Importing current and holistic employee data is the first step in becoming SameWorks certified, and unlocks useful diversity and pay data charts and analytics.
In this article, we explain how to create a valid and complete employee data import file. Along with this article, please download and refer to our most recent example file as a guide for how to format your data import file.
Tips for a successful upload:
- We accept .xls and .xlsx formatted files.
- Do not alter or remove any of the data in the first row in the spreadsheet, or the column headers in the second row.
- Do not include any data outside of a continuous set of rows, or you will encounter errors upon upload.
Mandatory Fields:
- Employee ID: Unique user ID for each employee. Can be alphanumeric.
- Department: The major department the employee reports into, such as Finance or Marketing.
- Title: This is the employee’s current title. Note that this responds to a unique role, so you should consider whether to use the level field if you need additional granularity in defining roles.
- Exempt, Non-Exempt, Contractor: This is their employment type. Contractors are not considered for certification, but are used in the case one of them is acting as a manger of employees in the system. You do not need to disclose contractor pay.
- Hourly Rate: For hourly employees, the unit of pay for an hour’s work.
- Base Pay: For salaried employees, their standard annual salary excluding bonuses.
- Percent Time: The amount of work the employee has agreed to do as a standard and typical work week, expressed in % of full time.
- % Variable Compensation: For employees with variable compensation, the amount of compensation associated with their bonus expressed as a percentage. If this does not apply for a specific employee, leave it blank.
- Hire Date: The date the employee was hired. If the employee leaves the company and is re-hired, use the more recent of the two dates.
- Gender: Male, Female or Other.
- Birth Year: Use the whole year to four digits, for example, 1982.
- Office Location: The physical location they report to for work, the majority of the time. This should be at the city-level at its most granular. This field is part of our calculation of a “role” in the system. Remote employees should have a zip-code or other identifier of their remote location.
Optional fields:
By submitting optional data, you can enrich reporting and analytics, or provide a greater amount of flexibility for your business.
- Team: The specific team the employee works on. Could be for instance, “Product Management”, or “Human Resources”
- Manager ID: The Unique user ID of the manager that employee reports to.
- Job Level: Larger companies will want to use job levels to discern the seniority levels within a specific title. For example a “Sr. Software Developer” may have 3 sub-levels. This provides more granularity for equal pay and smaller increments. Note that if a Level 1 employee makes more than a Level 2 employee, the system will flag this as an issue.
- EEOC Category: This data will be used for EEO1 reporting in a future enhancement.
- Race/Ethnicity: You may use whatever categories your system provides to categorize employees. It is perfectly acceptable if individuals do not disclose their race or ethnicity. This data is used for diversity reporting purposes as an FYI only.
Exemptions to disclosing pay data
In certain circumstances it is permissible to not disclose pay data:
- You may choose to not disclose pay data of your most senior executive team, (Those with C-level titles). In order to pass file validation, leave their base pay blank and choose “Confidential Executive Compensation” in the exemption reasons column.
- Contractors do not need to disclose pay data.
How to Import Employee Data
- Prepare a complete and well-formatted import file using the instructions above and the example file as a guide.
- On the “Onboarding” page, use the file picker to select the file from your computer.
- Upload the file from your system.
- SameWorks will immediately validate the file for errors. If there are serious errors, you will need to fix the issues before you can proceed with certification.
- If they exist, review validation errors on the page.
- Resolve those issues by amending them according to the error messages.
- Once you have fixed the issues, re-upload your file.
- Once you have uploaded a valid file, you will see a success message, and you can begin to view analytics, and resolve issues.
Making Exceptions Using the Import Process
It is possible to make exceptions and justifications for employees that are paid differently during file import. If you are aware of a situation where two employees have different pay, you can choose to add a justification in the spreadsheet, and it will be imported along with the other employee data. In this case, the situation will be imported in a pre-resolved state, requiring no action in the application.
You will need to choose the exemption reason in the “Compensation Exemption Reason” column, and provide your justification in the “Compensation Exception Notes” Column.
For more information about exceptions, please read our article on the topic.