Adding and managing employees

The employee profile is the source of truth for an employee’s information – from their personal details to their job and compensation information. To get started navigate to the Employees tab of the main menu. All your employees will be visible under the People Directory list in alphabetical order based on their last names.

You can find employees by using the search bar at the top. The search bar enables you to search by first/last name or email address. You can filter the directory further by employee status, department, or division.

Clicking an employee's direct reports will show you a listing of employees who report to them.

Click on an employee's name to view or edit their profile. Before making any edits or additions, make sure you configure your default or custom profile templates under the Profile templates tab. 

 

Lifecycle of an employee profile

The three default statuses of an employee profile in a company are Draft, Active, and Inactive. 

• A newly created profile starts as a Draft until all mandatory fields are completed and the profile is published. It's only possible to onboard employee profiles that are in draft status.
• When all mandatory fields are completed, the profile can be published. This action will make the employee profile Active and available to all employees in the People Directory. Active employees can be offboarded. 
• When an active employee is offboarded, their profile status becomes Inactive. Inactive profiles are read-only, with no ability to edit information, and are only visible to their line manager and HR Admin. You can restore an offboarded employee if necessary. 

🔎 Active employee profiles can be assigned a custom status (e.g., "In sabbatical", "Furloughed") created by HR admins under the Profile templates tab. 

 

Creating an employee profile

Automatic creation of profiles for hired candidates

When candidates reach the Hired stage in your job pipelines (if using Workable Recruiting), their employee profiles will be automatically generated in draft status. This will trigger notifications to all HR admins and the new employee's line manager about the creation of the draft profile for the newly hired employee.

When the employee profile is created:

• The default profile template will be selected, but you can change it later when you onboard the employee. 
• All the related information from the hired candidate will be retrieved and filled in to reduce manual data entry. The candidate's resume, offer letters and any other documents they signed will also be moved to the employee profile and displayed in the Files > Uploads tab. 
• It will have a Start date set only if this is determined by either the start date set in an offer letter (using the [start_date] variable) or the start date set when filling a requisition (with Hiring Plan).

Other ways to add employees

When adding employees, you also have the below options: 

Add manually:

1. In the People Directory, click Add employee > Add manually on the upper right.
2. Fill in the record info you possess and select the profile template you wish to use.
3. Once ready, click Save as draft and exit. After saving it as a draft, the employee profile is ready for onboarding. 

Import from CSV:

1. In the People Directory, click Add employee > Import from CSV on the upper right.
2. A full-page modal will open from where you can import employee data through a four-step wizard. The profiles will be imported in draft status. You can see a detailed guide for each step here. 

 

Actions available for employee profiles

Depending on the employee profile status, different actions will appear under the related menu.

Onboard

This action will be available only:

• For draft employees who have not yet been onboarded.
• To HR Admins.

Publish profile

When all the mandatory fields are completed for a draft employee HR Admins can publish the employee profile. This action will make it “Active” and available to all employees in the company directory and org chart.
If the employee's work email is not provided, you will be requested to add it before publishing.

Invite to account

For a published employee that has not yet been invited to join your account, you will see an Invite to account action under the Actions menu. This will send an invitation to the employee to join your account and access their Workable profile.

Edit profile

While viewing an employee profile click Edit profile under the Actions menu on the right. Make all changes you need in any of the sections and once ready click Save on the upper right. For active employees make sure you have filled in all mandatory fields. 

HR Admins can also make changes to one or more fields and schedule the updates to take effect on a future date rather than immediately.

Each profile section contains some predefined fields that can work as a default template for your basic needs. You can edit the default template or even create custom templates by navigating to the Profile templates section of your account. The default sections include: 

Information tab:

• Personal: Personal information such as the preferred name, marital status, and so on
• Job: Employment info like job title, hire date, employment status, and other specific job details
• Compensation & benefits: Compensation info and bank details
• Legal documents: Passport/visa documents, citizenship info and more
• Experience: Education, work experience, languages, resume, etc. 
• Emergency: Emergency contact details

Files tab:

• E-signatures: E-signature documents signed or waiting to be signed by the employee
• Uploads: Any files uploaded directly into the profile. Offer letters as well as any other documents the candidates signed will also be moved here when they are imported to the People Directory. Learn more here.

Delete profile

Deleting a profile immediately removes it from the employee directory. If an onboarding is scheduled or in progress, it will be stopped. To delete an employee profile, it needs to be either draft or inactive. 

• Draft: Click Delete profile in the Actions menu

• Inactive: If an employee profile is active, you must first offboard the employee and then select the Delete profile action from the Actions menu.

Change profile template

HR admins can change the profile template that is assigned to an employee profile anytime. Just click 'Change profile template' under the Actions menu.

The template change happens immediately for every profile. During the next profile edit, if any mandatory fields are not filled in, they must be updated in order to save the changes.

 

Profile fields history

The employee profile may include fields that need a “change log” for audit reasons. These fields are configured in the default template to keep history for every change that happens.

The clock icon next to a field indicates that it has more than one history entry. Users with view rights on this field can click on it and see the past values in a modal, while HR Admins can also manage historic entries.

HR admins can temporarily turn off field history (for minor updates) in the profile edit form, as shown below. 

 

Profile change requests

 

FAQs

What would be the steps for uploading past/former employees?

Follow these steps to upload former employees who are no longer with your company:

1. Create a basic custom profile template for past employees (any fields you don’t need or to which you don't have answers can be set as optional or hidden).
2. Upload the former employees via a CSV file, selecting the new custom profile template you created for this use.
3. Uploaded profiles will be set as draft by default, so you will need to manually publish and then offboard each one of them so that it is inactive. 

How can I set up existing users in Workable as employees?

The easiest way to set up your existing users as employees is to upload them via a CSV import. In order to map employees to their correct manager, the manager profile should already be published or included in the CSV import.