Author: Susan Traynor

An employee is empowered to manage their career through the use of the SuccessFactors Career Worksheet. The Career Worksheet, a component of the Career Development module, allows an employee to view details about job roles that interest them, see the role’s associated competencies and select a targeted or future role. Once selected, a role readiness assessment form can be initiated to measure how ready an employee is for the potential future role.

The Role Readiness Assessment form, accessed from the Career Worksheet will identify competency gaps for the target role and help an employee plan development steps to prepare for the role. The employee’s proficiency for each of the role’s competencies is rated and an overall role readiness rating is calculated based on the em­ployee’s actual competency ratings against the expected competency ratings for the role.

Before we look what is required to set up the Role Readiness Assessment form, let’s confirm that you are using development goals with competencies, Job Profile Builder (JPB), and the Career Worksheet. The remainder of this post is based on these assumptions.

Career Development Planning Settings in Provisioning

Before outlining the permissions needed for the Role Readiness Assessment form, let’s review the settings that are required for Career Development Planning.

To get started, you will need Provisioning access. Within Company Settings in the Goal Frameworks section, Goal Management Suite (Total Goal Management) and My Goals Tab should be enabled.

Under Career & Development Planning in the Goal Frameworks section, enable CDP Full (Development Plan) which also enables Development Plan V12. Enable Career Worksheet which also enables Career Worksheet V12. Enable Career Path V2 as well so that Career Paths may be created and used by employees with the Career Worksheet.

After enabling the Goal Frameworks settings, make sure Verions 12 UI framework (Revolution), Enable Generic Objects, and Enable the Attachment Manager are set as well.

Provisioning Settings for Job Profile Builder

The Role Readiness Assessment form relies on competencies linked to job roles. Competencies should be mapped to job roles using Job Profile Builder. There are some additional settings needed in Company Settings in order to use Job Profile Builder in the instance.

JDM v2.0 /Skills Management should be enabled.

In order to use Job Profile Builder, the Competency Library Management Suite should not be enabled.

A competency library which contains all of the competencies used for your organization is required. This is critical for the Role Readiness Assessment form to work. The form rates competencies linked to a role, therefore job roles must be linked to competencies in a competency library. Make sure there is a competency library in use. The SuccessFactors Competency Library 2.1 has the expanded list of competencies or you may create a custom competency library.

Career Development Templates in Provisioning

Three of the four templates used within the Career Development module may be found in Provisioning under Managing Plan Template: Development Plan, Learning Activities, and Career Worksheet.

The fourth template, used for the Role Readiness Assessment form is found under Form Template Administration.

Click on the link to see all of the existing templates. Scroll through the listing of form templates to find the standard Role Readiness Assessment template.

Career Worksheet V12 must be enabled and there should be a Career Worksheet template in order to see the standard Role Readiness Assessment template.

Role Based Permissions for the Admin Role

There are some role based permissions in the instance that must be set up for the system or HR administrator and employee roles. The admin role will need to manage and configure various features for Career Development Planning. In the instance, go to Manage Permission Roles. For the admin role, select Manage Career Development under the Administrator Permissions section.

To manage the Career Worksheet, Development Admin and Manage Career Path permissions are needed. Admin Career Development Plan Export Data permission is optional.

The admin role requires Job Profile Builder access in order to configure job profiles and map job roles and competencies to the profiles.

Access is also needed for components of Career Development Planning: development plan, Career Worksheet and suggested roles for the worksheet.

Under User Permissions>Goals, the admin role will also need access to the Career Development Plan and the Career Worksheet.

Role Based Permissions for the Employee Role

The employee role needs to have permissions set up to be able to access the Role Readiness Assessment form. A link within the Career Worksheet will open the role readiness assessment form, bypassing the usual form creation steps.

There are some role based permissions that need to be set up for the employee role for this link to work.

Grant “Permission to Create Forms” for the Role Readiness Assessment template

The employee role will need Performance Management Access under Performance User Permissions.

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The employee role will also need Permission to Create Forms which is found in the General User Permission section. Select the Others radio button and select the Role Readiness Assessment form.

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This permission is in addition to CDP permissions that should be set for access to development plans, the Career Worksheet and Career Paths.

The employee role will need access to view the Career Path. This permission will allow the user to browse career paths from the Career Worksheet.

Under User Permissions>Goals, the employee role will also need access to the Career Development Plan and the Career Worksheet.

Competency Expected Ratings Set Up

Now that the employee role permissions are set, we will look at the competencies for a job role and how they are rated on the form. The goal of the Role Readiness Assessment form is to rate the employee’s mastery of the competencies needed for the targeted role.

It is within Job Profile Content where roles should be linked to competencies from the competency library.

When mapping the competencies to a role, you will see the competency library to select from.

The system uses a cal­culation to compute a competency score which will demonstrate how ready an employee is for the targeted role. The role readiness calculation relies on an expected rating for each competency for a role. The readiness score is based on a comparison between the em­ployee’s actual competency rating with the ex­pected competency rating. Rating the roles’ competencies also identify areas of development that are needed in order to succeed in a future role.

The expected rating is configured within Job Profile Builder on the job role’s mapped competencies. The admin defines the expected competency ratings for each job role.

Assigning Expected Ratings to Role Competencies

In order to set the expected ratings for each competency on a job profile (a job role is attached to a profile), go to Manage Job Profile Content>Set Up Families and Roles.

A job role is associated with a job profile. Select a role to update by clicking on the role name. The content of the role will now be editable.

The screen will have tabs for mapped job codes, mapped skills, mapped competencies and mapped talent pools. Each tab will include a count for the mappings.

Go to the Mapped Competencies tab. Any competencies that are mapped to the job role will display. Competencies must be mapped to a role in order for the Role Readiness Assessment to work. If a role does not have competencies and it is selected as a target role, the Role Readiness Assessment form will not have any competencies to rate. So be sure to map competencies to each role.

The Rating column that is needs populated for each competency mapped to a role. The rating column is used to add the expected ratings and % weight for each competency. To create the expecting rating for a competency, click on the calculator icon in the Rating column.

Scores are entered on the pop up to determine the expected rating % for the competency.

Based on the rating scale used on the Role Readiness Assessment form, enter the lowest and highest scores in the rating range along with the expected proficiency rating.  In this example, the readiness scale has scores 1 to 5 with 1 being the lowest score and 5 being the highest score.

Assign an expected score. This would represent proficiency needed to succeed in this competency. The Compute button becomes active once the 3 scores are populated. Click on the Compute button and the calculated expected rating % is computed. Click the Apply button to finalize the calculation.

After computing, the calculated expected rating % is populated for the competency. In this example, using a rating scale of 1-5, the expected rating is 50% of the highest score.

After applying the calculation, back on the Edit: Role screen, the rating % is populated.

Continue to create the expected rating for each competency for the role. Once all of the ratings are populated, save the role.

You may also fill in the weight column to identify how much weight each competency holds. If left blank, the competencies are weighted equally in the overall readiness calculation.

You will need to identify the competencies mapped to every role and setting the expected rating for each.

Targeted Job Roles without Mapped Competencies

As mentioned earlier, Job profiles (with associated role) need to have mapped competencies in order for the Role Readiness Assessment form to work properly.

To better explain why this is critical, here are 2 examples.

Example #1: Role without competencies.

Within Manage Job Profile Content>Set Up Families and Roles, here is a job role that has no mapped competencies.

When this role is selected in the Career Worksheet, there are no competencies listed.

And when the employee selects the target role to evaluate their readiness, the form will have no competencies to rate.

If the role does not have competencies, it is impossible to evaluate an employee’s readiness for the role. The readiness meter will not calculate readiness for the role and there will be no gap graphs since there are no competencies.

Targeted Roles with Mapped Competencies but no Expected Ratings

Example #2: Job role has mapped competencies but no expected ratings

If a job role does have mapped competencies but the expected ratings are not set, there will be issues as well.

Here is a job role with mapped competencies. However, the role does not have any expected ratings set for the competencies; the rating column for each competency is blank.

If an employee selects this role to evaluate in the Career Worksheet, the three competencies are listed for the role.

So this part works correctly; the competencies display for the target role.

And the employee can go into the Role Readiness Assessment form and is able to rate on each of the competencies.

The issue occurs back on the Career Worksheet upon form completion. The Readiness Meter for the role has not calculated the readiness percentage. The calculation needs expected ratings and without them there is no readiness. So “Role is not ready” will display instead of a readiness percentage.

In addition, the gap graph for each competency only shows the actual rating and not the expected rating.

Without expected ratings for each competency, the gap graph will only display the actual competency rating.

Hopefully these examples point out the pitfalls of not having mapped competencies for roles as well as roles having mapped competencies but no expected competency ratings.

Other things to consider

If any of the roles being considered have mutual competencies, the readiness meter will populate for all of them after a role assessment is completed. In other words, if an employee has selected a few targeted roles that share a competency, when a role readiness assessment form is completed for one of the roles, the readiness meter will calculate readiness for any other targeted role that has the competency. Since expected ratings can vary by role, the same competency might display different gap values for different roles.

The form should be configured to auto-populate all of the competencies for the role. The form template should show that the competencies are job specific.

This can be set in the template in the instance by selecting Job Specific.

Ratings Calculation

Role readiness may be calculated in one of two ways:

• Summing up the number of competencies for the role
• Averaging out the competency readiness

Summing

Role readiness can be calculated as the percentage ratio between employees’ ready competencies and the total of required competencies for the role. Each expected rating met is worth a full point and each rating not met is worth zero.

The calculation would look like this:

(number of competencies the employee is ready for)/(total number of required competencies) * 100%.

To be “ready” for a competency, the system checks the employee’s current rating and the expected rating. If the current rating is equal to or greater than the expected rating, the employee is considered ready for this competency. The competency is then assigned a value of 1.

The system will then count up all the “ready” competencies to use in the calculation.

Here is an example. The targeted role has 5 competencies, each with an expected rating of 4. The employee has competency ratings below the expected ratings for 3 of the 5 competencies. The equation would be: (2/5) * 100%. The readiness for the role would be 40%. This percentage would appear on the readiness meter for the role on the Career Worksheet once the form is completed.

Averaging

A new option introduced in 2018 is a proportional calculation in which each competency rating is weighted as a percentage of the expected rating. A readiness score calculated proportionally may be more accurate in showing how close an employee is to full role readiness.

In this method, the readiness for each competency is determined and then an average is calculated for the role readiness percentage.

The system identifies readiness for each competency:

• 100% for any current rating that meets or exceeds the expected rating.
• 0% for no current rating for competency
• 0 for no expected competency rating
• when current rating is less than the expected rating, readiness is determined by calculation: (current rating – lowest rating in scale)/(expected rating – lowest rating in scale) * 100%

Once a percent readiness is determined for the role, the percentages are tallied. The sum is then divided by the total of competencies for the role.

To use the average calculation method, the Career Worksheet XML must contain the following switch:

<switch for=”new-role-readiness-calculation” value=”on”/>

If no switch configuration is added, the default calculation for role readiness is summing.

Display Targeted Role Name in Title of Role Readiness Assessment form

The title of the self-assessment form contains the targeted role name.

This occurs when the Company System and Logo Settings have “All documents will display their form template name at the time the document was created.” enabled. This option does not support translations of the document name.

If “All documents will display their current form template name as configured in the Form Administration settings. This option supports translations of the document name.” is enabled, the form will not contain the target role name.

When form is run with this setting, the targeted title is omitted.

Troubleshooting: Evaluate your readiness link not appearing on Career Worksheet

After setting up the Role Readiness Assessment template the Evaluate your readiness link is not visible on the Career Worksheet. Here are some possible reasons for not seeing the link:

• The Role Readiness Assessment form has not been configured in the Career Worksheet template (it needs to be configured for each locale). In order for the link from the Career Worksheet to the Role Readiness Assessment to work, the readiness form template ID must be identified in the Career Worksheet XML.
• Employee role does not have the “Performance Management Access” permission in RBP and/or does not have “Permission to Create Forms” for the assessment template that was configured.
• Proxying as the employee and trying to launch the Role Readiness Assessment form. This is a self-assessment function and the action is not supported by proxy feature. So, the “Evaluate your Readiness” link will only appear to the logged-in user directly (it will not appear if you are proxying as the user).

When the form is used in multiple languages, there needs to be one entry for each.

Troubleshooting: Role Readiness Percentages Not Appearing on Career Worksheet

Once the Role Readiness Assessment is complete, the role readiness percentages should appear for each targeted role. If the percentages do not appear, make sure the same rating scale is used for the Role Readiness Assessment and the Career Worksheet.

Make sure the rating scale referenced in the career worksheet XML is the same as the role readiness template rating scale. Otherwise, once role readiness form is done, the percentages will not display.

Launching Role Readiness Assessment for Current Role

The Career Worksheet XML can be configured to allow employees to launch the Role Readiness Assessment form for their current role. This is accomplished with the following switch added to the Career Worksheet XML.

<switch for=”show-self-assessment-in-current-role-tab” value=”on”/>

Create a current-self-assessment tag making sure to identify the form to use.

After the updated Career Worksheet XML is imported in Provisioning, the Current Roles tab will contain a link to evaluate readiness.

Click the link to open the form for the current role.

Some final reminders

• Competency ratings are not differentiated by role; if current and targeted role share a competency, rating will apply to both.
• Do not calculate an overall performance rating with the form.
• If a competency is defined in a specific language but the employee signs into the system in a different language, that competency will not appear in the form.
• Competency ratings are not differentiated by role; if current and targeted role share a competency, rating will apply to both roles.
• When employees open the Career Worksheet, the role readiness shown in the worksheet is always calculated based on the latest ratings.
• Route the form to the manager for a final rating, do not have the employee enter the rating of record.
• Only ratings from completed forms are displayed in the Career Worksheet.

Do you need help setting up the Role Readiness form or your SuccessFactors Career Development Implementation? Contact us at: info@worklogix.com