Employer Groups

Overview

Using employer Groups, you can organise your employers by creating a hierarchy for large or complex organisation structures.

Employer groups provides a way to easily manage employers where they operate from multiple sites, contain a group of companies or are large enough to divide sites in some way such as by regional area. The feature allows you to mirror the employer’s reporting structure and provide visibility within the employer console based upon these groups.

Using employer groups, you can provide the right level of access for progress reporting in a hierarchy which matches the employer’s understanding of the way they view their business. For example, this also proves particularly useful for scenarios where an employer has regional managers.

Types of employer groups

There are two types of employer groups:

• Automatically created - these will have type 'Employer' under the group type column.
• Manually created - these will have type 'Employer Group' under the group type column.

Permissions

Any administrator with ‘Create Groups’ permission can manage employer groups. This means that the ‘Employer Groups’ tab is available whenever the ‘Groups’ tile is visible for an administrator. 

Note that if the administrator does not have Manage Organisations permission, there will be no links to organisation profile rendered under the ‘Employer' type groups.

'Employer'-type groups creation: Even if the administrator does not have the Create Groups permission, and does not see the Groups tile, but has the Manage Organisations permission, and creates a new organisation of ‘Employer’ type, the relevant ‘Employer' type employer group will still be created in tenant.

Accessing the Employer Groups tab

Navigate to the Groups tile. Use the toggle and switch to Employer Groups. 

Here, you can view employer records that have been created automatically by the system. Employer records are automatically created and added to this list every time you create an employer record via the Organisations tile. 

In addition, the list also shows employer groups that have been manually created.

Employer group grid

The Employer Groups tab displays a list of all employer group records - both automatically created and manually created.

The employer groups list has the following details/actions:

• Id
• Name
• Type - Automatically created employer groups have an Employer type, while manually created ones have the Employer Group type.
• Parent name - Displayed where applicable
• Edit
• Delete - This option is only displayed for manually created employer groups.

You can use the search option to search for an employer group. You can type in the name of the employer group, or the parent. Note that searching using the ‘Parent’ text box will only search those Employer groups that have child groups under them.

Click Search after you type in your search criteria.

Create an Employer Group structure

You can create an employer group structure by organising the employer records into various groups and sub-groups. 

1. Create an employer group
2. Assign an employer record to an employer group
3. Create an employer group hierarchy

Create an employer group

On the Groups tile. use the toggle and switch to Employer Groups. 

Click Create.

The Add group screen is displayed.

You must specify a name for the group.

You can choose to specify a parent group. Note that you can only choose a manually created employer group as a parent group.

If you do not specify a parent group, the group will be a stand-alone group, not linked to any existing groups.

Click Create to create the group.

Edit an employer group

In case of a manually created employer group, you can edit the name of the employer group. You can also edit the hierarchy of the group by selecting a different parent employer group or by de-linking it from any parent group and allowing the employer group to have its own tree structure.

In case of an automatically created employer group, the name of the group is the name of the employer. It is not possible to edit the name of the group, but you can update the hierarchy. If the organisation name is updated, the employer group name will also be updated.

In case of an automatically created employer group, you can select either 'Employer' (automatically created) or 'Employer Group' (manually created) type of group as a parent.

Assign an employer record to an employer group

To assign an employer record to an employer group, edit the employer record. 

On the Edit group screen, set / update the parent group. Click Save.

In the following example, the employer record titled Grant Thornton Cambridge (ID 41) was edited and assigned to the employer group titled Grant Thornton (ID 161).

Create an employer group hierarchy

Using the same process, you can create multiple levels and define parent-groups and child-groups at each level.

Deleting employer groups

In case of automatically created employer groups, they cannot be deleted from the employer groups grid. To remove such groups from a tenant, the administrator should remove the corresponding organisation from the Organisations grid instead.

Manually created employer groups can be deleted only from Employer Groups grid, but with following restrictions:

• If the ‘Employer Group’ group has employer logins linked to it, administrators will see this message: ‘Can't delete this group as it has linked users’, and the group will not be deleted.
• If the ‘Employer Group’ group has sub-groups hierarchy below, the administrators will see this message: ‘Can't delete this group as it has linked groups’, and the group will not be deleted.

Define access levels for employers

As an Administrator, you can assign an employer login to one or more groups, so that you can manage which learners an employer login is able to view.

For example, a line manager can be given access to one or more groups containing the learners that they are responsible for. A brand manager can be given access to all the groups under their brand. And a regional manager can be given access to all groups in their region.

Defining employer group access for a new user

Navigate to the Users tile. Click Create. From the dropdown, select Employer.

On the Add User screen, fill in the fields as relevant.

Under the Employer Group section, select the groups you want to assign them to. You can select multiple groups at any level within the tree structure. If a parent group is selected, all child groups will be visible to the employer.

You can also use the search functionality to filter the groups.

After you have made your selection, click Create.

Editing employer group access for an existing user

Navigate to the Users tile. Locate the employer you want to manage access levels for. Click the pencil icon under the Edit column.

On the Edit Employer screen, navigate to the Employer Group section.

Select the groups you want to assign them to. You can select multiple groups at any level within the tree structure. If a parent group is selected, all child groups will be visible to the employer.

You can also use the search functionality to filter the groups.

After you have made your selection, click Update.

View learner records

After you have created your group hierarchy using employer groups, and sets access levels for different levels of managers, your employer logins can now view leaner records that they have been given access for.

They can also filter their learners by employer group. 

1. Login to the employer console.
2. Use the Groups filter to select the employer group

Based on the filters applied, the list of learners will be updated.

Groups and Employer Groups

The Employer Groups functionality does not replace existing group structure. It is an extra level of sub-division.

Using the employer console, you can filter the results of the learner list by both the employer groups which they have been assigned and the groups they have been assigned.

As an employer login, you can see the learners that are relevant to you, so that you can see their progress. An employer login's visibility of learner makes use of both the Group & Employer Groups that have been selected for that employer login.

The logic for selecting users is as follows:

1. If the employer login has one or more employer groups selected, and one or more groups selected, then the intersect of the two distinct learner lists will be visible to the employer login.
2. If the employer login is allocated to an employer group which has sub-groups (like organisations), then learners from all nested organisations will be visible to the employer-login – even though these (nested organisations) are not explicitly selected for employer-login in employer groups area.
   So, in the set up below, the employer-login will see learners that intersect with their Aptem groups and are linked to ‘Emp 1’ or ‘Emp 2’ organisations, even though ‘Emp 1’ and ‘Emp 2’ are not selected on the Edit Employer form.