Assiging Employees to Departments, Teams and Managers

How to Assign Employees to Departments, Teams and Managers 

Every employee profile carries a set of organizational assignments: which department, office, organization, and division they belong to, which teams they're part of, and who they report to. These assignments aren't just labels, they drive approval flows, visibility, and access throughout the rest of Simployer One. 

There are three ways to set or change these assignments, depending on when you're doing it and how many employees are involved. 

METHOD 1, MASTER DATA IMPORT (INITIAL SETUP) 

1. Provided during onboarding 

Early in onboarding, your Onboarding Specialist provides two master data files: an Organization Structure file (departments, teams, offices) and an Employee Import file (all employee information, including department, teams, and office). This is the standard way of getting your structure and people into Simployer One in one pass. 

See also: For the full column by column detail on these two import files, see the dedicated Simporter import guides. 

METHOD 2, FROM AN INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYEE'S PROFILE 

1. Open the employee's profile and go to the Overview tab 

This gives you a quick summary: who they report to, their department, and their office, shown as cards at the top of the page. 

2. Go to the Profile tab for the full set of fields 

Profile is broken into sections: Work, Financial, Personal, Employment, Compensation, plus any custom fields or groups your company has set up, emergency contacts, and children. Department, Office, Organization, and Reports to (manager) all live under the Work section. 

3. Select the pencil icon to enter edit mode 

This unlocks every field on the page for editing. Make your changes, then select Save. Select Cancel to discard changes without saving. 

Good to know: The Reports to field on an individual profile only lets you choose from currently active employees, meaning people who have already been invited to Simployer One. If the person you want to assign as manager hasn't been invited yet, this dropdown won't show them. In this situation, use Method 3 (Bulk/Quick Update) from the New hires tab instead, this works even for employees who are still inactive and not yet invited. This makes it the right approach for bulk manager reassignments during implementation, for example if a department's manager changes before everyone has gone live in the system. 

METHOD 3, BULK OR QUICK UPDATE FROM THE EMPLOYEES LIST 

1. Go to Employees in the left menu 

The list is split into four tabs: Candidates, New hires, Employees, and Archived. New hires are people who haven't been invited yet, Employees are everyone already invited (considered Active in Simployer, SCIM, and the integration API). 

Good to know: Bulk actions, including Change manager, work from the New hires tab too, even though those employees aren't active yet. This is the reason Method 3 is the right route for reassigning managers in bulk during implementation, for example when a department's manager changes partway through onboarding, before everyone involved has been invited. 

2. Select the employees you want to update 

Use the checkboxes to select one employee, several, or all of them at once using the header checkbox. 

3. Narrow the list first with Filter, if needed 

Filter by Team, Department, Office, Employment type, or Organization, or use the search bar to find specific people. Useful when you want to update everyone in a given unit at once. 

4. Open the Actions menu and choose what to change

Available actions include: Add to team, Change title, Change cost centre, Change department, Change office, Change organization, Change division, Change manager, Change permissions, Change employment type, Send invite email, Provision, Workflow, and Export to CSV.

5. Choose when the change should take effect

At the bottom of the action panel, before confirming, you can choose whether the change should apply immediately or at a later date. Select a future date to schedule the change.

Good to know: Scheduled changes can be viewed and cancelled before they take effect. Navigate to the Employees list and open your scheduled actions to manage them.

6. Confirm the change

The action applies to every employee currently selected, whether that's one person or the entire filtered list.

HOW THESE CHANGES RIPPLE OUTWARD

Department, office, organization, division, employment type, team, and manager assignments aren't isolated to the profile itself, other parts of Simployer One reference them directly. Updating an assignment has real, immediate effects elsewhere: 

Good to know: These effects apply going forward from the moment the change is made, they don't retroactively alter things that already happened under the previous assignment (for example, an already-submitted approval stays with the manager who approved it).