Departments and locations

Set up the departments and work locations your people belong to, with live headcounts for each.

On for most organisationsMost organisations have this from their first day on the platform.

Departments and locations give your roster its shape. They power the filters on your employee list and let you aim an announcement at one team or one office. Each one shows a live headcount, so you can see at a glance where your people are.

Where to find it

Departments, under Manage. The page has two panels, one for departments and one for locations.

Departments

The panel lists each department with how many active employees are in it, the manager if you have set one, and a description. Expand a department to see its detail.

To add or edit one, give it:

  • a name and a short code
  • a parent department, if it sits inside another (for example a team inside Operations)
  • a manager, chosen from your active employees
  • a description

Locations

The panel lists each work location with its active headcount, address, country, timezone, and whether it is your primary location.

To add or edit one, give it a name, address line, city, postcode, country and timezone, and tick it as primary if it is your main site.

How people are linked to them

Each employee record holds a department and a location. The headcounts are worked out from those, live, every time you open the page.

The platform links each person to the right department or location by name, ignoring differences in capital letters, as long as the name is not ambiguous within your organisation. When you create or rename a department or location, anyone whose record already carries that name is linked to it. This is what makes an announcement aimed at one department or location reach the people in it, including people added by an HR system sync.

Good to know

  • Keep names consistent. "Sales" and "sales" are counted together, but "Sales team" is a different department.
  • If a record holds a department or location that is not in your list, quick edit on the roster keeps it as it is when you save.
  • Leave requests go to each person's line manager, which you set on their employee record. See People.
  • HR admins and org admins manage this page. Line managers do not see it.

Questions

Invites and access

Invite your people one at a time or in bulk, let them join without an invite, and give admin or line manager access.

HR system sync

What a connection to BrightHR, Breathe HR, Personio or Sage HR does once it is on, and how to check it from Settings.

On this page

Where to find itDepartmentsLocationsHow people are linked to themGood to knowQuestions