What is Position Control?

It all starts with a "seat". A seat represents a department's ability to have/support a faculty member in their department (from a resource/staffing perspective). A seat will have an ID called a PCN (Position Control Number).

Some seats are:

• "filled" by current faculty members (one seat per person)
• "vacant" (faculty who have left U-M)
• "newly added" (department growth), represented by New Hire plans.
  
  • Some of these will be explicitly approved for use.

Why is this being added?

Over the past few years, Med School leadership has taken an increasingly strategic look at faculty workforce planning & hiring, to ensure resources are well allocated. Currently this is being done mostly outside Meridian's hiring workflow, which makes adhering to this strategy difficult. Monitoring, managing, and approving individual seats by Track by Department, and putting that data & activity in Meridian, will aid in this strategy.

To do this, changes have been made to both Planning and Hiring areas of Meridian, as well as Roster. Seats/PCNs will reinforce the connection between these areas.

How It Works (Business Process Overview):

Planning:

• New Hire Plans are entered into Meridian.
• Plans are "completed and snapshotted" on April 1st of each year.

PCN Approval (OFA only):

• New Hire Plans in the April 1st snapshot are reviewed (and approved or denied) annually by the Faculty Workforce Planning Committee.
• OFA will enter these approval/denial results into Meridian. (This approval process will occur annually each summer.)
  
  • While nearly all faculty members and Hiring positions will have PCNs, the Faculty Workforce Planning Committee's approval numbers will only be relevant/related to Tenure, Clinical, and Research tracks. LEO, Adjunct and Emeritus faculty appointments have no explicit limitation at the department level.

Hiring:

• A Hiring workflow is Initiated in Meridian.
• A seat is selected in Position Approval. This could be a:
  
  • New Hire plan (approved or not yet reviewed)
  • Vacant seat
  • Existing seat (double fill)
  • Unplanned position
• OFA reviews (and approves or sends back) the Position Approval section.

Roster:

• Faculty will appear in the Roster (via HR) once their appointment is processed by HR, and be assigned the PCN they had in Hiring.

Selecting a seat in Hiring (Position Approval):

There is a preferential order for choosing a seat (as available):

1. Vacant position from that track
2. Specific faculty member from that track (double fill)
   
   • Who has a termination date with a signed resignation/retirement letter within the next 12-ish months
   • This option can also be used when "promoting" a clinical instructor to a clinical assistant professor (which is considered a new appointment)
3. Approved planned position
4. Planned position that is pending review
5. Unplanned position, if nothing else is available

Data Migration:

All existing faculty in the Roster will be assigned a seat (PCN) per their Admin department.

• This PCN format will be: [Admin Dept Code] - [Track] - [Unique ID].
• e.g. 231639-T-34875

As faculty leave U-M, their seats (PCNs) will remain but become vacant.

Hiring workflows which are in-process (not finished yet) will receive a PCN  based on the Track associated with that Hiring workflow IF they are past Position Approval or if they are based on a New Hire plan.

Hiring workflows which have already been completed will receive a PCN based on the Track associated with that Hiring workflow.

When a faculty officially joins the Roster (via HR), Meridian will assign them the PCN associated with their completed Hiring workflow.

What's new for me? I'm a Planning user

• New "Position Type" field (Incremental or Replacement) option replaces "Likelihood" field when creating a new hire plan
• "Approved" or "Denied" badges on incremental new hire plans
• Restrictions on changing approved new hire plan details like Track, as well as deletion prevention
• New "PCID" on each planned change
• New layout for planned changes on List page cards
  
• Learn more about Faculty Planning in Meridian

What's new for me? I'm a Hiring user

• "Initiate Hiring" now takes you directly into Position Approval
• First field/button in Position Approval is now "Choose Seat"
• See a list of seats to choose to fill: new hire plans (approved or not yet reviewed), vacancies, existing faculty (double fill), or unplanned
• Fields like Track, Rank, Name, and Anticipated Hire Date will then appear for you to complete (or will be pre-filled)
• OFA will be approving the specific seat you chose as part of Position Approval
• Learn more about Faculty Hiring in Meridian

Additional New Feature: Hiring Dashboard

The Hiring List page now has the ability to toggle between the list of candidates (current) and a dashboard (new) showing key data points about the Hiring process for your department. The first of these data points (called widgets) is the Seat Summary, which represents key data about the new PCN/Seat functionality. Here you will be able to see the total seats associated with your department, with breakdowns about Filled, Vacant, Open, In-Process, and Planned seats. More dashboard widgets are planned for the near future!

A clarification on CID, PID, PCN, and PCID:

CIDs and PIDs on Hiring workflows are not going away; PCN will just be an additional tracking ID, to represent not only the position but also all future Hiring workflows associated with the same seat. Meanwhile, PCID is simply a unique identifier used in Planning.

• CID (Candidate ID) is associated with the candidate in a Hiring workflow (changes when you 'Cancel Candidate'), like it was in prior Meridian versions.
• PID ([Hiring] Position ID) is associated with the position in a Hiring workflow (remains intact/unchanged when you 'Cancel Candidate'), like it was in prior versions
• PCN (Position Control Number) is the seat ID, and is now also attached to the Hiring workflow. It is related to the Hiring workflow (similar to PID, so remains intact/unchanged when you 'Cancel Candidate') but also will continue to be active as you hire additional, future faculty into that same seat
• PCID (Planned Change ID) is the unique identifier for a planned change (in Planning). This has always been in Meridian but not visible until now. It is for more easily realizing which planned change is attached to a given Hiring workflow.

Hiring example:

• PID 1 anticipates that Bob (CID 1) will accept; Bob rejects the offer and is replaced with Cindy, who gets CID 2 (PID is still 1)
  
  • PCN is 12345, for originally Bob and now Cindy
• Cindy then joins as a faculty member for 5 years, and then leaves U-M
• Cindy's seat (now vacant) is still PCN of 12345
• A new Hiring workflow to replace Cindy is created, with a new PID and CID, though choosing Cindy's vacant seat of 12345 will attach that PCN to this new workflow 

'Cancel Hiring' is different, wherein it cancels both the CID and PID associated with the workflow (in fact the workflow effectively disappears / is archived), like it was in prior Meridian versions. Regarding PCN functionality, in this case the seat (PCN) will also be reset, meaning a selected vacant seat will resume being vacant, a selected New Hire plan will resume being an unused plan, etc.