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Preset attributes and their functionalities

 

This article provides detailed information about preset attributes used for the employee profile. 

Preset attributes are attributes that are created by default in your Personio account because they are linked to other functionalities in Personio. They can be viewed under Settings > People > Employee information and are marked there with the gray Preset attribute note.

Preset attributes are also displayed, by default, in the Information section of each employee's profile. They are also stored in all the languages available in Personio.

Since preset attributes cannot be edited or deleted, certain values have to be predefined for them. Learn which values can be entered and how to create and manage Custom Sections and Attributes.

 

Public Profile Section

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Name

  • An employee's name consists of the preset attributes First name and Last name, and it is displayed accordingly in the employee profile.
  • An employee's first and last names are also displayed by default as identification in the preparatory payroll.

 

Gender

  • Selection options: Male, Female, Diverse, Undefined
  • You can use gender variables for the document templates in Personio. Once the gender of an employee has been selected, the documents will automatically use the relevant gender-specific variant of a word.

Find further information on configuring gender variables in document templates. 

 

Department

In Settings > Organization > Department and Teams, define how many working hours per week correspond to a 100 % position for each department individually. Unless adjusted, the standard setting is 40 working hours per week. 

  • The weekly hours of a department are different from the weekly hours that are specified for each employee in their profile. The individual working hours of an employee are set in relation to their department's working hours. This relationship determines an employee's part-time value and contributes to the full-time equivalent (FTE) of the company.
  • Adjusting the part-time value will also have an effect on the salary of employees who receive a fixed salary. If the weekly working hours are adjusted, the salary adjusts accordingly based on the resulting part-time value.
  • To edit the options available for the attribute, go to Settings > Organization > Departments and Teams, and edit your company's departments.

 

Email

  • The email address is a unique identifier (Unique ID) in Personio. It is also required for the import of salary data and of attendances/absences. If no other attribute has been defined in Personio as a Unique ID, the email address is also necessary to import employee information.
  • Furthermore, the email address is required for the initial invitation to Personio, and for the employee to log in with from there on.
  • The delivery of notifications, reminders and onboarding to-dos also requires the employee's email address.

 

Sub-company

  • If sub-companies have been set up, a separate export is created for each sub-company in the preparatory payroll.
  • Under Employee roles, different access rights can be assigned per role for each sub-company.
  • In addition, separate organizational charts are issued for sub-companies.

 

HR Information Section

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Status

Active

  • The employee is considered in your Personio plan.
  • The employee can be found by all other employees via the search bar and will be displayed in the employee list to all who have viewing rights for the employee's public profile. 
  • By default, the employee list is filtered by active employees.
  • All active employees are displayed in the organizational chart.

Leave

  • The employee is considered in your Personio plan.
  • The employee can be found by all other employees via the search bar and will be displayed in the employee list to all who have viewing rights to the section where the Status attribute was allocated.
  • The status Leave is shown next to the profile picture in the employee profile.
  • If the Leave status is due to a temporary suspension of the employment, that employee's vacation entitlement is reduced for each full calendar month, and their salary payments are reduced to the exact number of days. Learn about scheduling leaves for employees. 
  • In the report on full-time equivalents, the employee is not included for the period of their absence.

Onboarding

  • The employee is not considered in your Personio plan.
  • They can only be found via the search bar by, and are only displayed to those employees in the employee list who have viewing rights for the employee's HR information.
  • If no hire date has been entered, or it is still in the future, the employee's default status is "Onboarding." On the hire date, the status automatically changes from Onboarding to Active.

Inactive 

  • The employee is not considered in your Personio plan.
  • They can only be found via the search bar by, and are only displayed to those employees in the employee list who have viewing rights for the employee's HR information.
  • The employee does not appear in the organizational chart.
  • The employee can no longer log into Personio.
  • The employee is no longer included in the preparatory payroll. (Unless there is a continuing salary payment. These are still shown in the preparatory payroll for up to 3 months after their status has been changed to Inactive). The employee must also have a termination date entered in their profile. Importing employees with an 'Inactive' status or changing their status to 'Inactive' without entering a termination date will not remove them from the payroll.

 

Employment type

Internal 

  • By default, reports in Personio are prefiltered by internal employees. This filter can, however, be manually removed.

External

  • External employees are not shown in the preparatory payroll.

Hire date

  • The hire date is required for assigning an accrual policy to an employee.
  • Without a hire date, the employee does not appear in the preparatory payroll.
  • If you are using Personio's onboarding function, the employee's hire date determines the due date for onboarding to-dos, as these are always in direct relation to the hire date.
  • Employees without a hire date are not considered in the reports.

Note
We advise against updating the employee's hire date retroactively, as it may alter the employee data and the associated reporting data. In some cases, the employee data might get severely impacted, and you may be required to create the employee's profile from scratch.

 

 

 

Contract end date

  • If you have entered a contract end date for the employee, a to-do will appear on your home screen 30 days before that date (depending on your access rights). From the to-do, you can select between Prolong contract and Schedule the termination of this employee.
  • Based on the contract end date, the employee's vacation entitlement is reduced according to the accrual policy, and the employee's length of service and planned exit date. Learn more about accrual policies.
  • In the yearly plan (Employee > Yearly Plan), the employee is marked in yellow in the month in which the contract ends.

Note
The contract end date is not automatically equal to terminating the employment. Learn more about the difference between contract end date and terminating the employment.

 

Supervisor

  • You can define access rights and approval processes in Personio via the Supervisor.
  • The Supervisor is also very relevant for the structure of the organizational chart. Employees are always assigned to the Supervisor that has been stored for them in Personio.
  • Depending on your plan, a Supervisor can be defined in on-/offboarding processes as responsible for certain tasks and to receive email messages. Learn more about how on-/offboarding processes can be configured.
  • On the dashboard, Supervisors are shown an overview of their respective team.
  • If access rights for the absence calendar have been defined, Supervisors can see their team members' absences on their dashboards. They can also filter for their team in the Company Calendar. 

 

Duration of the Probation Period

  • Once a duration has been entered for the probation period, the report Probation periods lists, for the selected reporting period, the employees who are in their probation period. Learn more about the probation periods report. 
  • You can set up reminders for employees of probation periods ending, via the employee roles.

 

Weekly hours

  • An employee's weekly hours are set in relation to the weekly hours of their department. This relationship is important for the employee's part-time value and the full-time equivalent of the company.
  • If the weekly hours' entry is adjusted, then this will have an effect on the salary of employees who receive a fixed salary, because a fixed salary adjusts relative to the resulting part-time value.

Tip
Adjusting the weekly hours does not affect an employee's vacation entitlement, which is calculated based on the work time model stored under Attendance. Learn more about vacation entitlements in the context of a change in working hours.

 

Children

  • When adding an estimated birthdate to an employee, Personio will automatically suggest a maternity protection period based on German regulations. However, this suggested period can be edited freely to make it compliant with any country's regulations. By activating the maternity protection, the respective time period can then be directly moved into the absence calendar.

Learn more about setting up maternity protection in Personio. 

Note
If you use the DATEV Integration, some additional attributes will become preset attributes.