Employees are empowered to manage their career through the use of the SuccessFactors Career Worksheet. The Career Worksheet is a component of the Career Development module which allows employees to view details about job roles that interest them, see the role’s associated competencies and select any as targeted or future roles.
When Job Profile Builder (JPB) is enabled and job profiles are defined, a switch may be set so that the Career Worksheet syncs with JPB. The sync enables role details from JPB to be used in the Career Worksheet.
How does the Career Worksheet work?
Employees may identify roles or career paths they may be interested in. They may the view details about job roles, including the associated competencies. This will enable the employee to gain an understanding of the development effort required to move into these roles.
After the employee selects a job role that they are interested in, there is link on the Career Worksheet to a form that evaluates their readiness for the role. The form measures the readiness by the rating the competencies associated with the target role, not the competencies of the employee’s current role.
The results of the role readiness form help employees plan their career development. By adding roles they are considering to Career Worksheet, they can track and measure their development to prepare themselves for the future roles and responsibilities.
The Career Worksheet also provides a competency gap analysis so the employee can see areas they need to work on in order to be ready to move into the role. This enables them to create development goals to help them attain the needed competencies to progress.
The Career Worksheet may also include a readiness meter based on a readiness calculation which computes a competency match score which compares the employee’s competency rating with the expected ratings for the role. This percentage shows how ready an employee is for a targeted role.
Components of the Career Worksheet
Worksheet tabs
The Career Worksheet contains two tabs: My Job Roles and Suggested Roles.
My Job Roles tab
My Job Roles tab contains two sub-tabs: Job Roles I’m Considering and My Current Roles.
Each sub-tab label includes a job role count.
The Job Roles I’m Considering tab displays a job role count of zero until job roles are selected. This sub-tab will not contain any data or competencies until the employee selects any future targeted role(s).
The My Current Roles sub-tab displays the employee’s current role and the competencies and any development goals associated with each competency.
Job Roles I’m Considering sub-tab
The employee may browse all job roles or the system generated suggested roles.
Click on Browse job roles… to see roles organized by job family. The employee may select multiple roles as target roles.
To select targeted roles from the My Job Roles tab, click on View suggested roles…
The Suggested Roles tab will display.
If filtering is enabled, the employee may select the job family or specific competencies to find roles for.
This filter will cause the suggested roles to display only the roles that contain the selected competency.
The other method to see the suggested roles is to go directly to the Suggested Roles tab on the Career Worksheet. This tab will be discussed later in detail.
My Current Roles sub-tab
The My Current Roles sub-tab displays the employee’s current role and the competencies and any development goals associated with each competency.
The competencies mapped to roles are the only sources of competencies used on the Career Worksheet. This is where the job profile builder comes into play. The components of the job role from Job Profile Builder are pulled into the Career Worksheet. The roles seen on the worksheet are linked to a job code (job classification) where the competencies are mapped.
Any existing development goals linked to the competency are included along with the development goal count. There is also an option to add development goals to the role’s competency.
If the current role has a career path, it may be viewed on the My Current Roles tab. This is a graphical representation of the progressive roles an employee may hold as they grow within the organization.
Any role within the career path may be viewed to see the job profile which contains the role description and competencies for the role.
Suggested Roles tab
The suggested roles are based on configured criteria. The system utilizes an algorithm to produce the list of suggested roles and calculates a score for the role based on proximity in Career Path, Competency, Job Family, Open Positions and Popularity within team.
Add a Targeted Role
Employees may click on a suggested role and add it to their career worksheet as a future targeted role.
Within the Suggested Roles tab, clicking on the plus sign for a role to add it as a target role.
Once selected, a message displays that the role has successfully added as a target role.
A targeted or future role will be seen on the My Job Roles tab, Job Roles I’m Considering sub-tab. The competencies associated with the role are listed as well. If the employee’s current role contains any of the same competencies and they have a development goal linked to a competency the development count will also be listed.
It is also possible to view the career path for any roles under consideration. Within the career path, a role may be selected to add as targeted role.
The career path for the job role displays. The job role in the career path is highlighted and starred.
Any role within the path may be selected as a targeted role.
Once selected, the targeted role appears on the Career Worksheet as a Role I’m Considering sub-tab within the My Job Roles tab.
Targeted Roles Icons
Once a target role in selected, on the Job Roles I’m Considering sub-tab, an Information icon will be visible and will provide instruction on how to navigate through the selected roles and add or delete roles.
Each targeted role will have a Readiness meter along with up to 3 icons: Role Details, Make this the default target role and Add New Learning Activity.
Note: if LMS is not used or not linked to the development module, the learning activity icon will not be present.
Click the Role Details icon to see the job profile associated with the role. The contents of the job profile may include the role description, competencies, minimum requirements, education, certifications, and job responsibilities.
Clicking the star icon will make this the default target role.
After choosing any additional job roles, selected targeted roles will display on the Job Roles I’m Considering sub-tab. Until a role readiness form is completed, the readiness meter will show that the role is not ready.
Role Readiness
An important component of the Career Worksheet is the Role Readiness Assessment form. The form creates metrics that help employees plan their career development. When the employee adds roles they are considering to the Career Worksheet, they can launch the form. The form enables employees to review the targeted role’s competencies and rate their proficiency to determine their readiness for the role. This allows them to identify the competency gaps for the target position or future role so that know what areas they need to work on. They can track and measure their development to prepare themselves for the future roles and responsibilities.
A few notes about the Role Readiness Assessment form
- Only employees can launch the assessment form for their targeted role.
- It is not possible to launch the form when proxied as another user.
- There is a link within the worksheet that opens the role readiness self-assessment form, bypassing the usual form creation steps.
- The form will auto-populate all of the competencies for the role.
- The system uses the Career Worksheet readiness calculation to compute a competency match score which compares the employee’s competency rating with the expected rating for the role.
- Any other targeted roles that contain the same competencies will have the Readiness Meter updated after the form is completed.
- Once the form is complete, the updated ratings are used in the Career Worksheet to show the role readiness.
- The employee may relaunch the form as many times as they like and each time the readiness will be recalculated.
Launching the form
The form is launched when the employee selects a targeted role from the Job Roles I’m Considering sub-tab on the My Job Roles tab and then clicks on Evaluate your readiness.
The employee will rate themselves on the competencies needed for the future role. These are the competencies that are mapped to the targeted role.
Ratings for each competency will be required with optional comments for each. Upon completion, form goes to their manager for their assessment of the employee’s mastery of the needed competencies.
The Manager will get form in their inbox and will need to rate each competency, add optional comments for each competency and provide comments for areas to focus on. The ratings and comments from the employee will be visible.
After the manager step is complete, the form may go back to the employee to view and submit to completion. NOTE: this is based on the steps from the standard Role Readiness form template.
The completed form will appear in the employee and manager’s completed folder.
When the employee goes back into the Career Worksheet, the readiness meter for the role that the employee is considering will now contain a percentage. This percentage represents how ready they are for the role based on their competency ratings against the expected ratings for the role.
Readiness Meter
The Career Worksheet calculates employee readiness for a role by evaluating the employee’s rated competencies for the future role.
The competencies for a role are configured to determine the expected rating. An employee’s readiness for the role depends on the form’s rating of the competencies against the expected ratings.
By default, the system uses the latest rating information in the system. The admin may also configure to specify a form or a couple of forms as the source of the existing ratings.
Role Competency Expected Ratings
Competency mappings to roles are the sole source of competencies listed on the career worksheet. And only ratings from completed forms are displayed in the career worksheet.
Gaps are calculated using the expected rating from Families and Roles. Since expected ratings can vary by role, the same competency might display different gap values for different roles. The admin may define default weights and/or the ratings expected based on the job role.
The form can be generated again whenever Evaluate your readiness displays on the Career Worksheet. It may be relaunched again and again for the same targeted or any other roles under consideration.
Any additional forms that are completed will then recalculate the readiness meter based on the new ratings. It is also possible to add more roles to consider and run the form for the new roles. There will be a date that shows when the role assessment form was last run so you know when the readiness was calculated. The meter always uses the most recent role readiness ratings.
If any of the roles being considered have mutual competencies, the readiness meter will populate for all of them.
Gap Graph
On the Career Worksheet, the gap graph shows the rating for each competency based on the form ratings and what the expected rating is. There is a gap analysis for each competency, comparing the last rating of record specified for the employee with the expected rating for that role.
The blue line in the graph represents the form rating score and the green line represents the expected rating. If the form rating matches the expected rating, the competency is considered “met”.
For each of the role’s competencies, there will be a count of the roles that also have this competency linked to it. This can be expanded to see the other roles.
The targeted role competencies that do not meet the expected rating will display first. These are the competencies that that the employee needs to develop in order to be ready for the role. These will have the green line visible in the graph because the form rating is lower than the expected rating.
These are the competency the employee may wish to add development goal to in order to help them prepare for this role.
The targeted role competencies that the employee has met will be displayed after the competency that need work. There will be no gap for these competencies because the form rating matches the expected rating.
Additional Features of the Career Worksheet
The Career Worksheet has a count of the employees in the targeted role. The list of employees in the role may be displayed.
There is an indicator to set so the preferred next role appears on the profile under Preferred Next Move. Enable checkbox to make the targeted role visible in the employee’s profile. There is a link to go to People Profile. The targeted role will display as the preferred next move.
Wrap up
The Career Worksheet puts power into the hands of the employees so they can take charge of their careers and plan for the future. When Job Profile Builder is enabled, the employee has visibility to roles that will enhance their ability to drive their development and guide their career.
More to come…
Look for the next installment to discuss how to set up the Career Worksheet and Role Readiness Assessment form.
For more information about Role Readiness and other talent management modules in SAP SuccessFactors, check out our book here!
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Hi Susan,
Great article, although i wanna ask, in your article you say that users can rate their own readiness for a role using role readiness assessment, was wondering, is it possible to import/upload historical rating data of a users to the system so its visible on the career worksheet?
Looking forward for your reply, Thank you so much,
Best regards,
Yoshua
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Hi Yoshua,
That is a great question. Career Worksheet uses the employee’s most recent job role competency ratings in the system to calculate readiness. When launching the role readiness form from Career Worksheet you may identify a specific form or forms as the competencies ratings source. In other words, the data source for ratings are form based. Historical ratings may only be imported as overall ratings into a user’s specific PM form. However, role readiness only uses individual job role competency ratings. There is no method to import each of the employee’s job role competencies into their PM form in order for the role readiness template to use those ratings to calculate readiness. I hope this answers your question.
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