Understanding worker-user relationships
In Beeline Professional, the relationship between users and workers helps determine the following aspects:
- Data visibility and security
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Together with security and permissions policies for access control, the relationship between users and workers determine who can see and interact with various resources available in the application.
- Task assignment
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User tasks are assigned to a person based on their relationship to the resource represented in a business process.
There are three types of relationships that define how users interact with workers:
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Supervisory (through the organization hierarchy)
Each relationship type has distinct advantages and challenges, making the choice dependent on organizational structure and business requirements.
Accountable person
By designating an accountable person, you create a direct link between a worker’s engagement and a particular user. Because workers can have multiple engagements, each engagement can have a different accountable person responsible for the engagement. For example, a healthcare worker can have a primary engagement for daily duties and a second engagement for voluntary or research work, each set up with different accountable persons.
Roles
Roles define an indirect relationship where task assignments are dynamically evaluated based on preconfigured rules. Roles can be assigned based on organization, cost center, or location. Roles-based relationships work best in these scenarios:
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When no organization hierarchy exists, or it is relatively flat with contingent workforce grouped into teams represented by organizations.
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When task assignments involve users outside the direct hierarchy, such as MSP staff or support teams like HR, Finance, IT, or any teams that qualify as a business partner.
Advantages
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There’s no need for supervisory hierarchical structures to order users and workers based on their reporting or managerial relationships.
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Avoids maintaining direct user-worker relationships.
Challenges
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Additional effort is required to configure hierarchical approval structures when compared to utilizing an existing organization hierarchy as per supervisory roles. To set up multi-level approvals using roles, multiple roles and assignments must be configured for the different levels of approval required, which increases maintenance complexity.
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Requires updates when workers and users change.
Supervisory
Supervisory organization hierarchies are often used in HCM solutions to reflect reporting structures. This indirect relationship type relies on an organizational tree where managers assigned to organizations are part of the organization that’s hierarchically superior to the one they manage. Workers are associated with the managed organizations, and approvals follow that hierarchy. Here’s how it works:
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Workers are assigned to organizations through their engagements.
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Organizations have managers who belong to a higher-level organization to ensure the approvals hierarchy.
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Changes, such as new managers or new workers, are automatically and dynamically resolved when tasks are assigned.
Advantages
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Automatic resolution of worker-user relationships when the organization membership changes for managers or workers.
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There’s no need to maintain role assignments when users join or leave the application.
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If an HCM solution is in place, contingent worker approval flows can mimic employee workflows.