Groups and subsidiaries

How a parent company and its subsidiaries work together in Recruit: group roles, switching company, shared libraries, group reports and careers pages.

A group links one parent company to one or more subsidiary companies. Each company keeps its own users, jobs, candidates and settings. People in the parent company can be given group access, which lets them see and work across the subsidiaries without logging in to each one. This article covers what group access gives each role, where you switch company, what the parent can share with its subsidiaries, and how group reports and careers pages behave.

Setting up a group

Groups are part of the Group Companies plan. If your organisation is not on it, none of the group screens appear.

A group cannot be created from inside your organisation. A HireRoad platform administrator creates the group, names its parent company, links each subsidiary and appoints the first group administrator. That person must already be a user of the parent company. After that, group administrators manage everything else themselves.

Group roles

Group access is a second layer on top of a person's normal role in their own company. It can only be given to users of the parent company, and each person can hold one group role at a time. There are four:

• Group admin: works in every company in their scope with the same powers as an Admin in that company. Group admins are also the only people who can grant group access to others.
• Group HR: works in the subsidiaries with the powers of an HR user.
• Group member: works in the subsidiaries with the powers of a Member.
• Group reporting: sees group totals, the group jobs list and the group candidates list, but cannot open jobs, candidates or settings inside a subsidiary.

Group HR and Group member users are limited to the jobs they are on. In a subsidiary they see a job only if they are its hiring lead or a member of its job team, and the same limit applies to the candidates on those jobs.

Each grant covers either All group companies or Specific companies. With specific companies, the person sees the parent company plus only the subsidiaries you tick.

Giving someone group access

You must be a group admin.

1. Go to Settings, then User Management, and open the user. They must belong to the parent company.
2. In the Group access card, choose a Group role: Group admin, Group HR, Group member or Group reporting.
3. Under Access scope, choose All group companies or Specific companies. For specific companies, tick at least one. The list shows every subsidiary in the group, even ones you cannot see yourself.
4. Select Save. A message confirms Group access granted.

To change a role or scope, edit the same card and save again. To remove access, select Revoke access and confirm. The person loses access to the other companies and drops back to their own company only. If a user already has group access, granting a new grant replaces it, because one person can hold only one.

Switching company

There is no single company switch for the whole application. Recruit shows a company control wherever a group user needs one, and it works in one of two ways.

Filters on lists and reports. The dashboard, the group jobs and candidates lists, and the reports have a Company filter with All group, Parent only and one entry per subsidiary you can access. A line under the heading reads Showing: followed by the companies covered. Your choice is remembered while you stay logged in and resets when you log in again.

A company selector on settings pages. Most settings pages, including User Management, Company Profile, Careers Page, Departments, Locations, Approvals, application forms and custom fields, show a Company dropdown at the top. Your own company is marked (your company). Pick a subsidiary and the page shows and edits that company's settings. Group reporting users cannot read subsidiary settings.

Creating a job for a company

When a group user starts a new job, Recruit first asks Which company is this job for? Choose your own company or a subsidiary you have access to, then select Continue. The company decides which job creation flow you see, because each company has its own approval setup. Once the job exists, the company cannot be changed. When you pick people for a subsidiary job's team, you choose from that subsidiary's users.

Group jobs and group candidates

Two extra items appear in the main menu for anyone with group access: Group jobs and Group candidates.

Group jobs lists jobs from every company in your scope with the columns Job title, Company, Status, Location, Department, Applications and Created. You can search by job title, filter by status, location and department, and sort by the Created column. The row menu offers View, and Duplicate where your role allows it: Admin and HR for your own company's jobs, and a Group admin or Group HR grant for subsidiary jobs.

Group candidates lists candidates across the same companies with Name, Company, Source, Location and Created. Email addresses and phone numbers are not shown here. A candidate on a confidential shortlisting job whose details have not been revealed yet, or an agency candidate who has not been revealed, appears with their name hidden and a Confidential label.

When you open a job or candidate that belongs to another company, a banner tells you where you are. It reads either You're viewing a record from the company with actions disabled, or You're editing a record from the company as a group admin. What you can change follows your group role, as described above.

What parent and subsidiary users can see

• Users in a subsidiary work as normal inside their own company. They do not see the parent or sibling companies, and they never see group screens.
• Parent users without group access see only the parent company.
• Parent users with group access see the companies in their scope, with the powers of their group role.

Shared libraries

The parent company can let its subsidiaries use its templates. This is set at library level, never item by item, and everything starts as not shared. Only an Admin in the parent company sees the page.

1. Go to Settings, then Company, then Library sharing.
2. Under Configure sharing for, choose All subsidiaries or one subsidiary. A note underneath confirms whether your changes apply to everyone or to that company only.
3. Tick the libraries to share. The row shows Shared, Not shared or a mixed count. Share all libraries ticks every row in the current scope.
4. Select Save. Select Discard to drop your changes. Your edits stay on screen if a save fails, so you can try again.

The libraries you can share are:

• Application forms: application form templates.
• Feedback forms: interview scorecard and feedback form templates.
• Onboarding forms: onboarding form templates for new hires.
• Communication templates: email, SMS and offer letter templates.
• Recruitment workflows: pipeline stage templates used to set up new jobs.
• Approval processes: approval workflow templates that gate job creation.
• Justification/checklist fields: the questions asked when a job is submitted for approval.

Custom fields are not part of library sharing. Each company keeps its own.

In a subsidiary, shared items appear alongside the company's own in lists and pickers, marked Shared from the parent's name. They are read-only there. Only the parent company can edit or delete them. A subsidiary can still apply a shared application form template to a job. The fields are copied onto the job, so the job keeps them even if the parent stops sharing later. If something a subsidiary already uses is no longer shared, the existing selection is kept but the item cannot be picked again.

For recruitment workflows, a subsidiary can choose a shared workflow with Use as default for new jobs. It then carries a Default for new jobs badge, and Stop using as default returns the company to its own default.

Group reports

For group users, the dashboard and these reports combine data across the companies in the selected scope: Adverts, Sourcing, Pipeline, Offers, Cost, Candidates, Diversity and Article 55. Totals are recalculated over the combined data, not averaged per company. Use the Company filter to narrow to the whole group, the parent only or one subsidiary. You still need permission to view reports in your own company.

Reports can be exported from the export control on each report page. For the Diversity and Article 55 reports, the export is available to group admins only, and other group users do not see it.

Group careers pages

Each company has its own careers page. The parent can also publish one grouped page that lists published jobs from the parent and chosen subsidiaries. Only Admins can change these settings. Go to Settings, then Company, then Careers Page and find Group Careers Aggregation.

1. Under Careers page mode, choose Show only this company's jobs or Show jobs from this company and included subsidiaries. The change is saved as soon as you pick it.
2. Under Included subsidiaries, switch each subsidiary on or off. New subsidiaries are included by default.
3. In group-wide mode, select Copy Group Embed Code to embed the grouped page on your own site, or View Grouped Careers Page to open it.

The grouped page only exists while the mode is group-wide. In the other mode it is not available.

Next to each subsidiary, Edit careers page opens Careers page for that company, where a group admin can set the Logo URL, Brand Colour (a six digit hex code such as #6366F1), Headline, Tagline, Introduction, Meta Title and Meta Description. Select Save and the message Subsidiary careers page updated appears. View careers page opens that subsidiary's own page.