People & Organization Module

The People module is the heart of Sparko, managing employee data, organizational structure, and company hierarchy.

Overview

The People module provides:

Complete employee directory
Interactive organization chart
Team management for managers
Employee profiles with career tracking
Company announcements and handbooks
People analytics and insights

Employee Directory

Accessing the Directory

Navigate to People > Employee Directory to view all employees in your organization.

Directory View

Employee Directory

156 employees across 8 departments

+ Add Employee

Employee	Title	Department	Location	Status
SJ Sarah Johnson [email protected]	Senior Engineer	Engineering	San Francisco	Active
MC Michael Chen [email protected]	Product Manager	Product	New York	Active
EP Emily Parker [email protected]	HR Manager	Human Resources	Remote	Active

Directory Features

Search & Filter

Search by name, email, or employee ID
Filter by department, location, status
Sort by any column

Bulk Actions

Select multiple employees
Bulk update department, title, or status

Quick Actions

Click employee name to view profile

Bulk Import (CSV/Excel)

Click Import in the directory header to upload a roster file
Columns are auto-detected and confirmable: name, email, department, job title, manager email, start date, employment type, location, phone
Imported employees are staged — they appear in the directory immediately, but no login email goes out until you send invitations
After an import you can send invitations right away from the result bar, or later from Admin Settings → People → Invitations

Employee Profile

Profile Overview

Click any employee to view their complete profile with six tabs of information.

Sarah Johnson

Senior Software Engineer

Engineering Department | San Francisco

Employee ID: EMP-2847 | Joined: March 15, 2022 | Active Overview Career Performance Compensation Documents Timeline

Personal Information

Email [email protected] Phone +1 (555) 123-4567 Location San Francisco, CA Work Type Hybrid

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        <span style="color: #1a1a2e;">2 years, 8 months</span>
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Profile Tabs

Tab	Content
Overview	Basic info, contact details, employment info
Career	Career path, skill gaps, development goals
Performance	Reviews, feedback, OKRs
Compensation	Salary history, bonuses, equity
Documents	Contracts, certifications, forms, payslips from finalized payroll runs
Timeline	Employment history and changes

Document visibility. When someone with access to an employee's profile uploads a document, they pick one of two visibility levels: HR only or Visible to employee. When employees upload to their own Documents tab, the file is always visible to them (there's no HR-only option to pick from their own profile), and they only ever see documents marked visible to them, never HR-only ones.

Asking an Employee to Sign a Document

HR can ask an employee to sign a document electronically. Tick Requires signature when uploading, or use Request signature on a document that is already filed. Visibility is set to Visible to employee either way, because nobody should sign something they cannot read. Turning an HR only document into one the employee can read is a disclosure, so it also needs the permission to view all personal documents. The employee gets a task in My Hub and a Needs signature badge on the document.

Asking again. Using Request signature on a document that is already waiting sends a reminder. The original request date and requester stay as they were.

Payslips. Payslips are filed by the payroll run and are regenerated whenever the run is rerun, so they cannot be sent for signature.

How the employee signs. They open the document, read it, then type their full legal name and tick the box confirming they agree to sign electronically. Both are required. The typed name is the signature.

What gets recorded. Sparko stores the typed name, the date and time, the IP address, the browser, and a SHA-256 hash of the exact file that was signed. Anyone who can see the document can open View signature to read this record. Opening it re-reads the stored file and re-runs the hash, so the record says whether the file still matches what was signed.

If the file cannot be read. Signing fails and nothing is recorded. Sparko never binds a signature to a file it could not read, and it refuses to sign a file whose size no longer matches what was filed.

Retention. A signed document cannot be deleted through the normal Delete action. Holders of the signature-void permission, which HR Admin and Super Admin have, get a Delete action on signed documents that asks for confirmation first, because it voids the recorded signature. The void is written to the audit log.

What this is, and is not. This is a typed electronic signature with an evidence record. It supports enforceability under the US ESIGN Act and UETA, and it is a simple electronic signature under eIDAS. It is not an eIDAS advanced or qualified electronic signature, and it is not notarisation. If your process needs a qualified signature, use a certified provider.

Editing Profiles

Who can edit:

Employee: Own profile (limited fields)
Manager: Team members (limited fields)
HR: All employees (all fields)
Admin: Full access

Editable by employee:

Personal email
Phone number
Emergency contact
Address

Changes that need HR approval: legal first/last name, phone number, and date of birth. When you submit one of these from your profile, it's sent to HR as a pending request — you'll see a "pending" badge until it's reviewed. HR reviews these in My Hub > Approvals, where each request shows the current value and the requested change with Approve/Reject actions (a rejection includes a note explaining why).

Custom Fields

Beyond the built-in profile fields, your admin can define custom fields to capture data specific to your company (a T-shirt size, a cost center, a work-visa type, a parking spot). Manage them under Admin > People Settings > Custom Fields.

Field types. Text, number, date, yes/no, or a single-select dropdown with your own options. You set a label, an optional help hint, whether it is required, and (for text) an optional format check.
How many you get depends on your plan. A count meter at the top of the page shows your usage, and reaching the cap prompts you to deactivate a field before adding another.
Sensitive fields. Mark a text or select field sensitive for data like a personal ID or a medical note. A sensitive field is encrypted at rest and hidden from anyone who lacks the "view sensitive custom fields" permission, who sees it masked. The one person who always sees their own sensitive field is the employee it is about. Because it is their data, it shows in full on their own profile and in their GDPR data export. There is no setting that hides a field from the person it describes.
Once created, a field's type, key, and sensitive flag are locked. You can still rename its label, change help text, toggle required, and reorder. Custom-field values are set on the employee record by anyone with edit access, and every change is written to the employee audit log.

Organization Chart

Interactive Org Chart

Navigate to People > Organization Chart for a visual representation of your company hierarchy.

Organization Chart

156 employees | 8 departments

My View Full View EB Ella Brown Chief Executive Officer 6 direct reports

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    <div style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 13px; color: #1a1a2e;">Amanda Price</div>
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Org Chart Views

My View

Shows you and your reporting chain
Highlights your position in the organization
Easy to see your manager and skip-level

Full View

Complete company hierarchy
Expandable/collapsible branches
Filter by department or location

Org Chart Controls

Zoom: Mouse wheel or +/- buttons
Pan: Click and drag
Expand: Click node to see direct reports
Focus: Double-click to center on person
Search: Find anyone in the org

Departments & Teams

Where the org chart shows reporting lines, Admin > People Settings > Departments manages the org's structural units. A department is the top-level unit every employee belongs to. A team is a working group nested under a department that a person can belong to alongside others.

Allocation across teams. Because someone can sit on more than one team, each team membership carries an allocation percentage, meaning how much of that person's time the team gets. Sparko rolls this up two ways:

Per team. The members list with each person's allocation, and the team's total allocated FTE (the sum of allocations divided by 100).
Per person. Their active team memberships and a running allocation total, flagged balanced (100%), under (below 100%), or over (above 100%) so you can spot someone double-booked or with unassigned time.

The org-structure view also counts departments, teams, members, and how many people are on more than one team.

Rename, merge, and delete are safe operations. Renaming a department rewrites the name everywhere it is used for scoping (PTO eligibility, timesheet config, recruiting approval routing, hiring-plan tags, saved audiences) so nothing silently breaks. Historical records signed with the old name, like past offers, keep it. Merging moves all employees and teams into the target department and then removes the source. Because every employee must belong to a department, deleting one requires you to pick a department to reassign its people and teams to first. A preview shows exactly what each action will touch before you confirm.

Managing departments and teams needs people.departments.manage. Viewing the structure needs people.departments.view.

My Team (For Managers)

Managers see a dedicated team dashboard at People > My Team.

My Team

8 Direct Reports 2 On PTO This Week 3 Pending Approvals 73% Avg OKR Progress

Team Members

SJ Sarah Johnson Senior Engineer In Office OKR: 85% MC Mike Chen Engineer II On PTO OKR: 62%

Team Management Features

Team Overview

See all direct reports
Track team OKR progress
View who's out of office

Quick Actions

Approve PTO requests
Schedule 1-on-1s
Write feedback
Start review

Team Health tab — a live snapshot of how your team is doing:

Team Engagement — the company's latest eNPS survey score
Avg OKR Progress — average goal progress across your reports
1:1 Completion — how many of your 1:1s have been held this cycle
Recognition — praise your team received in the last 30 days
Per-report health — a row for each report showing OKR progress, last 1:1, PTO used, and retention-risk level

Team Analytics

Performance trends
Skill distribution
Tenure analysis

Announcements & Handbooks

Company Announcements

Access at People > Announcements to view or create company-wide communications.

Announcement Types:

General
Policy Update
Event
Urgent

Features:

Rich text formatting
Attachments
Schedule for future

Known limitation: announcements always broadcast company-wide — there's no department or audience targeting yet, so a dept-specific policy update currently has to go to everyone.

Employee Handbooks

Access at People > Handbooks for company policies and procedures.

Handbook Features:

Version control
Acknowledgement tracking
Search within documents

Attaching the PDF: a handbook can carry the real document. Upload a PDF up to 25 MB when you create or edit it, and employees get a download link on the handbook. Only PDFs are accepted, and the file is checked by its actual contents rather than its name, so renaming something to .pdf won't get it through. Replace it any time by uploading another, or remove it and keep the written content.

Onboarding

Access at People > Onboarding to manage new-hire plans.

Plan features:

Phased task lists (preboarding / day 1 / week 1 / month 1 / month 3)
AI-generated onboarding plan from role and department context
AI-amend a plan — describe a change in plain language (e.g. "add a security training task in week 1") and the assistant proposes the additions/edits for you to approve
A reusable, company-owned task library so common onboarding tasks don't need to be re-typed per plan
Suggest tasks per stage when building a plan by hand. Each stage group has a Suggest button that proposes 3 to 6 tasks for that stage, based on the new hire's role and department. Tasks already in the group are passed along so the suggestions don't repeat them. Nothing is saved until you save the plan, so drop the ones you don't want by leaving them out.
Plan templates — clone any existing plan as a template, then instantiate it for a new hire with a new start date
Scheduled check-ins and equipment assignments

IT support contact: set an email address and a chat channel in Admin Settings > People > Onboarding Settings, and new hires see a "Need help?" card on their portal with both. Leave them blank and no card appears, so nobody is pointed at a contact that doesn't exist.

Automatic on an employee's first active day:

Probation check-ins are scheduled automatically
New-hire OKRs are assigned automatically

Per-field PII permission gating: viewing date of birth, SSN, ethnicity, home address, and emergency contact are each gated by their own permission — separate from general employee-view access — so a role can see basic profile info without automatically seeing sensitive PII.

Employee Invitations

Admin Settings → People → Invitations shows the account-invitation lifecycle for the whole company:

Staged — imported, no invitation email sent yet
Invited — invitation sent, password not yet set
Activated — password set; the employee can log in

Click Send invitations to email every staged employee a link to set their password. The action is safe to repeat — employees who already received an invitation are skipped. Imports (from the Setup wizard or the directory's Import button) never email anyone by themselves, so HR decides exactly when the company gets invited.

People Analytics

HR professionals and executives can access workforce analytics at People > Analytics.

Available Metrics

Metric	Description
Headcount Summary	Current employees by dept, location, type
Headcount Trends	Growth over time
Turnover Analysis	Attrition rates and reasons
Diversity Metrics	Gender and demographic breakdown
Tenure Distribution	How long employees stay
Hiring Velocity	Time to hire by role

Export Options

CSV for spreadsheets
PDF for presentations

Want scheduled email delivery, or turnover/diversity breakdowns? Build a custom report in Reporting & Analytics > Report Builder instead — this page only exports the current headcount snapshot.

Employee Insights & Career Development

The Employee Profile includes career insights that help employees understand their growth potential and opportunities.

Accessing Employee Insights

Navigate to People > Employee Directory > Click on any employee to view their profile. The insights are organized across three tabs:

1. Career Tab - Growth Opportunities

Succession Readiness

Shows readiness for leadership roles
Displays readiness score (0-100) and timeline (Ready Now, Ready 1-2 Years, etc.)
Based on performance scores, potential ratings, and calibration data
Visible to managers and HR for succession planning

Internal Opportunity Matching and Peer Skill Benchmarks have a backend API but are not yet wired into any page — there's no UI path to reach them today. They're not covered here until the frontend ships.

2. Compensation Tab - Salary Transparency

Salary Band Position

Shows where you sit within your salary band (min/max/midpoint)
Displays compa-ratio (your salary vs. midpoint)
Indicates quartile position (Q1-Q4)
Career path and role level context
Note: Requires Business tier or higher

3. Performance Tab - Feedback-Driven Growth

Feedback Skill Improvements

Links received feedback to specific skill development opportunities
Analyzes feedback messages for skill-related keywords
Suggests improvement actions based on feedback type (praise vs. constructive)
Tracks skill categories mentioned in feedback over time

Manager View: Team Succession Pipeline

For Managers Only: Navigate to People > My Team to see succession readiness for your direct reports.

Employee	Current Role	Readiness Score	Timeline	Next Eligible Roles
Sarah Chen	Senior Engineer	85	Ready Now	Engineering Manager, Tech Lead
Marcus Liu	Product Manager	60	Ready 1-2 Years	Senior PM, Group PM
Jamie Taylor	Designer	45	Ready 3+ Years	Senior Designer, Design Lead

Features:

Sort by readiness score to identify top succession candidates
View eligible next roles based on career paths
See performance and potential scores
Plan talent development and succession strategies

Privacy & Data Protection

Salary Data: Only visible to employee, manager, and HR roles
Succession Data: Only visible to managers and leadership
Skills Data: Controlled by employee privacy settings

Tier Availability

Feature	Professional	Business	Enterprise
Feedback Skill Linking	✅	✅	✅
Succession Readiness	❌	✅	✅
Salary Band Position	❌	✅	✅
Manager Succession Pipeline	❌	✅	✅

Common Questions

How do I update my profile?

Click your avatar > My Profile > Edit. Save when done.

How do I find someone in the org?

Use the global search (Ctrl/Cmd + K) or browse the Employee Directory.

Can I see my reporting chain?

Yes! Go to Org Chart > My View to see your place in the organization.

How do I export my data (GDPR)?

Go to Profile > Data Export to download all your personal data.

Related Features

Performance Management - OKRs and reviews
Time & Leave - PTO requests
Career - Career development and skills
AI Assistant - Get help with people tasks

Still need help? Reach us at [email protected].

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