Set up managers and approvers for HR change requests
Managers can make requests, e.g., to make changes for a direct or indirect report, or to hire someone. By default, any employee with at least one direct report in Zenefits is considered a manager.
- Approvers can approve or deny requests from a manager.
- Approvers can be any employee or administrator within the company, and may or may not be a manager as well.
- If no approver is set, all requests will automatically go to the primary administrator.
Managers can make requests to update worker information. Those requests are routed to approvers based on the company's Approver Settings.
- Select the Directory or My Team app.
- Click on the Approver Settings and Add new approval.
- Create your approval chain.
- Choose the types of requests that this new approver should receive.
- New Hires
- Transfers
- Salary Changes
- Terminations
- Enter the work locations, departments, and/or managers from whom this approver should receive requests.
- Enter the name of the approver( s ). If multiple approvers are entered, they will receive the same types of requests from the same requestors. If desired, add the approvers in a tiered approval chain.
These settings can always be changed by returning to the Approver Settings page and clicking Edit next to specific approvers.
Keep in mind that each manager, location and department adds to the approver’ s scope. For example, if an approver is set up for the Sales department and the New York location, that approver will get all requests coming from Sales (regardless of location) and all requests from New York (regardless of department).
- A manager needs to add a software engineer to the team. This manager hires someone through Zenefits. The new hire request is sent to the approver (e.g., Director of HR) who receives new hire requests from this manager. The approver agrees with the hiring decision and approves the request.
- A year later, the manager wants to give this engineer a raise and submits a request for a salary change. This request is received by another approver (e.g., the CFO), who reviews the request, but decides to deny it because the raise is too small.
Setting Up Approval Chains
In a tiered approval chain, a request must be approved by each approver in each tier in turn. The request must be approved by all approvers in order to be approved.
To set up an approval chain:
- From the Add New Approval page, enter an employee or admin name under the Approved By box. This will be the first approver.
- To add more approvers, click on Add new tier.
Requests can go to more than one approver, depending on the setup. For example, if Charles Dickens is an approver for the San Francisco location and Oliver Twist is an approver for the Marketing department, a request from a marketing manager in San Francisco will go to both and will require both of their approvals.