Org & Team Management Guide

Complete guide to understanding and using Org & Team Management in Workbench. Learn how to mirror your reporting structure and keep approvals moving without email whiplash.

Quick Summary

Org & Team Management helps you mirror your organization's reporting structure in Workbench, enabling automatic routing of approvals, dynamic assignees in workflows, and team-based operations. It's ideal for organizations that need to maintain accurate organizational data, enable team-level operations, and automate approval routing based on reporting relationships. Org & Team Management eliminates the need to manually specify approvers and ensures approvals flow through the correct chain of command automatically.

What is Org & Team Management?

Org & Team Management is the system that mirrors your organization's reporting structure in Workbench. It defines teams, departments, and reporting relationships (who reports to whom), creating a complete organizational hierarchy.

This organizational structure powers many Workbench features. For example, approval workflows can use dynamic assignees like "the employee's manager" or "the employee's manager's manager" to automatically route approvals through the correct chain of command. No more manually specifying approvers or dealing with email whiplash.

Org & Team Management also enables team-based operations. You can include entire teams in review cycles, assign team-level budgets, and track performance at the team level. The organizational structure ensures that every feature in Workbench understands your company's hierarchy.

Key Terms

Organizational Structure: The hierarchical representation of your organization, including teams, departments, and reporting relationships. The organizational structure mirrors your company's reporting structure and determines how approvals flow through the system.
Team: A group of employees organized together, typically representing a department, function, or working group. Teams can have managers, budgets, and can be included in review cycles together.
Reporting Relationship: The manager-employee relationship that defines who reports to whom. Reporting relationships determine approval chains, dynamic assignees in workflows, and organizational hierarchy.
Dynamic Assignment: A workflow feature that automatically determines assignees based on organizational structure (e.g., "the employee's manager" or "the employee's manager's manager"). Dynamic assignments adapt automatically to organizational changes.
Team Budget: A budget allocation assigned to a specific team within a review cycle. Team budgets help distribute compensation budgets across organizational units and enable granular budget tracking.

When to Use Org & Team Management

Ideal For:

Organizations with complex reporting structures and multiple management levels
Companies that need automatic approval routing based on organizational hierarchy
Organizations that want to run team-based review cycles and track team performance
Companies that need team-level budget allocations and spending tracking
HR teams that want to eliminate manual approver specification and email chasing

Who Benefits:

HR Teams: Automatic approval routing, team management, organizational visibility
Managers: Clear reporting structure, automatic workflow routing, team oversight
Finance/Leadership: Team budgets, organizational insights, approval chain visibility
Employees: Clear organizational structure, automatic routing, reduced confusion

How Org & Team Management Works

1. Define Teams

Create teams that represent departments, functions, or working groups in your organization.

2. Set Reporting Relationships

Define who reports to whom, creating the organizational hierarchy that powers automatic routing.

3. Enable Dynamic Routing

Use dynamic assignees in workflows (e.g., "employee's manager") to automatically route approvals.

4. Team-Based Operations

Include teams in review cycles, assign team budgets, and track performance at the team level.

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Organizational structure interface showing teams, reporting relationships, and hierarchy visualization

Dynamic Assignment in Workflows

One of the key benefits of Org & Team Management is enabling dynamic assignment in workflow templates:

How It Works

Workflow steps can use dynamic assignees like "the employee's manager"
Approvals automatically route through the correct chain of command
No need to manually specify approvers for each employee
Automatically adapts to organizational changes

Benefits

Eliminates email whiplash and manual routing
Ensures approvals go to the right people automatically
Reduces errors from manual approver specification
Scales automatically as your organization grows

How Org & Team Management Fits Into Your Review Process

Org & Team Management works together with other Workbench features to create a complete review system:

Workflow Templates: Dynamic assignees in workflows use organizational structure to automatically route approvals.
Review Cycles: You can include entire teams in review cycles and assign team-level budgets.
Compensation Management: Approval workflows use organizational structure to determine who needs to approve compensation changes.
Team Budgets: Budget allocations can be assigned at the team level, enabling granular budget tracking.

Common Use Cases

Automatic Approval Routing

Set up approval workflows that automatically route compensation approvals through the correct chain of command based on reporting relationships.

Example: Employee → Manager → Director → VP

Team-Based Reviews

Include entire teams in review cycles, enabling team-level performance tracking and budget management.

Example: Engineering Team Q1 Review

Team Budget Allocation

Allocate compensation budgets at the team level, enabling granular tracking and team-specific spending limits.

Example: $500K total budget, $200K to Engineering, $150K to Sales

Organizational Insights

Use organizational structure to generate insights about team performance, approval patterns, and organizational health.

Example: Team performance reports, approval chain analysis

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if an employee's manager changes?

When you update reporting relationships in Org & Team Management, dynamic assignees in workflows automatically adapt to the new structure. For example, if an employee's manager changes, future approval workflows will automatically route to the new manager. This ensures that your workflows always reflect your current organizational structure.

Can an employee be on multiple teams?

Yes, employees can be members of multiple teams. This is useful for matrix organizations or employees who work across multiple departments. When including teams in review cycles, employees who are on multiple selected teams will only be included once in the cycle.

How do team budgets work with individual employee budgets?

Team budgets are allocations of the overall review cycle budget to specific teams. When you assign a team budget, that portion of the cycle's total budget is reserved for that team. Individual compensation recommendations made for employees on that team count against both the team budget and the overall cycle budget. This enables granular tracking while maintaining overall budget control.

Can I import organizational structure from another system?

Yes, you can import organizational structure during data import. When importing employees, you can specify their manager relationships and team memberships. This allows you to quickly set up your organizational structure in Workbench based on data from other systems.

Related Concepts

To get the most out of Org & Team Management, you should understand these related concepts:

Workflow Templates — Use dynamic assignees based on organizational structure
Review Cycles — Include teams in cycles and assign team budgets
Compensation Management — Approval workflows use organizational structure for routing

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