Worklogix Blog

Tag: leadership

  • Performance, Talent, and Skills: Designing a Smarter SAP SuccessFactors Experience

    Performance, Talent, and Skills: Designing a Smarter SAP SuccessFactors Experience

    When organizations implement SAP SuccessFactors, the technology is rarely the hard part. The real challenge is making thoughtful design decisions that balance structure, adoption, and long-term value.

    Below are some of the most important considerations we guide clients through when designing Performance & Goal Management, Dynamic Teams, Talent Development, and Talent Intelligence Hub (Skills/Competencies)—based on real-world implementations and leading practices.

    Performance & Goal Management: Structure with Purpose

    One of the earliest decisions organizations face is whether performance reviews will include ratings.

    Leading practice is yes—most organizations use a 5-point scale. While SuccessFactors allows flexibility (3-point, 5-point, or even custom scales), odd-numbered scales tend to drive clearer differentiation. Rating labels can be fully text-based for managers and employees, while numeric values still operate behind the scenes to support analytics and downstream processes.

    If an organization chooses to go ratingless, it’s important to pause and ask:
    How will performance inform compensation, succession, and talent decisions?
    Ratingless models require stronger narrative rigor and often more mature processes to remain effective.

    Continuous Performance Management

    SuccessFactors offers two complementary capabilities:

    • Continuous Feedback – A leading-practice recommendation to enable from day one. It encourages real-time recognition and coaching without adding administrative burden.
    • Continuous Performance (Activities & Achievements) – Best positioned as a longer-term goal (in our opinion). While powerful, many organizations find it overwhelming at launch when layered on top of formal goal-setting and year-end reviews.

    The key is adoption: more functionality doesn’t always mean better outcomes.

    AI in Performance & Goals

    AI-assisted capabilities can enhance goal writing, feedback quality, and review consistency. While additional licensing may be required, these tools are increasingly part of forward-looking performance strategies and worth evaluating early.

    Dynamic Teams & OKRs: Flexibility for Modern Work

    Dynamic Teams enable organizations to form teams outside traditional hierarchies and manage work using Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).

    This functionality can be incredibly valuable for project-based or matrixed organizations—but it’s also newer within SuccessFactors. For some clients, it makes sense to adopt immediately; for others, it’s a strong candidate for a future phase, as SAP continues to expand its capabilities.

    The guiding question we recommend asking is simple:
    Will this add clarity and alignment—or complexity?

    Typically, this is not a Day 1 feature turned on at our customers.

    Career & Talent Development: Turning Data into Decisions

    The 9-Box Grid

    The standard 9-box within Succession Management remains a cornerstone of talent reviews. Leading practice uses:

    • 3 sustained performance ratings
    • 3 potential ratings

    If performance ratings are based on a 5-point scale, organizations must define how those ratings translate into the 3-point performance dimension of the 9-box (hence, our key addition of “sustained” performance).

    Ownership matters too. Mature organizations typically empower managers to place employees into the grid, while others may rely on executives or HR Business Partners until readiness increases.

    Talent Reviews & Presentations

    The most effective talent reviews integrate the 9-box directly into structured discussions, often using SuccessFactors Presentations to support consistency and executive visibility.

    Successor Readiness

    Leading practice readiness definitions include:

    • Ready now
    • Ready in 1–2 years
    • Ready in 3–5 years

    SuccessFactors also supports Emergency Replacement, identifying immediate successors in the event of an unexpected vacancy—an increasingly important capability for critical roles.

    Learning & Development Integration

    Day-one value comes from allowing employees to link learning activities directly to development goals.
    More advanced organizations later expand this by associating competencies with learning, enabling targeted searches and more personalized development paths.

    Calibration: Aligning Decisions Across the Organization

    Calibration ensures fairness and consistency. Leading practice is to use both:

    • Performance Calibration – Focused on performance ratings
    • Succession Calibration – Focused on 9-box placement

    When used, calibration steps should be intentionally embedded in the route map, not treated as an afterthought.

    Opportunity Marketplace: Making Talent More Visible

    Opportunity Marketplace connects employees to:

    • Learning activities
    • Mentoring
    • Projects
    • Internal job opportunities

    When integrated with Learning, Talent Development, and Recruiting, it becomes a powerful tool for mobility and engagement. AI-driven opportunity recommendations can further enhance adoption, though licensing considerations may apply.

    Talent Intelligence Hub: Building the Skills Foundation

    Skills & Competencies

    A successful Talent Intelligence Hub implementation starts with clarity:

    • What skills matter?
    • What competencies define success?
    • Are there existing catalogs—or do they need to be rationalized?

    Leading practice is to focus initially on skills and competencies only, deferring additional attributes (traits, behaviors) until integration maturity improves across the suite.

    Job Profile Builder

    If possible, jobs in Employee Central should map 1:1 to job roles in Talent. Skills and competencies are mapped at the job level (within Job Profile Builder)—not the job level hierarchy itself—an important distinction for accurate modeling.

    Growth Portfolio

    Growth Portfolio defines how skills live at the employee level. For initial releases, leading practice is:

    • View-only access for employees and managers
    • No self-selection of skills without approval workflows

    More advanced edit and approval models can be introduced later, once governance and definitions are well established.

    Final Thought

    The most successful SuccessFactors implementations aren’t defined by how much functionality is turned on—but by how intentionally it’s designed.

    At Worklogix, we help organizations make these decisions with adoption, scalability, and business impact in mind—so talent processes don’t just exist in the system, but actually work in practice. Do you need help implementing or supporting your SAP SuccessFactors system?  Contact info@worklogix.com for assistance

  • SAP SuccessFactors: Performance Form Design Flaws and How to Avoid Them

    SAP SuccessFactors: Performance Form Design Flaws and How to Avoid Them

    Learn the pitfalls to avoid in order to create a performance form that is impactful and provides clarity, evidence, balance, and has a future focus.

    Here are some of the ways forms measure the wrong things and here are some tips to improve the performance review process.

    What Not to Do #1

    Measure behavior not results. Typically attendance, compliance, and soft competencies are scored. Responses are vague and do not provide guidance on what to continue to do and what to work on to improve.

    What to Do Instead #1

    Connect measures to business outcomes. Do not rate just easily observable behaviors.  Include rating for strategic impact, customer value deliverance, growth in role.

    What Not to Do #2

    Use vague ratings.

    Ratings of Does Not Meet Expectations, Meets Expectations and Exceeds Expectations are vague and subjective at best. Two managers could rate an employee completely different using this rating scale.

    What to Do Instead #2

    Create a scoring system that is well defined with examples for each score. Also provide calibration rules. Tie ratings to business impact and not on personal opinion.

    What Not to Do #3

    One Size Fits All Form

    An organization with sales, marketing, research, and manufacturing cannot rate the varied roles using the same form. Each drives values in a different way. Customize role-specific scorecards based on the work that produces value.

    What to Do Instead #3

    Use a shared framework that stresses company-wide values, and standards. Have one form style but use different measures per job family.

    What Not to Do #4

    Make form too long and have too many steps

    Some forms ask too many questions and have crazy workflows. This causes employees and managers to feel pressure to complete the forms under tight deadlines which leads to rushed and low quality responses.

    What to Do Instead #4

    Ask fewer and better questions. Use evidence-based assessment using metrics and outcomes, anything to remove ambiguity. If a question adds no decision making value, it doesn’t belong on the form.

    What Not to Do #5

    Use of Generic Competency Frameworks

    While competencies such as “embraces change”, or “drives innovation” are aspirational, they are hard to rate objectively.

    What to Do Instead #5

    Competencies should be observable, job-relevant, linked to business outcomes and have defined behaviors for each level.

    What Not to Do #6

    Have Forms Built for HR

    Forms that allow box checking, reporting, and legal defense are great for HR but are not tailored to the manager and employee.

    What to Do Instead #6

    Optimize form with clear feedback, meaningful coaching conversation and have to have better performance in the next go round with no surprises.

    What Not to Do #7

    Have Unusable Output

    Weak performance forms don’t tie into development plans, pay decisions, drive staffing decisions or shape promotion paths. Don’t heavily lean towards rating subjective skills.

    What to Do Instead #7

    A well-designed form is operational, in that leaders use the output to allocate talent, managers use it to coach and employees use it to grow.

    Overall Tips for a Better From

    Make the form operational:

    • Provide clear, concise feedback
    • Have a balanced discussion: talk about strengths, but don’t neglect areas that are opportunities for growth
    • Create a path forward which identifies clear expectations, of view of what success looks like and how it is measured
    • Be fair and consistent in the assessment; avoid bias, assumptions, and judgments
    • Have a two way dialog with opportunity to ask questions, discuss challenges, invite reflection

    You should now be on your way to crafting a well created performance form. Just remember that it should be comprehensive in that it assess an employee’s performance, encourages their growth, and support the organization’s mission.

    Do you need help implementing or supporting your SAP SuccessFactors system?  Contact info@worklogix.com for assistance, download our support services brochure, or visit https://www.worklogix.com/implementation.html for additional information.