Role Complexities & The Great Resignation

AllOut’s post-pandemic blog series aims to heighten your awareness of the global changes affecting most organizations at this crucial recovery stage and provide solutions via an Internal Controls Health Check. We began the series with preemptive SoD tips that strengthen internal controls in response to increasing fraud risks. With our finger firmly on the pulse of change, this second blog addresses the need to evaluate how your organization establishes roles and user provisioning in the wake of impactful workforce trends unfolding on a global scale.

Changes in the workforce

Employees in their millions across all major industries have either resigned from their existing jobs or are planning to do so in the future. Where does this leave you? COVID-19 has accelerated this Great Resignation, which in addition to increasing hybrid and remote working trends, will likewise impact your internal resources, management, and security approaches if roles and user provisioning are vulnerable to change.

Job-Hopping is on the rise

• The U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics:

  In 2021, 74 million employees left their organizations.In July 2022 alone, there were 5.9 million quits and 6.4 million hires.    

• ‘The Future of Work After Covid-19', McKinsey’s projections spanning half the global population:

  Worker migration is ongoing. Due to the “knock-on effects on employment” between industries, it is estimated that 100 million workers will need to transition to another occupation by 2030.

• Gartner’s great reflection on the Great Resignation:

  The pandemic has accelerated job-hopping among employees looking for more, as 50 percent of those surveyed now have higher expectations from their workplace.

How can we help with current and projected change?    

Without safeguarding measures in place, mass exits and hires occurring within all industries could negatively impact your business operations and financial wellbeing. However, when roles and user profiles are established using secure and efficient configurations, even though people change, your business practices don’t have to.

Best practice steps for Role and User provisioning

• Roles are essential in any organization, and it is best practice in JDE to define them according to business processes (component tasks) rather than individual users.
• Once roles are established in this way, system administrators can then create user profiles and assign roles to users accordingly. Then if an employee leaves, whoever takes their place can inherit their role(s).
• Carrying out, modifying and reviewing this process when activating and deactivating users can be complex and demanding using standard JDE software, but there are ways to overcome these limitations.

A viable solution: implement tools designed to efficiently and securely review how roles are defined and what users have access to - for example:

ProfilePlus - Review and maintenance of active and inactive users  

• Set-up: automated user set-up saves time and relieves your IT department from dealing with unnecessary complexities. 
•   Clean-up: review user provisioning records and manage inactive users with easy-to-view data. 
• Audit Trail: record and view applied changes and approvals made to roles and user provisioning with reports that track alterations on any scale, making you pre-audit ready.    

CombiRoles - Process-based management for users with multiple roles requiring different security authorizations  

• Best practice solutions: when it comes to multiple role assignment, system administrators can bypass JDE’s 30-role memory limitation securely and create bespoke process functionality that can be tested before going live.
• Manage roles and overcome complex maintenance issues: easily determine and update the level of access users have, via automated role hierarchy and sequencing configurations, which can be deleted and rebuilt anytime.
• Highlight and avert sequencer conflicts: role sequencer reporting identifies conflicts and provides automated resolution directly in your JDE environment.
• Audit Trail: be audit-ready via easily accessible reports on all aspects of role security configurations and changes.   

Was this article helpful? To learn more, get in touch with our ALLOut experts who can help.