This article explains the difference between departments and teams in Personio, and how to use them to map your company’s organizational structure. You need to set up departments and teams differently, depending on whether you already used them in the past.

What's the difference between departments and teams?

In Personio, departments and teams refer to two different organizational structures:

• Departments are large organizational units that group employees by major business functions and follow a hierarchical structure. Subdepartments are smaller divisions within departments that focus on specific areas, like Performance Marketing within the Marketing department.
  
  
• Teams are smaller, more flexible groups that work on specific projects or tasks and can include members from various departments. Subteams are smaller divisions within teams that focus on specific areas, like Customer-facing within the X Product Launch team. 

Note
In Personio, you must always set up Departments, but you should only set up Teams (and Subteams) if your company uses a matrix structure, which allows for collaboration across departments.

See the next section for examples.

 

Examples of departments vs. teams

Example 1:

Your company has a traditional hierarchy, so you only need to create Departments and, if needed, Subdepartments:

Department	Subdepartment
Customer Experience	Customer Support
	Customer Growth
Product	Engineering
	Design
	Product Management
Marketing	Performance Marketing
	Social Media

 

Department
Customer Experience	Product	Marketing	Sales	Finance
John	Julie	Ellen	Phil	Oscar
Benjamin	Maria		Victoria
	Marcus

 

Example 2: 

Your company has a more advanced hierarchy, with a matrix structure that fosters collaboration across departments. Employees might belong to the same department but work in different teams.

You need to create both Departments and Teams (and, if required, Subdepartments and Subteams):

Department	Subdepartment		Team	Subteam
Customer Experience	Customer Support		Product Launch A	Customer-facing
	Customer Growth			Enablement
Product	Engineers			Upselling
	Designers		Product Launch B	Customer-facing
	Product Managers			Enablement
Marketing	Performance Marketing		Product Launch C	Customer-facing
	Social Media			Upselling

 

		Department
		Customer Experience	Product	Marketing	Sales	Finances
Team	Product Launch A	John	Julie	-	Phil	-
	Product Launch B	-	Maria	Ellen	-	Oscar
	Product Launch C	Benjamin	Marcus	-	Victoria	-

 

 

Set up departments and teams

If you've never used departments and teams in Personio before

If you have never set up departments and teams before, you need to create departments, sub-departments, teams and subteams.

Before you begin, prepare an overview of your company's organizational structure, and how you plan to implement it within Personio. Once decided, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Organization > Departments and Teams.
2. Select the relevant tab (Departments or Teams), depending on whether you’re creating a department or a team.
3. Click Add new in the top-right corner to create a new department or team.
4. Assign a parent to the new department or team. This automatically creates a hierarchy, and turns the new department or team into a sub-department or subteam.
   ► To represent multiple layers of hierarchy, assign a parent department or team to the parent department or team from step four. Repeat the cycle as many times as needed.
5. Assign employees to the new sub-department or subteam directly via Employee profile, or via People list. The parent departments or teams will be automatically assigned. You can also assign several employees at once via the import functionally.

Tip
When exporting the People list, add both the Department hierarchy and the Team hierarchy columns to include information about sub-departments and subteams. 

If you've used departments and teams in Personio in the past

A few months ago, we changed the way departments and teams are created in Personio. You can now create a more hierarchical mapping that includes sub-departments and subteams.

If you already used departments and teams at some point in Personio, we recommend that you transition to the new hierarchical departments and teams configuration, as it brings multiple benefits.

There are two ways to do this:

• Create a new sub-department or subteam
  Follow these steps to keep using your existing departments and teams, and adding new sub-departments and subteams.
• Turn your old teams into sub-departments
  Follow these steps to keep your existing departments, and convert your old teams into sub-departments, that will then appear in the Departments tab.

 

Option 1: Create new subdepartments and subteams

1. Create a new subdepartment or subteam

Before you begin, prepare an overview of your company's organizational structure, and how you plan to implement it within Personio. Once decided, follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings > Organization > Departments and Teams.
2. Select the relevant tab (Departments or Teams), depending on whether you’re creating a sub-department or a subteam.
3. Click Add new in the top-right corner to create a new department or team.
4. Assign a parent to the new department or team. This automatically creates a hierarchy, and turns the new department or team into a sub-department or subteam.
   ► To represent multiple layers of hierarchy, assign a parent department or team to the parent department or team from step four. Repeat the cycle as many times as needed.
   

2. Adjust access rights for the new subdepartments or subteam

1. Go to Settings > People > Employee roles. 
2. Select the relevant employee role and click Access rights.
3. Go to the Personal data > Public profile access rights section and click View > Custom.
4. Click Condition and make the relevant selection:
   
   ▶︎ For employees to have access to everyone in the same department, select Department is own (assigned department).
   ▶︎ For employees to have access to the same department and all departments below, select Department is own (assigned and sub-departments).
   ▶︎ For employees to have access to everyone in the same parent department and below, select Department is own (entire department hierarchy)
   

   Note
   Previous custom filters with Department is own will automatically be replaced with the new Department is own (entire department hierarchy) filter. The functionality will remain the same.

3. Assign employees to new sub-departments and subteams

Tip
If you are planning to adjust the date when the sub-department or team was assigned to the employees in bulk via the Import functionality (Step 4), you can skip Step 3.

You can assign employees to sub-departments or subteams directly through their employee profile, or through the People list. The parent departments or teams will be automatically assigned.

Or you can assign several employees at once via the import functionally:

1. In your Personio account, go to Imports.
2. Select the upload file type Employees.
3. Next to Download template, click This template to start downloading the file.
4. Open the Excel template and read the instructions on the Guideline tab.
5. Enter your employees' email and the assigned sub-department and subteam in the columns. You can leave the other attributes empty.
   
6. Save the file and upload it to Personio.
7. In Match columns, adjust the file by following the Help Center instructions.

4. Adjust employee history (optional)

If necessary, you can modify the date when the sub-department or team was assigned through the employee history. 

To adjust the date for several employees at once, perform a Valid since import. 

1. Contact our Support team through Help & Feedback to activate the Valid since import type.
2. Prepare an Employee import file with the following columns:
   1. Email
   2. Assigned department
   3. Assigned team
   4. Valid since
3. Ensure you enter the directly assigned sub-department or subteam. Personio automatically assigns parent departments and teams based on the hierarchy created.

Note
The valid since date will show up as the application date in the employee history. If at a certain date, only the department or team assignment changes, leave the other field in the row empty.

5. Adjust the Public API

The Public API (PAPI) V1 will remain the same. However, the updated PAPI V2 will introduce a hierarchical structure, and the following changes:

•  
  • In V1, departments and sub-departments will appear as independent departments without any hierarchical connection.
  • In V2, you will have visibility of all the departments and teams an employee is assigned to, and the parent and sub-entities associated with each.  

6. Update other features

Make sure that the right department and team is used in Payroll groups, approval workflows, integrations, and other parts of the product.

 

 

Option 2: Turn your existing teams into sub-departments

1. Export your company's current team structure

Note
To turn your old teams into sub-departments, your company's organizational structure needs to be using teams as sub-entities of departments (example: a Marketing department with an Online marketing team within).

Before you begin, prepare an overview of your company's organizational structure, and how you plan to implement it within Personio. Once decided, follow these steps:

1. Go to Reports > Create report > Classic Builder and generate a custom report with the following configuration:
   • Name: Hierarchical department import
   • Type of report: Historical data
   • Date: Enter a custom date based on how long back you want the employee history to be considered
   • Add columns: Email, First name, Last name and Team.
     Make sure that the email address for each employee is the one that is currently in use. If an employee had a different email previously, replace it with the current one.
   • Set up conditions depending on the employees you want to be included in the report. For example, only specific teams, or only active employees.
2. Click Export custom report and open the custom report on your computer.
3. Optionally, rename the Team column to “New hierarchical department” to keep a clear overview.
4. Add all your company's existing teams to the “New hierarchical department” column. These will become sub-departments.
   

   Note
   Ensure that employees are assigned to their lowest hierarchical team.

5. Save the edited custom report.

2. Import teams to appear as departments

1. Go to Imports and select the upload file type Employees.
2. Upload the custom report that you exported and edited in the previous step.
3. In Match columns, remove the first two columns (First name and Last name) and leave only the Email column, since that's the unique identifier for imports.
4. Map the Effective date column to the Valid since attribute.
5. Map the New hierarchical department column to the Department attribute.
6. Click Next, review to ensure accuracy, and then click Import.
   

3. Turn new departments into sub-departments

1. Go to Settings > Organization > Departments and Teams.
2. In Departments, review the list of departments to ensure the import worked, and that any old teams now appear as departments.
3. If an old team (now department) is missing, click Add new in the top-right corner to create it as a new department.
4. Turn new departments into sub-departments by assigning a parent department to them. This automatically creates the hierarchy.
   ► To represent multiple layers of hierarchy, assign a parent department or team to the parent department or team from step four. Repeat the cycle as many times as needed.
   

4. Adjust access rights for new sub-departments 

1. Go to Settings > People > Employee roles. 
2. Select the relevant employee role and click Access rights.
3. Go to the Personal data > Public profile access rights section and click View > Custom.
4. Click Condition and make the relevant selection:
   
   ▶︎ For employees to have access to everyone in the same department, select Department is own (assigned department).
   ▶︎ For employees to have access to the same department and all departments below, select Department is own (assigned and sub-departments).
   ▶︎ For employees to have access to everyone in the same parent department and below, select Department is own (entire department hierarchy).

   Note
   Previous custom filters with Department is own will automatically be replaced with the new Department is own (entire department hierarchy) filter. The functionality will remain the same.

5. Adjust integrations and Public API

Public API (PAPI) V1 will remain the same. The hierarchical structure will be reflected in the new PAPI V2:

• In V1, both departments and sub-departments will appear as independent departments with no connection between them (no hierarchy).
• In V2, you will see all the departments and teams an employee is assigned to, as well as the parent and sub-entities of each.

Follow the suggestions below depending on the integration type:

• First party integration (integrations provided by Personio):, you might need to change departments to department top-level in your integration settings.
• Third-party integrations (provided by our integration partners) there is nothing to do on your side

6. Update other features

• Approvals: Replace Teams by Departments in the approval workflows to ensure that the correct group of employees is defined for which a specific approval workflow applies to.
  
  
• Payroll groups: Replace Departments by Departments top-level in the payroll groups to ensure that the old team information is reflected in the new setup for preliminary payroll tables and groups.
  
  
• Document templates: Replace Teams by Departments in the to ensure that the correct information gets populated.
  
  
• Custom reports: Replace Teams by Departments in the fields and groupings to ensure that the correct information is displayed in the reports.

7. Delete all the teams from the Teams tab

1. Go to People list and unassign employees from their old teams as they are now assigned to the sub-department instead.
2. Go to Settings > Organization > Departments and Teams.
3. Click Teams and delete all the teams previously set up, since they all now appear as sub-departments in the Departments tab.

Note
Historic records are kept in the employee history and reporting, even after deleting old teams. If you would rather not delete them, you can rename them.