For People teams at globally distributed organizations, managing invoices, payroll, time-off, and expenses for a global workforce gets complicated fast.
Team structures rarely fit into neat boxes, so employees may work cross-functionally or belong to several teams. You might want to assign specific admins to manage invoices for team members in a particular region, or to approve invoices for contractors only. You might want more than one admin to approve time off requests to ensure coverage when someone is out of office. You might want team managers to be able to approve time off but not expenses.
How you need to structure access and permissions to manage your workforce will be unique to each company based on your organizational structure, business needs, HR workflows, and more. Ideally, your HR tools should be flexible enough to adapt to your team structures and admin processes.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce smarter team management with customizable permissions on Oyster. Now you can work more efficiently by aligning processes, permissions, and workflows with your actual team structures and organizational needs.
Flexible permissions and team structures
At Oyster, we’re committed to helping HR leaders navigate the complexity of scaling and managing global teams. The Oyster platform now allows you to assign approval permissions and set up team structures that reflect how your organization actually operates.
Every user on Oyster can have a customized combination of permissions—such as payroll admin and time-off approver—and can be assigned to specific groups for each permission type. You can also assign permissions at the team level (e.g., by department, region, projects, and more) and have cross-functional team members belong to more than one team. These new team management features on Oyster ensure scalable team management as you grow your global footprint.
Benefits of flexible team management
With the new team structures and user permissions on the Oyster platform, People teams will have greater flexibility and control while building structures and processes that reflect your actual teams and workflows. Here are the key benefits:
- Improve approval efficiency. Align approvals with your actual workflows for faster processing. Configure manager permissions by teams and assign multiple managers to a team to ensure coverage during absences.
- Maintain precise control. Customize exactly who can approve what. With specific permissions for expenses, time off, payroll and more, you can grant the right permissions to the right people—ensuring efficient approvals while maintaining data privacy.
- Reduce administrative friction. Manage your teams effortlessly through our dedicated team management view. Our intuitive interface reduces confusion and support dependency, making it easy to set up, modify, and govern permissions as your organization grows.
How to implement new team structures on Oyster
Now that Oyster offers this new functionality for better team management, here are a few practical tips and questions to consider for smooth implementation.
- Audit your current team structures and identify gaps. For example, are there team members who belong to multiple teams? Does your company organize teams by department and function? Or also by region, project work, or other considerations?
- Map out actual workflows and approval processes. Who should be doing payroll admin or managing invoices, time off, and expenses? Are these handled centrally or at the department or team level?
- Define permission requirements for different roles. For each team manager, what combination of permissions do they need? Are some tasks handled at the team level (e.g., time-off requests and expenses) while others are handled at the company level (e.g., payroll)?
- Plan for continuity with multiple approvers. How do you handle coverage when a manager is on vacation? Do you need to assign backup approvers to keep invoices or time-off requests moving?
Working through these questions will help you align your business and team needs with your permissions, processes, and workflows.
Empower your team with Oyster
For organizations growing across borders, Oyster offers an end-to-end EOR solution to build and manage global teams. Now, with customizable team structures and precise permissions, you can streamline your people workflows with a system that adapts to your organizational structure and business needs.
Reach out for a personalized consultation to discuss your global workforce needs and see the Oyster platform in action.
About Oyster
Oyster is a global employment platform designed to enable visionary HR leaders to find, engage, pay, manage, develop, and take care of a thriving distributed workforce. Oyster lets growing companies give valued international team members the experience they deserve, without the usual headaches and expense.
Oyster enables hiring anywhere in the world—with reliable, compliant payroll, and great local benefits and perks.
