WFM UK | HR UK: Employment History Conflict Resolution

Overview

As of October 1, 2025, a new Conflict Resolution feature is available to manage overlapping or conflicting changes within an employee’s career history, accessible via the Employment Details page. This functionality ensures data integrity when multiple changes with overlapping effective dates are processed.

A conflict arises when a change is scheduled and then another is submitted with an earlier effective date. Since both changes affect the employee's career history within a conflicting timeframe, the system flags them for review to avoid overwriting or unintended updates.

Upon submitting a potentially conflicting change, users are automatically taken to the Conflict Resolution page. This interface displays all employment-related changes involved in the conflict, grouped chronologically by their effective dates.

What actions are taken on the Conflict Resolution page?

For each group of changes:

• Review the individual changes listed that are causing a conflict

• Accept or reject each change based on relevance and correctness

• On the Confirmation step, proceed or return to revise decisions

Once saved, only the accepted changes are applied to the employee’s record. Rejected changes are discarded, ensuring the employee's history reflects only the intended updates.

Employment Change Conflicts & Resolution

If a change to an employee's employment details has been made and set to be effective from one date, but another change has been submitted and set to be effective from an earlier date, then this will cause a Conflict in the employee's employment history.

• In the example below, the employee was originally employed as a full-time salaried employee, earning £21,000 per year. Then a change to the employment details was submitted, updating their salary to £30,000 per year, effective from 1st July 2025

The pop-up window shown in Fig.1 will appear when the user selects Save after making a salary change in an employee's 'Employee Details' screen.

Fig.1 - Example of Employment Details Change

Then, following a change in circumstances, the employee is now actually set to be moved from salaried to hourly paid. 

There is a change in pay rate, and they will be moved to a flexible employment type and contracted hours, reducing to 25 hours per week, effective from 22nd June 2025.

Upon saving this second change, a conflict will be recognised and displayed to the user - see Fig.2.

• The user will now need to review the pending changes to the employee's employment history, and make a decision on which changes need to be approved with the stated effective date, or rejected and never happen

Fig.2 - Example of a second Employment Details Change

• In order of date that they are to be effective, select the changes to be approved or rejected and select Next, moving onto the next effective change

In this example, all of the changes taking place on 22nd June 2025 are approved and are to go ahead:

Fig.3 - Conflict Resolution Page (Approving Changes)

The previous changes will still show, allowing for continued review, with the selected status.

• If any changes to the previously approved/rejected changes need to be updated again, select Previous

The next group of changes will open up to either be approved or rejected. In this example, the salary change has been chosen to be rejected as on the 1st July 2025, the employee will no longer be salary paid.

Fig.4 - Conflict Resolution Page (Rejecting Changes)

• Select Next, proceeding to a final confirmation page:

Fig.5 - Conflict Resolution Page - Summary of Approved/Rejected Changes

• Select Previous to return to the conflicts and update approval or rejection status if necessary, or, to commit the changes, select Save

The 'Saving Employee' page will be displayed, which shows the important areas of the system being updated in real time.

• When 'All steps completed' is shown, select OK to proceed.

Fig.6 - Conflict Resolution Page - System and Employee Real Time Updates

Please note: If using Scheduling and integrated to the portal, then there will also be a stage for Updating Scheduling information

Please note: Users can leave this page at any time - updates continue in the background, and this screen is just for visual indication. If an update fails (shown by a red circle), stay on the page and submit a request to Fourth's support team to investigate.

The resolution of any conflicts in an employee's employment history will then be complete. The changes requested (if approved) will be updated within the employee's record and take effect from the effective dates, considering only the fields that were accepted to change as part of the conflict resolution.

All changes set to take effect will display in the Employee History.

• Go to HR > Employees > Employee List > search for and select Employee
• Use the employee side menu and go to HR > Employee Info > Employee History

Fig.7 - Employee History showing changes made

• From within Employee History, selecting View/Delete Future Changes will also be populated with the approved changes, and they can all be deleted from here if required.

Fig.8 - 'View / Delete Future Changes', 'View Deleted Records' buttons

Fig.9 - Future Changes in Employee History

• To show any changes that were rejected as part of the conflict resolution pages, select View Deleted Records

Fig.10 - Deleted Changes, rejected as part of conflict resolution