Concept: Superior and Subordinate Organizations

Supervisory organizations group workers into management hierarchies to define reporting structures. A supervisory organization can be a business unit, department, group, or projects. Supervisory organizations report to one another to form the supervisory organization hierarchy. Each supervisory organization can:

Have only one superior organization.
Have many subordinate organizations.
Exist in a single hierarchy only.

Jobs, positions, and compensation structures are associated with supervisory organizations. Workers are hired into these jobs and positions and each worker is a member of a supervisory organization. A manager role is assigned to a supervisory organization, or is inherited from a superior organization. A manager can't be a member of the organization they manage.

Assigning superior organizations and creating subordinate organizations are reorganization related actions that you can use on custom, retiree, and supervisory organization types and on these hierarchies:

Company
Cost Center
Location
Region

You can only include superior and subordinate organizations in a hierarchy when they’re the same organization type. You can’t assign a superior organization to an existing organization with a top-level node that’s referenced in a calculated field on a custom organization enabled for hierarchies.

When you create a supervisory organization, you can assign roles to it. Roles and role-based security groups determine access to information about that organization, business processes, and notifications. You can configure the

Assign Organization

business process to require a series of approvals for changing an organizational hierarchy and controlling access to information about your organization.

Creating a superior organization and assigning a superior organization are different business processes. When you assign a superior organization to another organization, you might create a duplicate instance in the same hierarchy. You can include duplicate instances in the same hierarchy, but they can cause issues such as unbalanced financial reports.

You can’t assign a superior organization to an existing organization with a top-level node that’s referenced in a calculated field on a custom organization enabled for hierarchies.

You can create a subordinate organization when you transfer or promote a worker from an individual contributor to a manager. The

Change Job

business process and web service support the

Create Subordinate

subprocess. When you set a future effective date for subordinate organizations, members of user-based security groups can assign roles immediately. Members of role-based security groups can assign roles on or after the effective date, when role inheritance is enabled. You can create a custom validation to prevent use of subordinate organizations before the availability date. You can view the history of:

A subordinate organization from the organization related action menu.
The
Create Subordinate
business process in the organization history of the superior organization.

To rescind the superior assignment, select

Business Process

Rescind

from the related actions menu of the business process in the

Details and Process

section.

If you rescind the

Create Subordinate

business process, Workday removes the hierarchical relationship between the organizations. However, Workday doesn't rescind any role assignments made during the

Assign Roles

subprocess. The formerly subordinate organization remains active as a free-standing organization with all of its role assignments in effect. You can add an organization to a hierarchy to create relationships for reporting purposes without assigning a superior or creating a subordinate organization.