Introduction to employee configuration

How employees are identified

Each employee is identified by two unique identifiers:

• Email address
• Employee number

Peakon does not consider any other details as unique, meaning that multiple people can have the same names and other details, but it is not possible for multiple people to use the same unique identifiers. 

It is recommended to use both unique identifier fields, however only one needs to be filled in, in order for an employee to be added to Peakon.

The benefit of having both unique identifiers on a user profile is that it lessens the possibility of human errors during data uploads, due to the incorrect details on the sheet overriding existing details on an employee record. 

Additionally, having both unique identifiers makes it easier to change a unique identifier. For example, if an organization must change all employee email addresses or employee numbers due to changing the naming convention or due to an acquisition, by keeping one unique identifier 'stable', it is possible to update the other unique identifier.

This is because when making a change on an employee record, the system first tries to find a match for the employee on the system, and if a match is made, the update can be made on the existing employee (instead of creating a new employee).

Email domains

An email domain refers to the information after the @ symbol on an email address. For security reasons, email domains need to be manually added to an organization's Peakon account by the Customer Care team. Once a domain is allowed, employees using that email domain can be added to the account. If an employee using a different domain is added, the system will inform the administrator that the domain must be added first, therefore avoiding possible security problems.

If the email domain is a commonly used domain, such as gmail, hotmail and so on, it is not possible to add this as a domain, and instead, Peakon needs to use a setting called 'Allow all domains'. 

Keeping employee records up to date

It is vital that employee records are kept up to date prior to a survey round starting, as all dashboards will use the data as it was at the start of the round (ie. the day before the survey starting), and lock it in. It is possible to make retroactive changes during and after the survey round too, but best practice is to update employee records on an ongoing basis, so that there are no sudden large scale changes.

Employee changes can be made in bulk via a data import, as well as directly on Peakon, whether it is in bulk or individually. See resources for instructions on the different use cases:

• Adding a new employee manually
• Removing an employee from Peakon
• Viewing and searching for employees records
• Managing users that are on extended leave
• Updating employee and segment data with a retroactive effect
• Adding new employees with a data import (CSV or XLSX)

Making retroactive changes to employee records

By default, any employee record update will be reflected on the relevant dashboards from the next survey round. This is why it is a good idea to ensure the data is correct before a round. However, retroactive changes can be made at any point. See Updating employee and segment data with a retroactive effect for more information.

What happens when an employee leaves

When an employee leaves, it is important that the date of the last working is marked on Peakon, under the separation date field in the employee’s record.

Once this is done, the system can start using that date as a reference point for the visibility period that this employee's historical results should remain on the dashboard (either 1, 3 or 6 months, depending on the setting your company has chosen). This is to protect the confidentiality of leavers as well, as opposed to their results falling out of the dashboard from one day to the next.

The visibility period is counted in survey time, so every time a new survey round begins, the system will see if there are any leavers whose separation date is now older than X months.

When the time comes, their results will automatically fall out of the aggregated score. 

For more information, see Removing an employee from Peakon.