HR-XML Looking Toward a Promising FutureóToday 4-2002

What do employers, recruiters, and staffing companies expect from the standards initiative being undertaken by the HR-XML Consortium? The answer is seamless integration between recruitment and HR systems and the removal of ìnon-functionalî requirements from technology buying decisions. Today, the unfortunate reality is that non-functional requirements, including ease of data integration, can take on undue weight in many HRIT procurement decisions. Getting one system to exchange rich and meaningful information with another system usually cannot be accomplished without the development of expensive, custom interfaces.

The mission of the HR-XML Consortium is to provide the means for an employer or recruiter to transact with a variety of job boards, staffing firms, and other partners without having to establish, engineer, and implement many separate interchange mechanisms. The HR-XML Consortium is an independent, non-profit organization that develops XML vocabularies to enable e-business and HR data interchange worldwide. HR-XML has more than 100 member organizations, including technology leaders. HR-XML has members located in more than 22 countries.

Inspite of a challenging business climate, the Consortium has been accelerating its work across many fronts. Consider HR-XMLís Staffing Industry Data Exchange Standards (SIDES) project. SIDES is a complete set of specifications to enable the e-procurement of temporary staffing. HR-XML members Adecco, Kelly, Manpower, Randstad, Spherion, and Vedior proposed this project in August 2001. HR-XML announced the commencement of this project on Sept. 10. Despite the challenges of the ensuing months, HR-XML will be releasing SIDES 1.0 during the first week of May 2002.

There are eight major modules that form the basis of SIDES 1.0:

StaffingOrder ñ information describing a staffing customerís servicing need, e.g. position description, start and end dates, estimated bill rate. The StaffingOrder XML document moves from the staffing customer to the staffing supplier and this transmission marks the beginning of the business process addressed by SIDES.
HumanResource ñ information describing a staffing resource employed by a staffing supplier e.g. their skills, experiences, cost. The HumanResource XML document moves from the staffing supplier to the staffing customer, usually in response to a StaffingOrder XML document. HumanResource incorporates HR-XMLís new Resume-2_0 specification (see description below).
Assignment ñ information confirming the actual work agreed upon to be done, e.g. the agreed upon staffing resource to perform the work, and the agreed upon bill rate. This XML document marks the end of the order/selection section of the process, and the beginning of the actual work-performed section.
Staffing Supplier ñ information describing a staffing company, e.g. government corporate identifier, remit to data, branch addresses and contacts.
Staffing Customer ñ hierarchical information describing a customer, e.g. government corporate identifier, Duns numbers, billing addresses and contacts, specific facility addresses and work environments.
Staffing Action ñ request and response schema, e.g. interview request and response. The StaffingAction XML document moves in either direction between the staffing customer or intermediary and staffing supplier as required to provide a basic communication mechanism between these trading partners.
Extended TimeCard ñ information showing the actual amount of time spent by the staffing resource performing work on the assignment over a particular time period. It also captures expenses. SIDES uses an extended form of the HR-XML schema TimeCard.
Invoice ñ information associating the actual time expended as shown via the Timecard, with the bill rate, as confirmed in the Assignment.

SIDES is not the Consortiumís only success story. The HR-XML Consortium has a growing number of them. One of the most remarkable success stories of 2001 was our Time and Expense reporting initiative (ìXML Timecardî). This workgroup was formed after our July 2001 meeting. The 1.0 specification was approved at our October meeting. What is remarkable is that this project team ñ with representatives from Oracle, SAP, and Kronos (among others) based in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States ñ was able to deliver its first specification in less than four months without a single face-to-face meeting. Work was accomplished via weekly conference calls and vigorous on-line communication.

What else has HR-XML accomplished? The following are brief descriptions of some of HR-XMLís specifications:

BackgroundCheck-1_0. (Candidate Recommendation, May 2002 release target) The BackgroundCheck-1_0 specification defines schemas to support requests to third-party suppliers of background checking services as well as the return of search results. The schema for background check requests explicitly supports screenings relating to criminal records, department of motor vehicle records, education, employment history, and credit worthiness. In addition, the BackgroundCheck schema is sufficiently flexible to transmit information required to execute custom screenings that a client might arrange with a background checking service provider.
EntityIdentifier-1_0. (Candidate Recommendation, May 2002 release target) This specification sets out a methodology for managing identifiers for people, organizations, transactions, or other ìentitiesî that may need to be referred to across a series of related conversations between trading partners. The specification sets out a methodology for identifier management across HR-XML Consortium schemas. It includes a set of design norms and recommendations as well as an XML Schema data type to use for entity identifiers.
Resume-2_0. (Candidate Recommendation, May 2002 release target) HR-XMLís Recruiting and Staffing workgroup has developed a follow-up to the resume definition that was included in its Staffing Exchange Protocol (SEP) specification. The new resume was develop using XML Schema Definition Language, which makes it more flexible and extensible than the resume included in previous versions of SEP.
Competencies-1_0 (Approved) The competencies schema allows the capture of information about evidence used to substantiate a competency and ratings and weights that can be used to rank, compare, and otherwise evaluate of the sufficiency or desirability of a competency.
ContactInfo-1_0 (Approved) Contact Method provides XML schema designers the patterns they need to capture postal addresses, phone numbers, e-mail, and on-line and wireless messaging.
Dating-1_1 (Approved) This specification sets out an approach for HR-XML Schema designers to require or prohibit the Time Zone designation for date, time and dateTime values in a consistent manner.
Dating-1_0 (Approved) This specification sets out guidance for using effective dates throughout the Consortiumís work.
PersonName-1_2 (Approved) Prescribes the form of the Person Name object used in HR-XML specifications. This update provides a version in XML Schema as well as in DTD.
PersonName-1_1 (Approved) PersonName Version 1.1 is an update of an earlier specification. Minor changes have been made and certain Version 1.0 components have been deprecated. Version 1.1 is backwardly compatible with Version 1.0.
PostalAddress-1_2 (Approved) Prescribes the form of the PostalAddress object used in HR-XML specifications. This update provides a version in XML Schema as well as in DTD.
PostalAddress-1_1 (Approved) PostalAddress Version 1.1 is an update of an earlier specification. Minor changes have been made and certain Version 1.0 components have been deprecated. Version 1.1 is backwardly compatible with Version 1.0.
Enrollment-1_0 (Approved) This specification supports the transfer of benefits enrollment data among U.S.-based employers, third-party administrators, benefit suppliers/vendors, and other parties involved in the administration or provision of employee benefits.
Job and Position Header 1_0 (Approved) the Job and Position Header specifications are high-level entities that may be used within a variety of HRM models and business processes. Both entities may be categorized into fragments such as Duties and Responsibilities, Work Policy, Requirements, and Work Schedule.
WorkSite and WorkSite Environment 1_0 (Approved) The WorkSite and WorkSite Environment specifications contain information pertaining to the site or location of a job or position; the environment of a job or position; dress code; and safety equipment.
DefinedContributions-1_0 (Approved) The PayrollBenefitContributions specification allows participant contributions information to be sent to a third party administrator. This specification is designed to support U.S. payrolls.
SEP-1_1 (Approved) Staffing Exchange Protocol Version 1.1 includes explicit support for procurement of temporary and contract staff. A wide variety of changes also have been made from the previous version to improve the flexibility and completeness of the SEP DTDs and to make them easier to deploy globally. Version 1.1 is designed to be backwardly compatible. Version 1.0 documents are valid against Version 1.1 DTDs. Certain Version 1.0 features are now deprecated.
TimeCardConfiguration-1_0 (Approved) The TimeCardConfiguration specification is designed for use with HR-XML's Time Expense Reporting specification. TimeCardConfiguration allows trading partners to describe the allowed values for the various elements of a time card.
Envelope-1_0 (Provisional) A simple envelope that can be used to implement HR-XML Consortium specifications.

Rather than working in a top-down fashion to develop a universal HR model, the HR-XML Consortium has limited the scope of its work to data interchange standards ñ i.e., the exchange of data between organizations or between the systems of different vendors. Basically, the Consortiumís methodology is to model a business process with the goal of identifying the points in the process where information is exchanged between trading partners. For each interaction point, the Consortium develops a generalized model of the data that needs to be passed to execute the business process at that point.

The big benefit for implementers of HR-XML specifications is that they will have a consistent view of data across different functional areas. They will be able to handle names, dates, addresses, and other common objects the same way, regardless of whether they are processing job postings, resumes, payroll, or benefits enrollment information, or carrying out other HR interchange data with trading partners.

By any measure, the HR-XML Consortium has moved very rapidly to deliver specifications desired by its members in key areas of data interchange. HR-XML is clearly one of the largest, best supported, and most productive standards groups of its kind.

To find out more about becoming a member of the HR-XML Consortium please visit www.HR-XML.org.
About The Author

Chuck Allen is the Director of the HR-XML Consortium, Inc., and President of Structured Methods, an XML standards consulting firm based in Raliegh, NC, US. Allen was an early advocate of applying standard XML vocabularies to the human resources management problem domain and he helped found the HR-XML Consortium in December 1999 Prior to founding HR-XML and Structured Methods, Allen was Director of New Product Development for the RIA Group, where he was part of the team that developed HR Advisor, which won awards as one of Human Resource Executive Magazineís top ten HR products for 1996 and as one of the top ten products of the decade. Allen worked in similar new product development roles for other major HR publishers such as the Bureau of National Affairs. Allen has a B.A. from the University of Virginia.