HCM Processes & Forms: US Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability compliance made easy!

     If there was ever a better, easier use-case for HCM Processes & Forms and furthermore, HCM P&F using the “old” Adobe Interactive Forms interface than bringing your company into compliance with the “new” Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability requirements, then I would love to see what it is! This is literally the easiest, fastest HCM P&F process I have ever built. But what is the urgent need for it and why do you care?

The Red Tape

     Well, under revised United States Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) regulations implementing Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 503), covering individuals with disabilities, employers must invite job applicants and employees to self-identify their disabilities on a standard “Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability” form prescribed by the agency. The final, “legal” form was approved on January 22, 2014.

     Under the new regulations, employers are required to survey their existing workforce within the first year of the employer’s next regular affirmative action program (AAP) update following March 24, 2014, the effective date of the regulations. Furthermore, the form must be provided to employees at least once every five years. That means if employers/companies have not already provided this to their employees/applicants, then it is high time to get on the ball!

     Here is more information about it direct from the government …. http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/section503.htm ….and here is the PDF form itself… http://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/sec503/Voluntary_Self-Identification_of_Disability_CC-305_SD_Edit1.24.14.pdf

In the SAP World

     So what does this mean for us working within the trenches (or “paradise” depending on your perspective haha) of SAP HCM? This kind of information is typically stored in infotype 0077 (Additional Personal Data) along with things like race and veterans status. I have heard of many companies as well as have my own clients that have looked for the best way to handle this to insure compliance (especially in large organizations where we are talking several thousands of employees and possibly thousands of new applicants daily as well!). Sure there are many possible solutions, but of course, HCM P&F is near and dear to my heart. haha

The HCM P&F Answer

     Let’s see here….so we need a PDF-like form where the employee can go online, make their selection, submit it and their HR specific record gets updated? Hmmmmm now why does that sound so familiar? …..where have I heard that before?…….hmmmmm….Oh yeh! That is EXACTLY what HCM Processes and Forms can do! So why not use it?!?!?!?! But now…..some other considerations.

     Although Adobe Interactive Forms (AIF) are considered “the old way” now in HCM P&F, they are actually the BEST solution in this case. Because our form requires very specific layout (font family, size, position, etc) and the US  government already provides it as a PDF, it is very easy to duplicate (import and modify with our needed data bindings) as a HCM P&F form. This is just not possible (and you will get arguments that it does not meet legal requirement either) if you use the “newer” FPM forms or other similar solutions. Yes, this is that one special case where AIF beats FPM hands down…there….I said it…you read it….let’s move on. haha

     Now, aside from using AIF, we do have some technical hurdles. As you should know if using HCM P&F, we rely on the decoupled (detached) infotype framework. In it, there are classes for our infotypes such as 0077. Within some of these, there are stricter “validations” than one might encounter in the “old” PA30 way of updating infotypes. Sadly, many of these “checks” will cause us grief for automating our IT0077 updates. Thankfully, SAP released some notes/updates related to this (thanks to my good friend Siddharth Rajora who is always on the “ball” for providing this information …look at notes note in sequence to apply: 1 – 1976932 2 – 1996041 3 – 1995948 4 – 1995949) which will modify some of the decoupled infotype class “validations” and other things that will need to be taken care of to properly handle our updates to IT0077 via HCM P&F. (side note: in some case, especially for clients not on correct component levels or can’t apply notes/packs as mentioned, I have seen them just create their own simple custom infotype with the fields needed to store the selection, dates, etc. and use that in place of IT0077 and the standard IT0077 related decoupled infotype classes….so it is even possible that way too but will require a bit more work)

HCM P&F Configuration

     Pretty much, all you do is map each field form the US IT0077 structure (make sure you use the US structure and not just the “common” XX one or you will hit Veteran Status errors) to your form scenario fields in SAP_PA. I go the extra step of flagging the “disability” date fields to be excluded from the operation since there are still “checks” in the standard 0077 class that will error/warn you about entering those dates. (NOTE: You may need to check your own requirements in case you need to actually set the disability related dates…disabled date/date learned….as they may require you writing your own backend service to set these correctly based on user’s selection…but even this is easy! You will notice these are checked in the class CL_HRPA_INFOTYPE_0077_US method CHECK_DISABILITY as well. Personally, I ended up writing a quick generic service to set/clear dates as needed based on the user’s selection so it met the check/validations “hardcoded” into the IT0077 US class. Adding that into configuration is easy enough so no need to go into it here.) Secondly, set your operation as a “change” on IT0077. Lastly, I add a “rule” assigned to this operation so that it only does the “change” if the user has selected an allowed value for the “disability status” (you need to check your own value range allowed…..but let’s say we only allow “X” , “N” or “A”). So my configuration looks like…

Overview

SAP_PA operations

SAP_PA fields

Rules

Unit Testing

….better known as “the proof is in the pudding”. haha….here you go..

(1) before running the form, we look at our employee’s IT0077 record via PA20 and get:

(2) now we execute the form, make our selection, and submit.

(3) now looking again in PA20 at the employee’s IT0077 record, we can see our selection is there…..and in compliance! (haha)

Last Step

     I won’t get into it here (because in good ol’ consultant speak “it depends” haha), but your next step will be to make this available via your ESS solution. This might involve changes to your homepage framework or launchpad configuration (or elsewhere) and possibly portal content changes as well. But I will leave all that fun to you. Hey, I can’t do all the work for you….at least not for free! hahahaha

Conclusion

     Well, like I said…..(1) easy (2) quick (3) best use of AIF I have seen! I hope this helps as I know others are looking to get this knocked out quick as well. As always, I do it just to help others and will keep blogging if you keep reading (haha). Till next time…