How actually Termination works in SuccessFactors Employee Central and what happens to direct reports?

The main motive behind writing this blog is to make things simpler for everyone to understand how SuccessFactors EC handles terminations and how new manager is assigned to direct reports of terminated employee when Position hierarchy is the leading hierarchy.

I come across below questions around this topic many a times from our customers or colleagues.

• If I terminate an employee then who will be the new manager of direct reports?
• Does EC automatically assigns higher manager from position hierarchy?
• Are the direct reportees left alone for a while?
• Is the termination process different for those who don’t have direct reports?
• Can I assign a global manager to direct reportees?
• Can I add more options to choose from on how to transfer direct reports?
• Can I bypass the option of transferring direct reports?

When you Terminate an employee who has Direct Reports, you are presented with the option to ‘Transfer Direct Reports’ –

• Everyone to upper level manager – This is the default and suggested option
• Everyone to other manager – You can select any other employee as  new manager of direct reports
• Individual transfer of direct reports – Upon selecting this option all the direct reports are displayed and individually you can assign a new manager.

Note: These options are standard and you cannot modify, remove or add any other option. You can’t bypass these options as there’s no blank which can be selected from the dropdown.

When you select option 1 – Upper manager is shown in the job information portlet of the direct reports. If you see the position Org hierarchy that will still show the direct reports reporting to vacant position and vacant position reporting to upper manager.

When you select option 2 – You can assign any manager including a global manager. In this case the manager which you selected will show up in the Job information portlet of direct reports. If you see the position Org hierarchy that will still show the direct reports reporting to vacant position and vacant position reporting to upper manager.

When you select option 3 – You can individually assign new manager to all direct reports.

After selecting any of the above options and terminating the employee, Manager Change (as per you config) action will get triggered on direct reports as shown below. The new manager will be assigned according to the selection you make from the 3 options.

Note 1: As I said, in Position Org chart the direct reports will still be shown reporting to terminated manager. So when this vacant position is filled all direct reports will start reporting to this new manager automatically. You will find the event ‘Manager Change’ for all direct reports when new manager is hired on the vacant position. This is because in position hierarchy the positions of direct reports were still reporting to vacant position and when employee is hired on that vacant position all direct reports will start reporting to this new holder of the vacant position.

Note 2: If you have multiple incumbents (holders) on same position and there are 2 incumbents of the manager position then when you transfer to upper level manager then system will assign any of the multiple incumbents assigned to manager position. System can fetch any incumbent. If you want to change then you can do it manually or by import functionality.

Recommendation : For all your Reports and Integrations it is better to get manager from Job informtion portlet rather than reading position hierarchy because Job info will always have the correct manager which can be fetched via API.

You may have to write custom logic to read position org chart in Integrations where there’s a special logic and not only fetching the current manager of employee.