Setup Considerations: Attributes and Segments

How do you want to segment your employee population in Peakon?

Start with referring to the fields on employee records of your HR tool, and consider how to mirror that in Peakon. Most attributes in Peakon tend to be

Option

type.

See Reference: Attribute Types to learn about attribute types on Peakon.

How do you plan to import employee data into Peakon?

You can:

Regardless of the method you're using, you need to manually create custom attributes on Peakon before adding employees. Imports and integrations automatically create segments for existing attributes.

Although Peakon's attributes use standard mapping, you can add aliases to attributes when the attribute name in your HR tool is different, if you don't want to change its name in Peakon. This ensures that Peakon recognizes the existing attribute despite a difference in naming convention.

Should Peakon automatically create segments from imported data?

Peakon creates new segments with the associated employees, when you import or add employee data into Peakon.

You can also choose to prevent the automatic creation of new segments when importing data. This can be useful if you have certain attributes that change segment names frequently, which can result in the creation of duplicate segments, if there's no existing match in Peakon.

When a segment's name changes in your HR tool, rename the segment manually in Peakon, and only then import or sync the data.

How do you plan to structure your attribute hierarchies?

You can configure attribute hierarchies to create child and parent relationships between individual attributes, creating a hierarchical chain from the lowest child attribute to the highest parent attribute. This enables you to assign a parent segment to a manager (Example: The regional director who manages their region's segment), with the manager automatically gaining full managing access to the child segments too.

Peakon automatically creates hierarchies between segments within the Manager attribute itself based on the reporting lines from your employee data. However, you can create a hierarchy that starts with the Manager attribute as the child attribute, and set a department-like attribute as the parent. Then you can set a business unit or a region as a parent of the department-like attribute, and so on. Example:

Manager

Department

Business Unit

Country

Region

.

It's possible to create multiple hierarchies for each attribute. Example: You can set both Department and Location attributes as parent attributes for the Manager attribute.

You can choose to update hierarchies manually with the click of a button, or for Peakon to automatically update hierarchies as employee data changes over time. See Concept: Hierarchical Attributes for more information.

Do you need to localize the names and descriptions of any attributes or segments?

You can localize attribute and segment names if:

If you don't add localizations for attribute and segment names, they will display in English in dashboards and surveys.

You must import employee data using the attribute and segment names in the original language to avoid the creation of duplicates.

Which attributes do you want to map to standard values for benchmarking?

Peakon automatically maps standard attributes to standard values, which enables Peakon to use those attributes for external benchmarking. You only need to configure mapping if you're deactivating standard attributes, and instead creating custom attributes for the same purpose. See Configure Attribute Mapping for Benchmarks for instructions.

How do you plan to manage your sensitive attributes?

You can configure sensitive attributes to be visible to:

Segments from sensitive attributes must pass visibility thresholds to be visible to allowed users.

If a user manages a segment that you restrict, they can still view it. However, other users won't be able to view it. See Concept: Restricting Attributes and Segments.

Do you want to combine existing attributes to create intersecting segments?

You can use Peakon to create and automatically maintain combined attributes that use segments from existing attributes. Example: If you combine Gender and Department, Peakon will automatically create and maintain gender by department segments based on overlapping employee segment values. See Concept: Combination Attributes for more information.

Do you want to collect segment data through surveys?

Attribute data collection enables employees to self-select a segment from a drop-down menu in the survey. If you're collecting segment values this way, you can add attribute descriptions to explain in surveys how you will use those attributes. See Steps: Collect Demographic Data in Surveys.

If the data you're collecting is sensitive (Example: Disability), you can enable the consent setting for employees to consent before providing their response.

It's also possible to target attribute data collection, enabling you to only collect attribute data from certain employee groups in the survey.

Do you want to use any of your attributes for branding?

When you enable branding on an attribute, Peakon uses the attribute's segment names and logos instead of the company name and logo in surveys, for employees of those segments.

Example: Your company has multiple subsidiaries with their own company names and logos. You can create a

Subsidiary

attribute and place all employees into various segments within the attribute. Branding the subsidiary attribute means that each employee will see the company name and logo of the

Subsidiary

segment that they're part of. See Override Company Name and Logo for steps.

Do you want to use segments to automatically populate access control groups?

Connecting an access control group to a segment enables automatic population of the access control group. Example: You could create an access control group named

Manager access

with 2 segments;

Dashboard and comment access

and

Dashboard access only.

Connect each segment to a different access control group to populate the groups with users that are part of those segments.

Only eligible employees will become members of the group, for example a user must manage employees or segments to become a member of an access group with manager permissions.

You can use this method to enable local administrators to indirectly add or remove managers from access groups, by updating the targeted attribute's segment values on manager employee records.

See Example: Enable Local Administrators to Manage Members of Access Control Groups for an example of how to configure these type of groups.

Do you have users who need access to certain segments, but they are not people managers?

Assigning segments to users without needing to create a reporting line is appropriate for providing access to users that don't manage employees in that segment, but they still need to access survey results from the segment.

You can configure segment manager access individually or through a data import. See Assign Segment Managing Access Manually and Concept: Segment Manager Import to learn more.

Do you plan to create new segments after survey rounds have already closed?

When you launch a new survey round, employee responses submitted during that round contribute to the segments that the employees were part of on the date of the survey launch. If an employee changes their line manager during a survey round, their responses from that survey round will still contribute to the segment of the manager they reported to when the survey round opened.

We recommend making employee segment changes before survey rounds open, however, if needed, you can retroactively backdate such changes to a date that's just before the survey round opened. Consider whether backdating segment values may pose confidentiality risk to the employee. Example: Backdating in a way that already existing responses disappear from one manager's dashboard and appear in another manager's dashboard.