Before you begin adding or importing your team members into ClayHR, it’s strongly recommended—though not mandatory—to first define the core organizational attributes that shape how your people are structured. These definitions become foundational building blocks that influence permissions, accessibility, reporting, and overall system clarity.

ClayHR uses three key organizational dimensions:

1. Org Units (or Departments)
2. Locations
3. Job Profile

Establishing these early creates a consistent framework that every user record can inherit.

1. Org Units (or Departments)

Departments represent the functional groups or business units within your organization—for example: Finance, Sales, Engineering, Marketing, Operations, or Customer Support.

Why Departments Matter

• They help organize employees into meaningful groups for visibility and reporting.
• Many permissions and approval workflows can rely on departmental structure.
• Departments make it easier to filter, segment, or analyze your people data.

You can create as many departments as needed, and these can evolve over time as your organization grows or restructures.

2. Locations

Locations represent the physical or operational sites where your employees work—this can be an office, regional hub, country, or even a remote/home-based grouping.

Why Locations Matter

• They support region-based permissions and compliance needs.
• Location metadata is used for scheduling, attendance, holiday calendars, and workforce planning.
• They allow you to group employees for site-specific communication or reporting.

If your organization spans multiple offices or countries, defining locations upfront ensures consistent classification across the system.

3. Job Profile

Job Profiles describe the overarching function, level, or job family of a person in your organization—examples include: “Junior Developer,” “Senior Accountant,” “Sales Manager,” “HR Coordinator,” or “Director of Operations.”

Why Job Profiles Matter

• They provide a standardized way to classify roles across the business.
• Competency frameworks and career planning rely on job profiles.
• They help ensure consistency when you add new employees or run talent-related processes (performance, skills, career progression, etc.).

Job Profiles define who someone is in the organization structurally—not necessarily their role on a specific project or assignment.

Why These Three Foundations Are Important

Defining Org Units, Location, and Job Profile early allows ClayHR to:

• Apply consistent, scalable permissions based on shared attributes.
• Deliver better reporting and analytics by giving you clean segmentation.
• Support workflows and approvals that depend on organizational hierarchy.
• Maintain data accuracy when onboarding new users or importing large groups.
• Reduce downstream cleanup by aligning everyone to the same structural framework.

These foundational attributes act as the backbone of your HRIS setup. Once they’re in place, every employee you add will fit cleanly into your organizational model.

When Should You Set This Up?

• Before adding or importing employees (ideal).
• Before configuring permissions or access rules, since many depend on these attributes.
• As part of your onboarding to ClayHR, ensuring a clean and scalable setup.
• Anytime your structure evolves, as all three elements are fully editable.

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To learn more about the difference between "User Profile" | "User Role" | "User Group" , please, click here.If you prefer to go ahead and create user's records right away, please, go here.