill-based workforce within an organization. They are also a key component of the Eightfold platform, which supports various use cases in TA and TM. These use cases include but are not limited to - Position auto calibration, assessments, Career Navigator, Succession Planning, and Upskilling.

• Users can create roles using multiple methods.
• Role title and job code are mandatory for all roles. Job code is a unique identifier and cannot be shared between roles.
• If a role with an existing job code is uploaded or synced via ATS, it will update the existing role (subject to the config under role_update_fields_config in role_library_config).
• Roles created through auto initialization, file ingestion, or API may remain unapproved until manually approved, based on the config settings.

How to create roles

The different methods or channels of creating roles are listed below. These channels also help in keeping the roles updated recurrently.

Auto Initialization

Roles can be created automatically from position or employee profile data within a group ID. When a new job code is found in this data, a corresponding role is created. The role's attributes are determined based on positions and employees with the same job code. As new employees or positions are added, new roles are created if needed, as long as role creation is enabled in the settings.

To know more about this, read Role Initialization for JIE.

Sync from ATS/HRIS

Roles can be synced from external ATS or HRIS systems if predefined roles exist. We currently support syncing from SuccessFactors and Workday. Note that roles in Eightfold may correspond to different objects (such as 'Job Profile') in external systems.

Roles can be synced periodically, similar to Position or Employee syncs. We run daily and weekly syncs for ATS roles.

To enable role sync, follow these steps:

1. Go to https://app.eightfold.ai/integrations/ats?tabid=configjson (Admin Console > Integration > Integration Systems) and select the ATS/HRIS.
2. Select the System ID from the Select System ID dropdown.
3. Navigate to the Advanced tab. Add 'role' in the 'entities' field under 'sync_settings', and ensure that 'is_enabled' is set to true. Click Compare & Save.
4. Add the group ID in the role_backfill_ingestion_gate.

File ingestion

Eightfold supports one-time file ingestion for roles using CSV, and both one-time and recurring ingestion using XML files. Each role must include a title and job code, and for XML uploads, an external ID is also required.

To use this feature, you can navigate to Admin Console > Integration > File Ingestion. Eightfold provides you with sample XML and CSV files, along with sample schema within the Download Sample Files and Download Schema options.

You can upload the roles file, or enter the file path and then click Ingest.

The external ID, unique to each role from the customer's system, ensures accurate updates. The job code, found under ‘associated_tags’, links roles with employees and positions and must match exactly (including whitespaces and case) for proper linkage. For customers without an external ID system, Eightfold recommends using the job code as the external ID, ensuring uniqueness.

Include all relevant role attributes when available. Eightfold can advise on the best data integration approach based on your data structure. Providing a sample Excel file with your employee or role data can assist in this process. To know more about recurring ingestion, read JIE recurring file-based roles ingestion.

Manual role creation

Eightfold also provides you the ability to create roles manually. To create a role, follow these steps:

1. Select Talent Design from the ‘waffle’ icon (nine-dot menu) at the top-right corner of your screen.
2. Click Create New Role.
3. Enter the relevant details for the role, such as - Role Title, Location(s), Role Tags, Ideal Candidate, Skills, and more.
4. Click Confirm Role when done.

Role attributes and properties

The below table lists all the attributes and tags for a role, serving as metadata that is used by TA and TM to understand the role better.

Custom tags

It is possible to create additional tags for roles, in addition to the default tags mentioned in the previous section. These additional tags may help with role management tasks - in searching for, or filtering and sorting roles based on different tag values.

To create additional tags, follow these steps:

1. Check if the tag already exists for the group ID using the custom fields dashboard.
2. If a tag isn’t already available, create a custom field to store the values of the tag in roles, using the Create option.
3. The fields that are available in roles by default for all group IDs are:
   • efcustom_text_job_family
   • efcustom_text_job_function
   • efcustom_text_job_band
   • efcustom_text_job_code
   • efcustom_text_job_level
   • efcustom_text_business_unit
   • efcustom_text_business_function
   • efcustom_text_title

Enable JIE

This section provides an overview about enabling JIE for your organization.

Map roles to job codes

If your organization utilizes job codes to uniquely identify roles, Eightfold can seamlessly set up your organizational roles within the role library, ensuring a smooth transition of your role definitions.

Data preparation

The first crucial step is to prepare your organizational data for ingestion into the JIE role library.

1. Role creation: using any of the methods described in the previous sections.
2. Skill requirement definition for each role: the true value of roles within the Eightfold platform lies in the skill sets attributed to them. As organizational roles are established in the role library, we collaborate to define their respective skill sets. This enables you to leverage these roles effectively across the TA and TM modules.
   1. Integration with ATS/HRIS
   2. Recurring file-based bulk setup: or a bulk setup, a file-based ingestion method similar to the one described earlier can be employed. Eightfold would require an excel spreadsheet containing roles, along with associated skills and proficiencies.
   3. Manual role definition: alternatively, roles can be manually defined or updated within the role library. Users can add skills to roles and grade them based on proficiency using a customizable numeric scale.

Begin using JIE

Once roles and employee data are established within the role library, it becomes a centralized repository powering the TA and TM modules. Continuously maintain and update the role library to ensure alignment with organizational needs and evolving talent requirements.