Requisition and Offer Approvals: Modelling Real Decision Rights
Approval workflows in ORC are where your org chart meets reality. Configure them to match how decisions are actually made, not how the policy says they should be.
Every ORC implementation hits the approvals conversation, and it's always more revealing than anyone expects. On paper, requisition approval is clean: manager requests, HR approves, done. In practice, you uncover finance sign-off thresholds, headcount freezes, and the one director who insists on seeing every senior hire. That mess is the actual requirement.
Use approval rules, not hard-coded chains
Oracle's approval configuration supports rules based on attributes, job level, cost, department, location. Lean on those rather than building rigid named-approver chains that break the moment someone changes role. A rule that says 'anything over this salary band routes to finance' survives reorganisations. A hard-coded name doesn't.
Design for delegation and absence
Approvers go on leave. If your workflow has no vacation rules or delegation, requisitions stall and hiring managers rage. Configure delegation from the start; it's not an edge case, it's every summer.
Keep the chain as short as it can be
Every approval step adds days to time-to-hire. Challenge each one. Does finance really need to approve a backfill that's already in budget? Often the honest answer is no, and trimming a step is worth more than any clever automation.
Real scenario: a client's offers took eleven days to approve on average, killing them in a competitive market. We mapped the actual chain, found three redundant approvals inherited from a legacy process, and cut approval time to under three days. No new technology, just modelling the real decision rights and removing the theatre.