Employee Reporting Relationships - Manager vs Supervisor

There are two fields in Banner that identify reporting relationship for employees, the manager and the supervisor. These fields also referred to as "Reports To" (for the manager) and "Supervised By" (for the supervisor), due to the Banner names for the respective fields. The information on this page is designed to explain the difference in the two fields, how they are used, and how they are updated to ensure accuracy.

Manager ("Reports To")

An employee's Manager is associated with their position (think of the box on an org chart... an employee's position box connects to their manager's position box), and should reflect the true managerial reporting relationship for the position. This field is used by employment areas for determining reporting structures of departments. The Manager field is also used by UNMJobs, and serves as the basis for routing staff performance evaluations. The Manager field is updated via a position maintenance request to the relevant employment area. In addition, updates for staff employee's may be made by college and division HR Agents via the HR Reports "Reports To" report. If your department requires a significant number of updates to Staff Managers, you can complete the following form to request that HR process these updates on your behalf: Staff Reports To Update Template.xlsx For more information on these requests, contact hrit@unm.edu.

Supervisor ("Supervised By")

An employee's Supervisor is associated with their job (think of the name inside the box on an org chart... the supervisor connection is based on people, with an employee connected to a supervisor), and should reflect the person with supervisory responsibilities for the job. The Supervisor field is used by several IT applications across campus for the purpose of communications and approvals, including Learning Central, Chrome River, and the BAR. In most cases, the Manager and the Supervisor are the same person. However, there are cases where they are in fact different people. This is typically driven by a manager delegating responsibility for administrative tasks and approvals that require modifying a supervisor - for instance, faculty members in a department may have a department administrator as their supervisor for approval purposes, but their Manager appropriately reflects their department chair. The Supervisor field is updated via a Supervisor Change ePAF.

	Manager (Reports To)	Supervisor (Supervised By)
What does it represent?	Position to position (think title to title) reporting relationship: Accountant 2 reports to Department Administrator Associate Professor reports to Department Chair	Job to job (think person to person) reporting relationship: Louie Lobo is supervised by Lucy Lobo
How is it used?	Reporting relationships for compliance reporting Staff performance review routing in UNMJobs "My Team," organization structure, and manager permissions in UNMJobs	Learning Central supervisor notifications Banner Authorization Request supervisor approvals Chrome River supervisor approvals "My Team" organization structure in Banner 9 Employee Dashboard Supervisor permissions in LoboTime
Where is it in Banner?	NBAPOSN(form)/NBBPOSN(table)	NBAJOBS(form)/NBRJOBS(table)
How is it updated?	Updated via the HR Reports "Reports To" report or a position maintenance request to respective Employment Area. "HR Reports To Update" BAR roles required to process updates via the Reports To report.	Updated via Supervisor Change ePAF. "ePAF Originator" BAR roles are required to process updates via ePAF.
When are updates required?	Typically changes less frequently, as updates are only needed when positions change during reorganizations, reclassifications, etc.	Typically changes more frequently, as updates are needed when employees or supervisor change jobs.
What about pooled positions (students, temps, or on-calls)?	Because the Manager is driven by the position to position relationship, all employees in a pooled position will share the same manager: For instance, if the manager associated with a student employee position is a department administrator, all students sharing that position number would report to that same department administrator.	Because the Supervisor is driven by the job to job relationship, each employee in a pooled position is able to have a distinct supervisor.