Activate an employee and manage their status
Activate a draft employee, transfer, suspend and resume them, decide probation, and run their onboarding tasks.
Required permission: hr.employee.manage
Before you begin
You need hr.employee.manage. Before you activate someone, the employee should have an assignment covering today, a working calendar, a reporting manager, and a contract in force. The Activate employee dialog checks all of this for you.
The states of an employee are Draft, Probation, Active, Suspended, Notice and Terminated. Notice and Terminated are reached through Offboarding.
Steps
Activate a draft employee
- Open the employee and select Actions > Activate employee (or the Activate employee button on a draft).
- Read the readiness list. Items marked blocked must be fixed first, and each has a link to the place to fix it: the join date, an assignment in force today, the work calendar, the reporting manager, a signed contract in force, and any required documents.
- Tick each warning to acknowledge it: an unsigned contract, incomplete identity, open onboarding tasks, or no bank account.
- If this person is at the top of the organisation and has no manager, tick the box to waive the manager and enter a Reason.
- Select Confirm.
Transfer from a date
- Select Actions > Transfer from a date.
- Enter Effective from (today or later). Choose the Assignment to change if two are in force.
- Choose the new position, grade, manager, working calendar, contract type or cost centre. Leave a field blank to keep its current value. At least one must differ.
- Enter the Reason and confirm.
Suspend and resume
- Select Actions > Suspend. Optionally enter Suspend from (today or later; a future date schedules the suspension) and Expected return. Enter the Reason and confirm.
- To bring the person back, select Actions > Resume, enter the reason and confirm. To drop a suspension that has not started, select Cancel scheduled suspension.
Decide probation
- Select Actions > Probation decision and choose the Outcome.
- Confirm moves the person to Active. Extend needs a New probation end date later than the current one and within 12 months of the probation start. Terminate needs a Last working day and starts a draft termination.
Onboarding tasks
- On Overview, open Onboarding. The assignee ticks a task as Done. Only HR can waive a task (with a note) or reopen it.
What happens next
- Activation puts the person in Probation (if the contract has a probation end in the future) or Active. A history entry is written, payroll is told, and an Access request shows as Pending on the Access tab when the person has no login yet. An administrator creates the login and fulfils the request.
- A transfer ends the old assignment the day before the new one starts. Nothing in the past is rewritten. The History tab shows the transfer with its reason and dates.
- A terminate decision on probation creates a draft termination with reason 'Probation not confirmed'. It never terminates by itself; a different person must approve it.
- Worked example. A transfer from Sales to Operations effective 12 Oct 2026: the Sales assignment ends 11 Oct, the Operations one starts 12 Oct. Headcount for 11 Oct counts the person in Sales; for 12 Oct, in Operations. Total headcount does not change.
Good to know
- Warnings must be ticked: 'Acknowledge the warnings before activating.' A blocked item stops you: 'Activation is blocked.'
- Waiving the manager needs a reason: 'Say why this employee has no manager.'
- A change cannot start in the past: 'A change cannot start in the past. Choose today or later.'
- If nothing differs in a transfer: 'Nothing changes. Choose a different position, manager, grade, calendar, contract type, cost centre or FTE.'
- A second scheduled suspension is refused: 'A suspension is already scheduled. Cancel it first.'
- Probation cannot run past 12 months: 'Probation cannot run past 12 months (14 Jan 2027).'
- Only HR can waive or reopen a task. An assignee who tries gets 'Only HR can waive a task or reopen it.' A waiver needs a note.
- A person who raised the access request cannot fulfil it: 'You cannot decide a request you raised.'
- Editing the onboarding template later does not change tasks already given to a hire.