Manage locations

What this achieves

A location is a place your organization works from. It is recorded separately from the department hierarchy, so one department can span several sites and reporting can group by either.

Required role: Administrator.

Steps

Go to Organization → Locations.
Create a location and complete its details.
Open a location to see what is assigned to it.

A location is not a department

This is the distinction that keeps your structure the right shape. A department is a function; a location is a place. Somebody belongs to one of each.

Creating a department per site is the common error. It splits your reporting on the wrong axis and doubles the structure you maintain.

Example: HC Corp keeps one Engineering department and records its London, New York, Abidjan, and Cairo offices as locations. Reporting can group engineers by department or by site without either being duplicated, even though those sites sit under different legal entities.

What locations reach beyond this screen

Locations are used well outside the organization section, which is why an accurate list matters more than it looks.

Option	Description
Holiday calendars	Public holidays can be scoped to a location, so a holiday applies only to the people based there.
Attendance and geofences	An allowed check-in area can be linked to a location and seeded from its coordinates.
Coverage rules	Minimum staffing is defined per location.
Positions	A position records the location it sits at.

Example: a bank holiday scoped to HC Corp UK Ltd’s London location is excluded from leave-day counts for London staff and not for New York staff. That behaviour depends on the location record existing and people being assigned to it.

Deletion is blocked while employees are assigned

Deleting a location warns that it cannot be undone and states plainly that if employees are assigned to this location, deletion will be blocked.

That guard is specific to locations. Departments, business units, and teams do not have it — they warn but do not stop you. Do not assume the protection is general.

To remove a location that is in use, reassign the employees first.

What happens next

Locations become selectable on employee records, on positions, and on the surfaces that scope by place — holiday calendars, geofences, and coverage rules. Where you operate across sites with different working patterns or public holidays, getting people assigned to the right location is what makes those behave correctly.