Under Administration > Employees, administrators set up the foundations of HR Management: the skill catalog in Skill Management, the Employee Review Forms, and the Compensation Types. You define who can view and edit which personnel data under Administration > My Company > Roles & Permissions.

You can also reach the three menu items via the Administration gear icon in an employee's navigation. They are available to administrators.

Skill Management contains your company's skill catalog. The page shows two tables: Skills with short form, description, and category, and Skill categories with the number of assigned skills. You assign skills from this catalog to employees.

Categories group related skills, such as programming languages, foreign languages, or certifications. Create the categories first, then assign them directly when you create a skill. Via Create new category, you enter a Short form and a Description. The short form has up to 64 characters, must be unique, and becomes read-only after creation. You enter the description with up to 85 characters in at least one language. When you assign skills, the category narrows down the selection, which makes searching large catalogs easier.

Via Create new skill, you record a skill with the following information:

When you assign a skill, you rate the person's proficiency from one to five stars, see Skills – HR Management.

Both tables offer the row actions Edit and Delete. If a skill or category is in use, the confirmation prompt shows the number of affected employees or skills. If you delete a category, its skills remain and are then no longer assigned to any category.

Forms define which fields to fill in when recording an employee review, such as goal agreements, ratings, or an onboarding checklist. The list shows the name, creation and modification date, creator, and remark of each form. Via Create new form, a two-step wizard opens.

In the first step, you enter the Form name with up to 64 characters. The name must be unique, regardless of upper and lower case. The optional Remark with up to 255 characters describes what the form is for. Click Next to go on to building the fields.

In the second step, you build the form from up to 20 fields. Via New form field or Additional field, you add a field and define its settings on the left, while the field grid appears on the right. You change the order via drag & drop.

With the Test preview toggle, you see the form as it appears when recording a review and can fill it in as a test. Save creates the form.

The following field types are available:

Click the name to open the form for editing. Each save creates a new version that applies to all reviews recorded afterward. Reviews already recorded keep the version they were created with.

The Copy row action opens the wizard with all fields of the form, and the name receives the suffix "(copy)". This lets you build similar forms quickly.

When you Delete a form, reviews already recorded remain unchanged. If a recurring appointment uses the form, select a different form under New form in the confirmation prompt, which is then used for these recurring appointments. This requires at least one other form to exist.

Compensation types categorize variable compensation, such as special payments, benefits in kind, or holiday bonuses. When you record a variable compensation, you select one of these types. The table shows the short form, description, interval, payment frequency, amount, and status of each type.

ZEP comes with eight active compensation types without defaults that you can use, adjust, deactivate, or delete right away:

Via Create new compensation type, you add another type:

Interval, payment frequency, and amount make up the Default section. These entries are optional and prefill the form as soon as someone selects this compensation type for a variable compensation.

If you set a compensation type to "Inactive", it is no longer available for new variable compensations. Compensations of this type that were already recorded remain and appear in the compensation overview. You can delete a compensation type as long as it is not used for any person. Otherwise, ZEP shows how many employees it is used for.

Under Administration > My Company > Roles & Permissions, you control which role can view or edit personnel data. The HR Management permissions are in the Employees area in the Employee Account group, and the permission for your own skills is in the Own permissions & my reports area. Each permission distinguishes between View and Edit, where Edit requires View. The administrator's permissions are fixed; you adapt all other roles to your organization. The permissions on the Department Manager tab apply to the employees of the managed department and its subdepartments. For the structure of the permission matrix, see the article My Company – Administration.

The module adds the following rows to the permission matrix:

The rows appear in the permission matrix as soon as HR Management is included in your product line or has been added.

Tax data, insurance data, contract details, and inventory each have their own row. With View, users see the corresponding page or table and the card in the employee file. With Edit, they create, change, and delete records or manage the inventory. On the Tax & Insurance page, each of the two tables appears with its own permission.

Master data, contact details, working time model, bank details, and additional attributes are also in the Employee Account group, each with its own row. They belong to the employee file and are available independently of HR Management.