Contents
Introduction to Placement Stages
Configuring Placement Stages
Overview of Stages and Statuses
Stage 1: Initialisation
Stage 2: Approval
Stage 3: Paperwork
Stage 4: Onboarding
Stage 5: Current
Stage 6: Offboarding
Stage 7: Wrap
Stage 8: Complete
Introduction to Placement Stages
A Placement in Mercury has a busy life cycle. It passes through several stages, from initialisation - when data is still being collated and updated, an optional approval stage or stages if desired, through to final check points, before being live.
This document explains those stages and the detailed status reasons that may be seen within them. It explains from a user perspective how to affect the Placement’s journey from initialisation to closure.
Configuring Placement Stages
These are the basic stages of the Placement life cycle:
Stages can be skipped but new stages cannot be created. A common scenario may be that you want to have the Issue Paperwork stage for Contract placements, but have it removed from Permanent placements. If this is the case, please speak to your internal System Administrator who can liaise with your Customer Success Manager at Mercury.
Overview of Stages and Statuses
Each of the boxes above represents a stage in a Placement’s life cycle; each contains a list of status reasons relevant to that stage. For each stage, once a Placement reaches the final listed status, it will automatically and immediately transition to the first status in the following stage. Movement within a stage is achieved as a result of either user activity or, in some cases, by the passage of time/automation - e.g. skip paperwork for perm Placements, once approved, straight to live, etc.
We will now look at these stages in more detail.
Stage 1: Initialisation
Purpose: To ensure that the terms and details of the Placement are correctly recorded in Mercury.
Movement through the stage
Every Placement starts at status Pending. Several fields need to be completed before the Placement is ready for the next stage, however, these are not, for the most part, marked as mandatory fields. This allows the required information to be entered piecemeal if it is not all available at once.
Configurable options
Mandatory Placement fields: There are no limitations on which fields on the Placement are made mandatory, except for core mandatory fields which cannot be changed. We can provide a list of the fields if required; please speak to your Mercury CSM.
Mandatory Validation fields: These are the fields that must be completed before a Placement can be finalised. When the Validation button is selected, the Placement record condenses the tabs down to just show the General and the More Addresses tabs. Technically, there are no limitations to the fields that can be made mandatory for the validation, but due to the way the process condenses the tabs, we recommend only selecting fields from the aforementioned tabs.
All fields could be removed to skip the validation. When choosing which fields to keep or make mandatory for validation, it is important to consider if the user completing them will have that information. It could be that the Consultant is completing the validation stage, but the Finance team would later add certain data into the Placement. You would want to ensure any fields that Finance complete are not mandatory for validation.
Running Validation and Finalisation
To progress, the user clicks the Validate button at the top of the form. When the button is clicked, it condenses the form to only show the chosen two tabs required for the validation process:
1. In the Placement details tab - all fields that can be legitimately left blank are hidden. All the fields that are left visible in the tab will need to be completed before the Placement can progress.
The user may save the incomplete form at any time. It is also possible to leave the form without completing all the required validation fields. Mandatory fields must be completed if you have added new data and wish to save this and return to it later. Note that in this latter case it will be necessary to click the Validate button again.
Finalising the Validation
Once all required fields have been completed, it will be possible to set the Finalised field to Yes. If the field is changed from No to Yes but all the required fields have not been completed, the field will automatically change back to No. The Finalised toggle is on the Placement Details tab:
NOTE: If the Finalised toggle does not appear, then you can request for it to be added to your system. In the meantime, the Placement can still be finalised on the top right of the record - click on the dropdown arrow next to the Finalised area:
Change the No to Yes:
Save the record. Once the Placement has been saved with Finalise set to Yes, the status of the Placement will change to Terms finalised – this is a transitional status, meaning it is in the background and not seen by the user within the Placement record - and this stage will be complete. The next stage is Awaiting Approval.
Stage 2: Approval
Purpose: To ensure that the Placement has passed through a review and approval process. The approval can go to any individual, multiple individuals or a team. The number of stages is not limited. You may wish to have just a manager's approval; or a manager's approval, a compliance approval and a finance approval, etc.
NOTE: This stage is optional. If there is no requirement for an approval stage, this can be skipped.
Movement through the stage
Approval Automations
Standard automations: Email notifications to an individual (manager, specific user) will be set up; this will provide a link to the Approval record. From here, the Placement record can be accessed by the Regarding field. Once the Placement has been checked, return to the record, and Approve or Reject:
Timeline Updates
The Timeline can be found on the Admin and Activities tab on the Placement; all approval stages and approval emails will be listed here for audit purposes. The Approval record can also be opened and accessed via the Open Record icon:
Stage 3: Paperwork
Purpose: To ensure that Candidate and, if required by the business, Client contracts have been prepared, issued, and received back. The contracts can be created per Placement type and can also be Client specific.
Movement through the stage
Placements start this stage at status Awaiting paperwork. Prepare a document for issue by clicking the Issue paperwork command bar button on the top ribbon (this icon only appears once the Placement has been approved). This allows a template to be selected and then causes that document to be populated and collated. There is the option to continue to prepare further documents if required.
Issuing Paperwork steps
The documents that have been prepared are in the Documents folder within the Related tab. They then need to be sent to the Candidate or Client; this might be by email or in hard copy - either way, it is necessary to confirm in the Mercury CRM that they have in fact been sent out.
Confirming Paperwork has been Sent/Received
There are date fields to confirm that paperwork has been sent - complete the Candidate Docs Sent and Client Docs Sent fields on the Admin & Activities tab; these must be manually added. If only one pack has been sent, only enter one date and leave the other blank:
Once all documents have been marked as sent, the status of the Placement will change to Paperwork Sent. Next it is necessary to confirm that the paperwork that was sent out has been returned, duly completed, and signed. Use the Candidate Docs Received and Client Docs Received fields on the Admin & Activities page to enter the dates on which the Candidate and/or Client paperwork was received. If only one pack has been received, only enter one date and leave the other blank. Once all documents have been marked as received, the status of the Placement will change to a transitional status of Paperwork complete.
NOTE: Alternatively, you can configure post-paperwork approval/sign-off if the configuration setting REQUIRE_POST_PAPERWORK_SIGNOFF is set to Yes, then the Placement’s status will update to Final approval required. On the Placement, it skips the Paperwork Complete status within Mercury and moves to the status Awaiting Onboarding.
Stage 4: Onboarding
Purpose: To ensure that all onboarding requirements have been met prior to the commencement of the Placement.
Movement through the stage
Placements start this stage at status Awaiting onboarding. Compliance criteria can be defined to be relevant to the onboarding process. You will notice on the Placement that there is a Compliance tab and an Onboarding tab. For each individual compliance criteria created, it can be marked as Onboarding, Offboarding or neither. If marked as neither, it will be considered Compliance. This will determine which tab it appears on. Only criteria marked as Onboarding affects the status of the Placement; this is because Onboarding can be controlled by an agency, whereby compliance, which usual comes in the form of a document, cannot be controlled by the agency. For example, a Purchase Order could be listed as a check and may not be provided for several weeks; because of this you may not want the Placement to not move on to a status of Live.
Some compliance status records may require documentary evidence which may come from the Candidate (via the Candidate Portal if this has been purchased), from the Client or from an internal source. Others may require simply that they be ticked off, or that a small piece of information be recorded.
How to apply Compliance to the Placement
An Agreement is commonly used to apply required Compliance to a Placement record; this is because an Agreement is a template that can be created that determines the compliance required. For example, if you recruit globally, you may wish to create an Agreement per Country, as the compliance would differ. Agreements can also be generic and applied to a Placement from any Client, or they can be client specific. The one rule that must be applied is that an Agreement can only be built and used against one Placement type (e.g. Permanent, Temporary, Contract). If there is compliance that is required for every Placement type, then an Agreement is not required; it can instead be set to automatically be added to every Placement in the system.
Compliance Evidence
If the compliance confirmation type is Evidence, then the compliance evidence record must have a document uploaded; this will automatically change the status from Outstanding to Submitted. The record is then designed to be checked by someone from a Compliance team. There are specific permissions that can be assigned to those people; they will be given access to additional Checked or Rejected buttons on the record. The record must be updated to Checked to update the compliance status.
NOTE: If you do not have a Compliance team or anyone checking the compliance, then permissions can be given to all users to simply update their own compliance to Checked.
Relevant compliance status records are listed in the Compliance or Onboarding tabs, and an indication of the degree of completion is given there in the form of a percentage and also in a banner message at the top of the form. What is most relevant is that only items on the Onboarding tab affect the status of the Placement and it moving on. The use of onboarding is optional; if no relevant compliance criteria is set up, then this stage will be omitted.
Once all compliance statuses have been marked as valid, or none is defined, the transitional status of the Placement will then change to Onboarding complete and this stage will be complete.
Stage 5: Current
Purpose: To track the Placement while the Candidate is engaged.
Movement through the stage
Stage 6: Offboarding
Purpose: To ensure that all offboarding requirements have been met prior to the commencement of the placement.
Movement through the stage
Placements start this stage at status Awaiting offboarding. The Offboarding tab is only visible on the Placement when the status has moved to Ending Soon. Compliance criteria can be defined to be relevant to the offboarding process. For each such criteria, a compliance status record is added to the Placement. Each of these status records must be marked as valid before offboarding can be deemed complete. Some compliance status records may require documentary evidence, which may come from the Candidate (via the Candidate Portal), from the Client or from an internal source. Others may require simply that they be ticked off, or that a small piece of information be recorded.
Relevant compliance status records are listed in the Offboarding tab, and an indication of the degree of completion is given there and in a banner message at the top of the form. The use of offboarding is optional; if no relevant compliance criteria is set up, then this stage will be omitted.
Once all compliance statuses have been marked valid, or none is defined, the status of the Placement will change to Offboarding Complete and this stage will be complete.
Stage 7: Wrap
Purpose: To move a fully completed Placement to a completed state.
Movement through the stage
Placements start this stage at status Complete. The Hard end date of the Placement is set by adding a fixed interval to the date on which the Placement ended - the fixed interval is specified in a configuration setting; by default it is set to 4 weeks - this can be changed. That date is the target for all offboarding and administrative tasks to be completed, so the Placement should then be in status Complete.
Note that the configuration setting may in fact specify that the hard end date is not to be calculated, but is to be left for the user to complete. Once the hard end date, whether calculated or entered manually, is reached, the Placement is deactivated.
Stage 8: Complete
Purpose: To show that the Placement has been completed/ended.
Movement through the stage
If Onboarding applies, as mentioned above, it must be completed in order for the Placement to move to a status of Completed. If there is no Offboarding required, it will automatically move to Completed - this is relevant to both Contract and Temporary placement types. For permanent placements there is no end date, therefore the Placement will never end or complete; the Placement should therefore be manually deactivated if the Candidate is placed again by your agency or by another. An automation could be built to deactivate the Placement after a specified period - please speak to your Project Manager or Mercury CSM if you require further information.
NOTE: Contract and Temp placements will move to a status of Completed but they will not automatically deactivate - they will always remain Active. If you wish for them to be deactivated, this will need to be completed manually.