Not surprisingly for Onboarding, most of the feature enhancements revolve around compliance. The biggest news is the release of compliance forms for the USA (I-9, E-Verify, W-4. SWF and standard forms). There were some customers in the USA hesitant to jump into Onboarding 2.0 until this happened. In addition, you can also create custom compliance forms if any happen to be missing for you country. Problem solved!
Onboarding is also now included in the platform-wide features of Data Purge, Read Audit, Change Audit, and Information Report. There was a major overhaul of the Read Audit report screen to assign specific fields as sensitive across most modules (see below screenshot), and onboarding is included in this. You can use the new screen to pick which fields you deem are sensitive instead of the system only assuming ethnicity, minority, and ssn are sensitive.
New Read Audit Configuration Screen Where you can choose which fields are sensitive
Additionally, there’s a ton of features to organize and enhance compliance usability. There’s now a way to add a compliance step to your standard workflow for the onboarding process (see below). Compliance forms can also now be categorized based on document type. Email notifications can also now be sent based on compliance-related events.
Adding a compliance step to the Process Variant Manager
SAP has also added reporting on compliance in People Analytics that allows you to query on the status of compliance forms.
Business Rules
Business Rules continue to expand their usefulness in Onboarding as well. You can now directly edit the event reason in onboarding using a business rule (before you had to make a custom recruiting field for event reason).
Another neat new feature is the ability to customize the user id and employee id formats that get generated automatically. This is accomplished using a business rule and will allow administrators to organize the ids to follow helpful conventions rather than just being entirely up to the system.
Business rules can also be tied to email events for additional categories as well now too (Suite Mapping Error, Nudge Assignment, and Manage Assets Upload Categories). Attachments can also be added to email notifications as well.
All in all, there’s 16 items being changed/enhanced in this release for Onboarding and we didn’t cover every detail here. For more information, check out the What’s New Viewer here.
As of October 9, 2020, SAP has released their documentation for the H2 2020 release. You can view the full set of documentation in the What’s New Viewer here. As a reminder, preview release will be October 16 and production will be released November 20th. For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog here. For tips on how to manage a release, check out or blog here. For your convenience, we’ve summarized the highlights of what’s new for 2020 within Succession and Development below!
Writing Assistant and Coaching Advisor for Job Profile Builder
The biggest news for these modules we’ve seen is that the Job Profile builder now supports the Writing Assistant and Coaching Advisor (see below). This was a big gap that is finally being closed. We had some customers who wanted to use both the Job profile builder and the Writing Assistant and Coaching Advisor. This required creating all of the content for the Coaching Advisor and Writing Assistant in the legacy competency library config screens and then switching on the Job Profile builder and hoping everything got converted OK. If there was a mistake somewhere or something you wanted to add to the Coaching Advisor or Writing assistant…well then there wasn’t a way to fix it without turning off the Job Profile builder. Now this gap is closed and a profile job profile builder compatible maintenance screen for the Writing Assistant and Coaching Advisor exists. Woohoo!
Writing Assistant
Talent Search
Another significant enhancement we’ve seen is to the talent search. Now at the top of the screen there’s a checkbox to toggle between AND/OR logic when searching for background information (see below). We are wondering how this compliments / replaces the “Make All Criteria Optional” button that already existed under the settings menu. You can also add up to 6 criteria within each background element. There’s also a new competency picker in the talent search. The export feature was also enhanced to allow you to reorder and choose which fields can be exported. More fields can also be exported now under Advanced Information and Ratings & Competencies.
Talent Search Showing New Check Box for Before and After
Calibration
Calibration sessions got a neat enhancement where you can now view comments from other calibration sessions so long as they use the same template (see below)! We can see this becoming very useful to organizations that manage multiple sessions across large organizations. This was also enhanced in the Odata API where a new object, “CaibrationSubjectComment”, is available so that these comments are exposed for interfacing.
Calibration Comments Between Sessions
In addition, you can also use autocomplete when searching for people in calibration. Also, if you are attempting to purge a user who happens to be the only facilitator for a session you can now replace the user with an active user and then continue with the purge.
Career Worksheets and Career Explorer
Within Career Worksheets and the Career explorer we’ve seen some nice usability improvements. For example, the ability to remove recommended roles in the career explorer. Users can now remove a recommendation if they no longer wish to see it. This is a nice feature that can help encourage employees to keep looking for other roles instead of just constantly throwing something irrelevant at them. Aside from this, the career worksheet also got a security enhancement where the worksheet is only viewable if the employee is in the user’s target population. The progress bar also swapped colors as shown below. The bars will also show up now for not applicable / too new to rate competencies (they were hidden before).
Before:
After:
But that’s not all!
Development templates and Continuous Performance Management also got another integration point. Now when a user
Matrix views (9-box) also got visual /usability updates. For example, you can now remove the “Too New to Rate” option. You can also view the people cards for employees even when you are zoomed out of their box. You can also select reporting levels in the Matrix Grid Report.
You can now also hide contingent workers in the Succession Org Chart. The “Add Successor” icon also appears now even when there is no successor exists.
Talent pool nominations can also now be approved or rejected. Nomination history for talent pools is also available via the Odata API and People Analytics Stories.
All in all, there’s over 25 items being changed/enhanced in this release and we didn’t cover every detail here. For more information, check out the What’s New Viewer here.
Lately, in a variety of customer engagements for various SAP SuccessFactors modules, I’ve had to bring up the topic of the Job Profile Builder. As a relatively new feature that touches every module, it’s really no wonder! But there’s still a lot of customers who aren’t quite familiar with it. This blog should give you an understanding of what the Job Profile builder is, why you would want to use it, and an overview of what it takes to go about setting it up.
What is the Job Profile Builder?
The Job Profile Builder is an important SuccessFactors Platform feature that enables customers to build and organize a catalog of well-formed jobs. So what exactly is a “job”? If you are familiar with position management in HRIS systems, you’ll know to traditionally think of positions as a seat. One person sites in one seat (I know there’s some exceptions, but let’t not get complicated here). Jobs are an abstraction above positions. So where there might be a Maintenance Tech I position who services a building in San Francisco, there’s also a Maintenance Tech I position in Seattle that does the same thing but is a unique instantiation of a position from the San Francisco position. The job describes the common tasks, required skills, education, & competencies, etc. for these positions. If you’d like an idea of what kinds of information companies associate with a job regardless of the system they use, Mercer has a great article here.
What Benefit Does it Provide?
Quite a few benefits are to be had with a well maintained job catalog. From a business process perspective, it will help you categorize and regulate your positions. For example, standardizing pay bands, required competency levels, government classifications, etc. On the Successfactors side, the Job Profile Builder integrates across all modules and can greatly reduce redundant data entry while helping facilitate the business process benefits. The following integrations are available with the job profile builder:
Employee Central: Direct association with positions in Position Management
Performance Management: Automatic Assignment of Competencies
Succession Management: Successor suggestions based on competency assessments
Compensation: Derive compa-ratio based on link with job grade
Recruiting: Automatic population of job posting description from job profile
Workforce Analytics: Planning based on required job Competencies
LMS: Assigning learning content based on job
In the example screenshot below, we can see how the recruiting integration automatically pulls the job description from the job profile for internal and external requisition postings. This can save your recruiters a great amount of time having to re-type job descriptions for each posting.
Example Job Profile Integration with Recruiting
How does Job Profile Builder work?
There are 3 major components and corresponding configuration screens of the Job Profile builder:
Job Profile Content: Define the options (e.g. drop-downs) that show on the profile. For example what skills or competencies or education types will exist in the system that can be placed on a profile. An example of configuring what degree types will exist for selection in creating a job profile in the system is shown below. There’s also a lot of helpful pre-built content from SAP available for download from the SuccessStore that pops up as you build your content. For more info, see the link here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/70097a1a469d47a0ae08809e4a240f98/2005/en-US/99856fa2c4944001ab5991e92c9454eb.html
Managing Job Profile Content
Job Roles: Roles are what you build the profile around. They represent a specific set of skills, competencies, description, etc. Roles can be associated with job codes which in turn associate to positions. Job roles can also be grouped into similar categories called Job Families. You setup the Job roles within the Job Profile Content screen. See the example below. For more info, see the link here: https://help.sap.com/viewer/70097a1a469d47a0ae08809e4a240f98/2005/en-US/aa2d3d5b1027403bbcffa8b29f70196d.html
Setting up Job Roles
This still doesn’t tell us what the Job profile is….well, when you create a Job Profile you are associating it to a specific Job Role and filling in a specific template with the specific content relevant for that role. So to answer the question of what is a Job Profile?–It is the marriage of these 3 components. You can see in the screenshot below where a specific template is being filled in with the content we have setup in the system to define a particular role.
The Manage Job Profile Screen: Editing the Content on Your Specific Job Profile
How does the Job Profile Integrate with Employee Central Position Management?
You will notice when you start creating a Job Profile, there’s a screen asking you to associate the profile with a Job Role:
Example screenshot showing organization of Job Families to Roles and Positions when creating a Job Profile
When you edit roles, the system will ask you to map Job Codes. Those Job codes sit between the job Role and the Positions. Thus while there’s a 1:1 relationship between the Profile and the Role, there can be many codes associated to a role. Since there’s many codes across many positions, thus there are many positions that can be associated to one job role and profile.
This provides us with many benefits! For example, whenever you create a requisition from a position with an associated Job Profile, the requisition will automatically pull in the Job Profile as well and activate this integration seamlessly!
Furthermore, the Job Profile builder can utilize Employee Central workflows as well! This can be beneficial as you manage you job catalog as a variety of resources all using the profiles across the modules may want to make edits. In the screenshot below we can see when one of these interested parties modifies the Job Profile it will trigger a workflow.
Screenshot of Job Profile Builder Edits Triggering Workflow
Conclusion
Hopefully you now have a good understanding of the Job Profile Builder and are excited to start using it! Setting up a job catalog can be a tremendous undertaking, but hopefully now that you understand how the tool works, it can make the task a little easier. If you have an existing job catalog you’d like to import, there are also import screens available for you. As I mentioned before, there’s also a lot of helpful pre-built content available from the SuccessStore.
For more information about the Job Profile Builder and other talent management modules in SAP SuccessFactors, check out our book here!
Do you need help with integrating or setting up the Job Profile Builder? Contact us at: info@worklogix.com
Calibration is a process used to appraise employee performance in a fair and consistent manner. Managers meet in calibration sessions to discuss employee performance and achieve agreement on performance ratings. At the onset of a calibration session, the definition of each performance rating can be agreed upon to enable a common language to use when discussing and evaluating performance. The intent is to help eliminate any potential manager bias when discussing employee performance and finalizing ratings.
SAP SuccessFactors Calibration provides a framework to objectively evaluate employee performance. This tool provides HR and senior managers the means to impartially review and adjust performance ratings across teams, departments and the organization. A calibration session provides a visual presentation of employee data from multiple sources in multiple views. Evaluating ratings in several formats with different filters may help to find areas of bias.
Calibration may be a standalone process or part of a performance review process, a talent review process, or a compensation review process.
Information used within Calibration may be sourced from Performance Management, People Profile, Compensation, or Succession data. Within Performance Management, overall performance, potential, competency, and goal ratings may be calibrated. The Succession related metrics that may be calibrated are Risk of Loss,Impact of Loss and Reason for Leaving. Compensation ratios may be evaluated using the salary, bonus, stock and variable pay components of a compensation template. Overall potential, performance, competency, objective and two custom ratings may be calibrated from the talent profile section of People Profile. Upon completion of a calibration session, ratings are updated in the original source.
We will focus on calibration based on ratings from a performance form template.
Basic Configuration of Calibration
There are several steps to perform before we are ready to run a calibration session:
Enable Calibration in Provisioning
Configure Succession Data Model
Set role-based permission for Calibration access
Configure data source template
Enable calibration related e-mail notifications
Configure Calibration Template
Configure Calibration Settings
Assign users to Executive Review role
Configure Calibration History Portlet in People Profile
In this blog we will cover the steps to configure Calibration in Provisioning. The steps to configure Calibration in your instance will be covered in the next blog, “Configuring SAP SuccessFactors Calibration Part II – Instance Set Up”.
Enable Calibration in Provisioning
First we must enable Calibration in Provisioning. Within Company Settings, search for “Calibration” to find the section called Enable Calibration. Once found, click the checkbox as seen below.
Enable Calibration
Additional settings under Enable Calibration may be enabled here. If you plan on using Executive Review, which summarizes calibration activity across sessions, enable this feature here. We will need this feature enabled when creating the calibration template.
If you are going to permit managers to create their own calibration session, click the checkbox for “Enable Manager Calibration Session”. We will need this feature when configuring the calibration settings.
The other features may be set in the instance directly via Manage Calibration Settings and will then reflect as enabled in Provisioning. We will be discussing these features in the next blog, so we can leave the rest unchecked here.
There is also a radio button within Enable Calibration used to identify the permission model used. The default permission model is legacy permissions but you should be using Role-Based Permissions (RBP). Make sure “Use role based permission model”is selected.
Use Role-based permission model
Save the settings in this section of Company Settings before moving on to the next set of features to enable.
Calibration Reporting Permission
There are no standard reports or dashboards for calibration. Any calibration reporting will need to be done using ad hoc reports. If you wish to make calibration data available for reporting, go to the Analytics and Dashboard Tabs & Misc Reporting section of Company Settings.
“Additional Adhoc Sub domain Schemas Configuration” and “Enable INCLUDE STARTING FROM USER in people pill” will need to have the following enabled:
Calibration
Calibration Org Chart Coverage
Calibration Activity
After saving the settings, back out of Company Settings and we will continue with additional configuration set up.
Configuring Calibration in the Succession Data Model
There are elements in the Succession Data Model that can be used for calibration. We will need to update the data model to ensure these elements are configured. Export the data model in order to make updates.
Open the file using an XML editor. Here we will be updating the following:
Rating elements
Display options
Filter options
Calibration History Portlet
We will look at each of these.
Rating Elements
The ratings that can be calibrated are based on the available ratings configured in your system. While setting up Calibration in your instance, you identify the data source of the ratings. Earlier we had mentioned that ratings may come from performance form templates. You may calibrate ratings from an existing performance form template or you may decide to create a new performance form template in order to utilize additional rating types such as overall competency, overall goal and overall potential.
In either case, the data model must contain the rating elements that you wish to calibrate. Most likely these already are already in the data model but you will need to verify this. The rating elements are:
sysOverallObjective
sysOverallCompetency
sysOverallPerformance
sysOverallPotential
sysOverallCustom01
sysOverallCustom02
A code segment seen below displays an example of the overall performance rating background element.
sysOverallPerformance Background Element
Make sure all of the rating types that you wish to calibrate are included in your data model.
Additional Elements to Calibrate
There are three standard elements that may display in some of the views in a calibration session. If you are using SAP SuccessFactors Succession, these most likely are in used for Talent Flags and Matrix Grid reports.
riskOfLoss
impactOfLoss
reasonForLeaving
A code sample of the flags is shown below:
Talent Flags in Data Model
Display Options
Calibration sessions can display data in many views. In Part II of this series, you will learn how to create these views. There is a display option feature that is particularly useful for the List view tab. Here the data is displayed in a table with a row for each employee being calibrated. If there are several columns for this table, there could be a lot of back and forth scrolling. With the display option feature, some columns may be hidden. There is an icon for display options that enables users to add or remove certain columns from the view. Some are hardcoded and will always show up as display options in a calibration session:
First Name
Last Name
Count
Quickcard (if enabled in the calibration template)
The Quick Card display option may be enabled when configuring the Calibration template which we will discuss in Part II.
When clicking on the display options icon within the calibration session, any of these fields may be deselected and those columns will no longer display on the view.
There are some icons that may be added as a display option fields. Any display option fields defined for Succession in the Matrix Grid Classifier tool in Provisioning or the flags be set in Matrix Grid Report Icon Reconfiguration may also be used as display options in a calibration session. In the list view, any of these icons selected would appear in a new column called “Attributes”. Bin and matrix views the icons appear underneath an employee’s name. Having these icons readily visible for each employee may be useful when comparing employees.
Filter Options
Filter Options are used in a calibration session to narrow the list of the employees that display. If there are a large number of subjects, this is a way to view a smaller group that meet the filter criteria. It may be more manageable to view subsets of employees during the session.
Within a calibration session, the standard fields that are available as filter options are:
Manager
Division
Department
Location
Jobcode
These will always appear as filter fields for a calibration session. If Risk of Loss, Impact of Loss and Reason for Leaving are also in your data model, these fields will also be filter fields. The 15 custom fields that may be defined in the data model may also be added as filter options. To set this up, the custom fields must be part of the default filter in the data model as shown below in the code segment sample.
Adding the custom fields as default filters
These custom fields may also be used in as filters in calibration. Module specific filters are defined within <custom-filters>. Identify the calibration module filters by adding this tag:
<filter-module-id=”calibration”>
Include the custom elements that you wish to use as calibration filters. This should be placed after the default filter as shown below:
Calibration Filters
There is one additional calibration specific element that may be added to the data model. We will look at this next.
Calibration History Portlet
Calibration data may appear in People Profile when the Calibration History Portlet is configured. This portlet provides a snapshot of calibration session data along with ratings. The background element for the portlet must be added to the data model. A code segment sample is shown below.
<background-element id="calibrationHistoryPortlet" type-id="138"> <label>Calibration History Portlet</label></background-element>
If you also wish to use the portlet in the Employee Scorecard, the portlet must be added under the view-template “employeeScorecard”. A code segment sample is shown below.
Adding Calibration History Portlet to Scorecard
After making the data model updates, save and import the data model.
Congratulations! Calibration is now enabled and you are ready to set up Calibration in your instance. Coming soon will be my blog, Configuring SAP SuccessFactors Calibration Part II – Instance Set Up to learn how.
For more information about Calibration and other talent management modules in SAP SuccessFactors, check out our book here!
Do you need help setting up your Calibration implementation? Contact us at: info@worklogix.com
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central has come out with several enhancements and features for 1H 2020. All of the latest enhancements can be found here (S-User ID required). Scroll down to the ‘What’s New Viewer’ to review the changes.
Filter on Solutions for Employee Central to review all the latest changes. Under Description, click on ‘See More’ to see screenshots and detailed information.
This post will be highlighting some of the top enhancements & features:
Show Full Name in History Pages
Users previously had difficulty finding out who made the change solely by their user name in the History page. But now SuccessFactors has made it easy for users by showing the full name of the person who made the change along with the user name in the “Last modified” field of the “History section” for the below pages:
Job Information
Job Relationships
Compensation Information
Personal Information
Dependents
Addresses
Synchronize Data from Work Order to Job Information
Manual steps has been reduced – Yes!! Manual steps are no longer required in updating the job information of contingent workers when there is a change in their work order.
Now Synchronization is automatic between the work order and job information for the common data of contingent workers. This can be achieved by creating a business rule while adding a new work order or modifying an existing work order.
Detailed Information can be found here: Click Here
Check Tool for Contingent Workforce Management
New checks have been created to help users identify and resolve potential configuration and data issues with the contingent workforce management application.
To save time and effort, a few checks have been added to highlight issues related to application configuration and contingent worker data along with resolution tips to help users resolve them by themselves.
Detailed Information can be found here: Click Here
Export and Import of Corporate Data Model Information
The Corporate Data Model can be now be imported and exported from the Admin center. Users can incorporate their changes in the exported XML and import them back in from the Admin Center.
This includes Country or Region-Specific Corporate Data Model. This removes the need to do the Import/Export of the CDM on the provisioning side.
Detailed information can be found here: Click Here
Rule Contexts During Import
Now while importing a data model, the original values of the rule contexts will be preserved. Previously when users imported a data model by default, all rule contexts were reset to Yes.
Detailed information can be found here: Click Here
Accept or Reject Auto Delegation Requests
SuccessFactors has now offered the chance to users whether they wish to accept or reject delegation request. Users can now respond to auto delegation requests on a new tab called “Delegation Requests for Me”. Workflows are delegated to them only when they have chosen to accept the request.
Detailed information can be found here: Click Here
Specify Start Time and End Time of Auto Delegation
Delegators will now be able to choose a period for the auto-delegate to remain effective. Users have the option to choose the start date and end date when they configure the delegation.
During the specified period, the workflows will be triggered automatically for the delegates to approve. When the “end date” has been reached, the auto delegation feature will turn off automatically and hence no manual work is required to turn it off.
Customizable Key Details on the My Workflow Requests Page
An enhancement has been made to include the custom key details for workflows in the “My Workflow Requests (Advanced To-do)” page.
Now workflow decisions can be made by seeing the summary without having to open the workflow detail page for position workflows.
Detailed information can be found here: Click Here
Time Sheet Custom Fields are now supported for the iOS and Android Mobile Apps
The SAP SuccessFactors Mobile apps now support the following Time Sheet custom fields: Date, Boolean, Number, Decimal, and String.
This feature creates better alignment between the iOS and Android Mobile apps and the web application.
New Rehire Event Reason for Replication of Employee Master Data
A new event reason has been created that supports the scenario where an employee is rehired after termination. Job information records will be extracted from the rehire date with PSEUDO_REHIRE event reason.
Starting in 2020, SAP changed the release schedule to every 6 months. All of the latest enhancements can be found here (S-User ID required). Scroll down to the What’s New Viewer to review the changes.
Click on the What’s New Viewer to review the latest changes
Filter on Solutions for Compensation, Variable Pay, and Reward and Recognition to review all the latest changes. Under Description, you can click on ‘See More’ to see screenshots and detailed information.
After reviewing all the changes, we narrowed the list down to the Highlights for H1 2020Compensation & Variable Pay & Reward and Recognition:
1. Import and Export non-EC Eligibility Rules
Administrators now have the ability to Export and Import Eligibility rules
Admins can export the rules as a .csv file and then import the file as needed into other templates
This process will save time and improve accuracy during configuration
Import and Export buttons now appear for Eligibility Rules
2. Enhanced Display Criteria for Bulk Download Icon
Users can now view the icon for bulk download only if a statement was generated for an employee from the recently filtered list of Executive Review
Previously, the icon was displayed even if statements weren’t generated from the filtered list which caused confusion
Enable the Display Bulk Print Statement Icon on Executive Review Page option
Bulk download icon only displays if statements are generated for filtered list
3. View a List of Employees Excluded from Statement Download
Using log files, users can now identify employees who are excluded during the bulk download process from Executive Review
Log file will show a list containing the username and user ID of all excluded employees
Log file shows list of employees excluded during the bulk download process
4. Publish by User for Variable Pay and Total Compensation Plan Templates
Administrators can now publish specific employees or groups of employees to Employee Central in Variable Pay and Total Compensation Plan templates
Prior to this release, this feature was only available for compensation templates
Publish by Employee is now available for Variable Pay and Total Compensation Plans
5. Use Bonus Payout Summary Reports Offline
Users can now modify editable fields in the exported file while offline from Executive Review. The modified exported file can then be reimported to update the fields with new changes.
Permissions must be set to allow for edit and export access to Executive Review
Enable the setting for Offline Edit Access for variable pay worksheets
Import functionality now exists for Bonus Payout Summary
6. Expanded Pay Range Matching for Promoted Employees
Users can now define a new finalAttribute field that the system uses when calculating the final pay range.
This will avoid the issue of miscalculated post-promotion pay ranges in EC-enabled compensation templates caused when the system continues to incorrectly use pre-promotion classification and pay grade information
In previous versions, the system incorrectly calculated pay range on the basis of pre-promotion information
finalAttribute field can be defined for proper calculation of pay ranges
7. Hierarchy and Date Validations for Check Tool
Check Tool now has two new validations:
Review the Manager ID of each head of hierarchy in the compensation plan
Ensure that all date fields within UDF are formatted correctly
Additional useful validations added to Check Tool
8. Default Currency View in Compensation, Variable Pay, and Total Compensation Plans
Users can now set the currency that the system uses as default when compensation, variable pay, and total compensation plans are launched.
In previous versions, this was handled in the XML
Users can set Default Currency under Currency Settings
9. Expanded Flexibility in Total Compensation Plans
While creating total compensation plans by copying existing templates, users now have the option to create a plan by selecting an existing Compensation template without also selecting a Variable Pay plan template.
This is useful as not all customers are using variable pay
Total Compensation Plans can be created without having to select variable pay template
10. Delete Awards
Users can now delete awards, irrespective of their status using the award IDs.
Awards that are no longer used can be permanently deleted from the system
Users now have the ability to delete awards
See this great article for useful information on how to prepare for a SAP SuccessFactors Regular Release.
Starting in 2020, SAP SuccessFactors has changed its release schedule from every quarter to biannually. With this change, the releases will be larger with an additional preview week. Here we will focus on what’s new and what has changed in Calibration.
There is one new feature for Calibration along with four enhancements. Let’s start with what’s new!
Customized Weighted Ratings now used in Calibration
There is a new universal feature that allows ratings from the Customized Weighted Rating summary section of performance form template to be used in Calibration. Prior releases of Calibration could only use ratings from the Overall Performance, Overall Potential, Overall Objective and Overall Competency sections of a performance form templates as rating sources.
This option is helpful if you wish to calibrate the overall form rating based on the ratings given by different roles in different steps instead of using the final overall rating from one role. The customized weighted rating is calculated based on the ratings and weights from the steps and roles that were defined in a business rule. Another rule defines the trigger step used to calculate the overall weighted rating.
The Customized Weighted Rating section of a performance form template is displayed below.
Customized Weighted Rating Section of PM Template
When using ratings from the Customized Weighted Rating section, make sure the calibration step is after the step where the calculation of the weighted rating is triggered in the PM form. Just remember, when the manual rating is enabled in this template section, the calculated rating would not be available in the Bin view of a calibration session.
The Customized Weighted Rating section of a PM form is shown below.
Customized Weighted Rating section of a PM Form
In the example below, you can see the customized weighted rating appearing in a calibration session. It appears in the “Overall Form Rating” column because a manual rating overrides the calculated rating.
Overall Rating in Calibration Session
Continuing with this example, the rating is updated from “Meets Expectation” to “Extraordinary” in the calibration session as shown below.
Updated Rating in Calibration Session
After the calibration session has been finalized, the updated rating appears in the performance form as seen below.
PM Form Reflects Updated Rating
In the Customized Weighted Rating section of the form, the overall rating reflects the updated rating of “Extraordinary” from the calibration session. The overall score pod at the top of the form reflects this updated rating as well.
Now let’s see what existing functionality has been improved in the latest release.
There are four universal enhancements for Calibration.
Subjects List Page Enhancement
In prior releases, when drilling down into one of the standard charts in Executive Review, printing the Subjects List page was not supported. In addition, any list display modifications were not saved. Now it is possible to print out the list of subjects and retain any adjustments made to the page display after refreshing the page. More details are shown below.
Now when a data point is drilled into a chart, the print option is now available as seen below.
Subjects List with Print Capability
Within this list, the Executive Reviewer may customize the display. Columns may be reordered by dragging and dropping, column widths may be adjusted, the sort mode may be set for columns and display options may be changed. The printed list will reflect the display changes. Notice there is no “save” button, the adjustments are saved automatically. The changes are preserved after the Subjects List page is refreshed as well.
When the Executive Reviewer drills down into another cell in the chart, the updated display has been retained. This enhancement prevents the user from having the update the display each time the Subjects List page is viewed.
Enhanced Comment Details
This next enhancement is applicable when comments are required when a rating is changed in a calibration session. When viewing comments made on a subject, the name of the calibration participant who entered the comment is listed along with the date the comment was made. An example is shown below.
Comments with Name and Date
When the rater is required to enter the user name associated with a rating change, your calibration template will have “Authorized By” enabled as shown below.
Calibration Template with Authorized By Enforced on Rating Change
Now when viewing a comment with “authorized by” enabled, the comment detail will include the authorizer as well as the comment creator and date as seen in the example below.
Comments with “Authorized By” Field
Next we will see an update for matrix views within a calibration session.
Full Screen Mode Matrix View
During a calibration session, matrix views will now have the toolbar available in full screen mode. Previously the toolbar was not visible in this mode. From the standard view, the user clicks on the “Open Full Screen” icon as seen below.
Matrix View with Full Screen Icon
When switching to the full screen view, the toolbar is available and enables users to take the same actions in the full screen mode as they would in the normal mode.
Matrix View in Full Screen Mode with Toolbar
New Reporting Columns
The final Calibration enhancement involves ad hoc and SAC reporting. There are new fields available to report on when generating a report for a finalized session. The session approval date along with the name of the last user to modify the session are now available. Most likely the last user to modify the session was the approver. The last modified user fields include “Modified By User Name”, “Last Modified by First Name”, and “Last Modified by Last Name”.
“Session Approved Date” Field
“Last Modified User” Fields
The new fields are available when reporting for all three calibration domains. A sample report is shown below.
Sample Calibration Report with New Fields
Wrap up
We have now explored what’s new and what features have been enhanced in Calibration. While the updates are minimal, hopefully these features will make your calibration sessions more user friendly. Check out my other blogs on what’s new in Succession and Career Development.
Do you need help with your calibration implementation? Contact us at: info@worklogix.com
Want to know what’s changed from the first Half (1H) 2020 SAP SuccessFactors release for Career Development? Let’s take a look!
There are two new universal features within Career Development and three universal enhancements in Mentoring. We will wrap up by seeing the new Career Explorer tool that is only available in an Early Adopter Care (EAC) program at this time.
We will begin with the new universal feature in Career Worksheet.
Creating a Deep Link to “My Current Roles” in Career Worksheet
It is now possible for an employee to use a deep link to go directly to the “My Current Roles” tab in Career Worksheet.
So what exactly is a deep link? For our purposes, it is a hyperlink that links to a specific page in the SAP SuccessFactors application. For example, a custom tile on the home page may contain a deep link. This acts as a shortcut to reduce the number of clicks to move to another page in SuccessFactors.
In prior releases, it would take several clicks for an employee to get to their current role on Career Worksheet. From the home page the path would be Development>Career Worksheet>My Current Roles tab.
With the latest release, an employee can open a deep link to go directly the Career Worksheet “My Current Roles” tab by using the new URL “sf/careerworksheet?currentrole=true“.
In order to take advantage of this new feature, a little set up is needed. For our example, we will add a link to the “Quick Links” tile on the Home page.
First let’s set up the URL so it will be ready when we need to reference it. To use the deep link, add it to the base URL of your SuccessFactors instance. To find your base URL, look at the URL for your login page. An example is shown below.
Now we can set up our deep link. Go to “Manage Home Page” and find the “Quick Links” tile as seen below.
Manage Links
Click on “Manage Links” in order to add the URL. Click the plus sign seen in the top right corner of the page. You will then be able to add a new entry. Provide a name for the link label, turn the link on by default, enter the newly created URL and save. An example is seen below.
Create Deep Link
Now go to your home page. The new deep link will now be available in the “Quick Links” tile as seen in the example below.
Quick Links Tile
Clicking on this tile, the user will see all of the quick links available to them. In the example seen below, the user has added this link to their favorites.
Link to Current Role
Clinking the link will take the user to the “My Current Role” tab on Career Worksheet as seen below.
My Current Role Tab of Career Worksheet
That wraps up what is new for Career Worksheet. Next we will move on to the Development Plan.
Development Plan
The final “what’s new” for Career Development Planning is the availability of the Buddhist calendar in Development Plans. This enhancement is specific to customers in Thailand. The Buddhist calendar will now display in:
Development Plan – add and edit learning activity
Development Plan – add and edit goals
Learning Activity within Development Plan – create and edit new learning activity
Learning Activity Group within Development Plan – group definition, edit assigned learning activities for groups
We have now seen the new features for Career Worksheet and Development Plan. Now let’s see the enhancements for Mentoring.
Mentoring
There are no new features in Mentoring but there are a few universal updates to existing functionality:
Enhanced Matching Rules
Reduced number of recommended mentors
Email notifications for changes in mentor availability
We will look at each one.
Enhanced Matching Rules
When an admin creates a mentoring program, the program signup form is configured. The admin creates a series of questions that mentors and mentees must answer when joining a mentoring program. Now matching rules are defined for each question. The system determines the best match for a mentor and mentee based on the responses and the matching rules for each question.
When creating the signup form in prior releases, there were only four columns to complete as seen below.
Prior Version of Signup Form
The fields to complete were: “Answer Type“, “Selection Values“, “Questions to Mentor” and “Questions to Mentee“.
The admin would create questions for the mentors and mentees. Each question would need to have the answer type defined: free text or a picklist. If the answer would come from a picklist, the picklist would be identified in the “Selection Values” column.
The latest version of Mentoring has a much more robust method for matching program participants.
The new signup form is displayed below.
New Signup Form
Like the previous releases, a matching rule is created for each question that appears on the signup sheet. Now there are additional criteria defined in order to find the best match:
Question Category
Matching Based On
Key Question
Matching Type
Weight
The “Answer Type” and “Selection Values” columns from previous releases have been combined into the “Question Category”. An example of the selections for this field is shown below.
Question Category
If the question may be answered by a picklist, the picklist is identified in this field otherwise the question category value would be “Free Text”.
In order for mentors to be matched to mentees, all of the questions cannot be free text.
Just a few things to keep in mind about picklists.
The picklists that may be used for each question are: competency, department, division, location, gender, job family, job role, job code, job level, job title and skill. You may also use custom picklists. The picklists need to be defined in the data model and permissions must be granted.
The same picklist (standard and custom) may be used in multiple questions.
Custom picklists may only be used when matching is based on preference, not with mentee or mentor preference or profiles.
New is the “Matching Based On” column. For each question, matching may be based on:
Preferences. Mentors and mentees are matched based on their answer to the question.
Mentee’s Preference. Using this match type, there is only a question for the mentee. The mentor will not get the question on their signup form. Matching is based on the mentee’s answers and the mentor’s employee profile.
Mentor’s Preference. Using this match type, the question is only for the mentor. The mentee will not get the question on their signup form. Matching is based on the mentor’s answers and the mentee’s employee profile.
Profiles. This match type does not use a question. Matching is done based on the picklist value for the question on the mentor and mentee employee profiles.
Also new is “Key Question”. When a question is identified as “key”, and the mentee and mentor don’t satisfy the matching criteria for the question, they won’t match. Key questions cannot be weighted.
Matching type. Options are “Matched” or “Not Matched“. Matching depends on the answers or the profile to determine if they are a match on each question. If the answer is defined as “Not Matched”, the answer to the question by the mentor and mentee cannot be the same in order to match on the question.
Weight. If used, the sum of the weights must equal 100. If this column is left blank, equal weight will be given to each question. If you wish to omit a question from matching, you may leave its weight blank but have the weight for the remaining questions to add up to 100. Responses to key questions and free text questions cannot be weighted.
The table shown below identifies which fields are available for each “question category”/”matching based on” combinations. The fields that the admin will be able to enter for each question on the signup form will differ based on the matching options.
Question Category
Matching Based On
Question to Mentor
Question to Mentee
Key question
Matching Type
Weight
Free text
N/A
X
X
N/A
N/A
N/A
Picklist
Preferences
X
X
X
X
N/A
Picklist
Preferences
X
X
X
X
Picklist
Profiles
N/A
N/A
X
X
N/A
Picklist
Profiles
N/A
N/A
X
X
Picklist
Mentee’s Preference
N/A
X
X
X
N/A
Picklist
Mentee’s Preference
N/A
X
X
X
Picklist
Mentor’s Preference
X
N/A
X
X
N/A
Picklist
Mentor’s Preference
X
N/A
X
X
Field Availability Based on Question Category/Matching Based On
For example, if you are using employee profile as the matching type, there will be no questions for the mentee or mentor because matching is based on the picklist value on the mentor and mentee employee profiles. For all cases where a question is identified as “key”, the weight field will not be active.
Matching Rules
The matching between mentors and mentees is based on the rules set up for the signup form questions. Matching rules determine the recommended matches. The system compares data from the mentee to the mentor.
The matching program looks at the key questions first. If the matching rule is not satisfied for any of the questions, the mentor/mentee are not considered a match. If there is a match based on the rule of a key question, the system keeps matching based on additional question matching rules. For non-key questions, preferences or employee profiles are compared to calculate the mentor’s match score.
Skill and competency questions calculate a match score based (0 to 100) on the number of picklist values matched for a question. The number of mentor’s competencies/skills that match with the mentee is divided by the total number of competencies/skills that the mentee selected in their signup form. This number is then multiplied by 100 to arrive at the match score for this question. So the more competencies/skills that match, the higher the matching score. The match score for any other standard or custom picklist will be 0 or 100. If a question does not have at least one picklist value in common between mentor and mentor, the match score is zero.
After the system calculates the mentor’s match score for each question, the scores are summed. Weights used on a question are also used in the calculation of the final match score. Based on the results, the top ten matches become the recommended mentors for a mentee.
Matching Program for Supervised Mentoring Programs
Supervised mentoring programs use a backend matching program to calculate match scores. This program uses a star system with four matching levels.
Preferred (four stars) match based on preferred mentor selected during sign up
Excellent match (three stars) based on 75% or higher match score
Good match (two stars) based on 50 – 74.99% match score
Average match (one star) based on 49.99% or lower match score
Recommended Mentors Cap
Another enhancement involves reducing the number of recommended mentors. In prior releases, when a mentee completed the questions on their signup form and then saw the recommended mentors, up to 100 recommended matches would display. Now the mentee will only see ten recommended mentors. This limits the mentee’s time scrolling though all matched mentors to make a selection and instead can focus on the ten with the best fit.
Recommended Successors
We will now look at the final enhancement for Mentoring.
Email Notifications for Unavailable Mentors
The final enhancement involves email notifications for mentor availability status changes.
When the availability status of a mentor changes, their mentees and their pending mentees will receive an email notification. This is very helpful information for mentees to be made aware of so they may select another mentor. In prior releases, only the mentor received notification when their availability status changed.
Going forward, the mentor will only receive a notification if the admin changed their availability. In other words, if the mentor changed his own availability status, he would not be notified. In either case, the mentee will receive the availiabilty change notification.
Let’s look at what happens when the admin goes into a mentoring program and makes a mentor unavailable as seen in the example below.
Admin Makes Mentor Unavailable
The mentor will not be available until July 24, 2020 so both the mentor and the mentee will receive an email notification.
The mentor notification is seen below. The email contains the date the mentor will be available again. It also explains that the mentor cannot be selected by a mentee when in this unavailable status.
Unavailable Notification to Mentor
When the mentor is no longer available, the mentee receives an email notification as well. Any mentee that has a pending mentor request with this person will also get the email. A sample email is shown below.
Unavailable Mentor Notification to Mentee
In the email, the mentor’s availability date is supplied. The mentee also is prompted to select a new mentor.
Now we will see what happens when mentor makes himself unavailable as seen below. The mentor changed his availability and entered the date when their availability date.
Mentor Makes Himself Unavailable
In this case, only the mentee will receive the availability notification.
Next, if the admin goes into the program and makes the mentor available again, both the mentee and mentor will be notified.
Here is a sample email notification received by the mentor.
Mentor Notification of Availability
The mentor is made aware that they are available again so the mentor may expect to see some mentoring requests coming his way again. The email also explains that they may go into the program to change the availability or status.
The mentee is notified of the mentor’s availability as well. Shown below is a sample notification.
Mentee Receives Mentor Available Notification
If mentor makes himself available again, only the mentee receives notification.
We have now seen what’s new and enhanced for Career Development. Now we will take a brief look at the limited release for a new feature.
Career Explorer
A new component of Career Development is Career Explorer. It uses a machine learning algorithm to make recommendations for future job roles based on users “like me”. Career Explorer recommends career opportunities based on the career paths of people who are similar to the user in the organization. An employee can see the career path taken by others that used to have the same job role or who have similar skills, previous roles or education. This give the employee some additional future job roles to consider that may not be within their regular career path. This tool provides personalized guidance over the predefined career paths to determine the possible next role.
Career Explorer helps an employee find possible future roles outside of traditional career paths or even discover an unexpected fit for a role. These roles may be set as targets for career development. Based on the recommended roles, the user can also see a future career path in a lineage chart.
A sample view of Career Explorer is shown below.
Career Explorer
Competencies, skills and other job profile details may be viewed for each role. The employee may see how well they meet the job role requirements. If the role is added to their Career Worksheet, the employee may identify competency deficiencies and then create development goals and learning activities to help fill those gaps.
Prerequisites
Career Explorer is currently available only to those in the Early Adapters Care program (EAC). In order to apply, you must be have a minimum of 1000 employees all associated with job roles. Additional requirement include using:
Employee Central
Job Profile Builder using job code, job classifications and competencies
Succession Management
Career Development Planning, preferably with Career Worksheet enabled
Registration ends November 1, 2020.
Wrap Up
We have now seen what’s new and improved within the Career Development module. And we have seen what is coming with the new Career Explorer. Check out my blog on what’s new for SAP SuccessFactors Succession for 1H 2020 as well.
With the SAP SuccessFactors First Half 2020 release there are six updates in Succession. There are four new features and two enhancements. Let’s start with Talent Pools.
Talent Pools
There are two new features and some minor enhancements for Talent Pools.
The two new features are:
View Nomination History for Talent Pools
View Talent Pool Nominations in People Profile and Talent Cards without Talent Pool Object Level Permission
The Talent Pool enhancements involve filter fields and the Nomination Table.
Now let’s look closer at each starting with what’s new for Talent Pools.
View Nomination History for Talent Pools
This new universal feature permits those with Talent Pool permission to see nomination changes for nominees within a Talent Pool.
In prior releases, there was no nomination history available to view within a talent pool. Now users with Talent Pool role-based permissions with assigned target populations may see the nomination history for employees in a talent pool.
Within a talent pool, there is new icon used to view nomination history for each nominee. The example shown below identifies the icon which displays on the top right side of the talent pool table.
View Nomination History Icon
Talent pool nominees that have nomination change history for this pool will display in the “Nominees” section that displays on the left side of the page. Click on any nominee name from this column and their nomination change history for this talent pool will display.
An example is displayed below.
Talent Pool Nominees with Nomination Changes
The name of the user that made the change will display along with the change date. The readiness, status, nomination source and notes for each change are displayed as well.
Approved and Removed nominees will display their nomination history. You must click the checkbox for “Show Removed” in the nominees section to see any employees removed from the talent pool. Both Approved and Removed nominees will display as seen below. The default view is approved nominees.
Approved and Removed Nominees with Nomination Change History
To see the nominee’s talent pool history for another date range, click the “Date Range” calendar icon that is available on this screen. An example is shown below.
Modify Date Range for Nomination History
The default date range is one year from the current date. The date range may be modified and then the nomination history will display for the new date range
We will now look at the other new feature for Talent Pools.
View Talent Pool Nominations in People Profile and Talent Cards without Talent Pool Object Level Permission
It is now possible to enable users without Talent Pool object level permission to view Talent Pool nominations of employees in People Profile and Talent Card.
This new feature may be used to enable managers to see this information for their direct reports in People Profile and Talent Card.
This is a provisioning opt-in. The setting to enable is “View Talent Pool nominations in People Profile and Talent Card without having the Talent Pool object level permission“.
Provisioning Opt-In
When enabled, users without Talent Pool object level permission may view Talent Pool nominations for employees within:
Nomination Block in People Profile
Nominations section of Talent Card
In addition to these two new features, there is also an enhancement for Talent Pools that we will look at next.
Talent Pool Enhancements
There are a few enhancements to talent pools. Let’s open a talent pool to see what’s changed.
Talent Pool Nomination Table View
First, there are more lines available in a talent pool nomination table view as seen below. This update also includes making the line width consistent with tables in other modules.
Updated Nomination Table for a Talent Pool
Notes Column Placement
There is an additional display field option as well. Users may modify the position of the Notes column. Let’s see how it’s done.
Within the talent pool, click on the “Define Column Properties” icon as noted below.
Define Column Properties Icon
A pop up displays the available fields that may be included in the talent pool view. When the cursor is place on “Notes“, the upward and downward arrows may be used to change placement of this field.
Define Talent Pool Column Properties
Clicking “OK” and the nominations in the Talent Pool will now reflect the changed column order as seen in the figure below.
Nomination Table with Updated Notes Column Placement
The final enhancement to Talent Pools involves selected filters.
Talent Pool Filters
First, the selected filters can now be automatically cleared after all nominees are deleted from a Talent Pool. Looking at the example below, the filters were defined by clicking “Adapt Filters“.
Select Fields to Appear on Filter Bar
Here is where the filters are defined. The fields to use as filters are selected and will appear on the filter bar within a talent pool.
In the example shown below, there is a filter to display nominees with a readiness of 1 to 2 years.
Talent Pool Before Nominee Deletion
After the final nominee is deleted from the talent pool, the readiness filter is cleared as seen below.
We have now seen all of the updates for Talent Pools. Let’s see what else is new in Succession.
Exclude Nominees from Seeing Themselves within a Succession Plan
This is an admin opt-in setting that when enabled, prevents users nominated as successors to see themselves in a succession plan. This will also prevent them from nominating themselves. This means that users with permission to do Succession Planning for certain positions won’t see themselves within the succession plans of those positions.
Let’s see how to enable this feature. Go to “Nominations Set Up”. Scroll to the very bottom of the screen and enable “Exclude nominees from seeing themselves within a succession plan”. The “Nomination Set Up” page is shown below.
Nomination Set Up Feature to Enable
This exclusion prevents nominees from nominating themselves. Additionally, the nominees would not see themselves in Succession Org Chart, Position Tiles, Lineage Chart, Talent card, People Profile, Presentation and Nomination History from position card. A Talent Search would not display them or a list that they are a part of.
There is one additional feature that we will now explore.
New OData API Function Imports for Succession
There are two new OData API Function Imports for Succession:
approveSuccessors
rejectSuccessors
These function imports may be used to approve or reject nominees that are in a pending status.
In prior releases, third-party applications could only read the Succession nominations in Pending Approval status.
The two new function imports allows third-party applications to write the approval steps of the nomination workflow.
The role-based permissions needed for both function imports is: Succession Planners>Succession Approval Permission.
Approve Nominees in Pending Status
Pending status for approvals are:
Change Pending
Pending
Approval Pending
Parameters for approval and rejection are nomineeIds (mandatory) and comment (optional).
Now we have seen what’s new in Succession, let’s see the final enhancement.
Picklist Label Enhancements for Matrix Grid Report and Talent Pools Overview Page
In previous releases, picklists used for filter fields in the Matrix Grid Reports and Talent Pool Nominations overview page showed option IDs rather than labels.
Matrix grid reports support custom filters and these filters may be associated with a picklist. If this is the case, the picklist labels will be displayed in the customizable fields. Picklists that are used for filter fields of the Matrix Grid Reports and Talent Pools nominations overview page will now show labels instead of option IDs. A custom picklist with values for a talent pool filter is shown below.
Talent Pool Filter with Values
These fields also remember the picklist labels that were chosen the last time.
Wrap Up
We have now seen the new features and functionality for the Succession module. Check out my blogs on Highlight of 1H 2020 Release Updates for Calibration and Career Development too.
Compensation Statements may be the most critical aspect to a successful Compensation implementation. Statements are typically the only visibility employees have to the Compensation module and are important in not only communicating final payments to employees but also in letting them know of any other company directives and overall business results.
Working in Compensation for over 15 years, I have configured a lot of compensation statements. Sure, custom statements in XSL can be created to meet all of the customer’s wildest dreams, but this may not always be needed or possible as customers might be restrained by budget, time, or expertise in maintaining year over year. Standard delivered statements can be used for compensation, templates, variable pay templates, or a combination.
Admin Center –> Compensation –> Actions for All Plans –> Manage Statement Templates –> Add Template –> from SuccessStore –> choose template type
My Top 10 List on how to optimize standard compensation statements:
1. Gather statement requirements early
Statements are often thought of as an end of the process final product. While they are just that, you will find that if you include statements as part of the early requirements discussion along with the design of the compensation plans, you will end up with a better final product.
In order to pull fields of information into the statements, they must be a field in the plan template(s) you are referencing. You can include extra indicative data or calculated fields (such as Merit Percent) or fields that show final values rounded (such as New Annual Salary) in case your customer wants to show nice rounded numbers to the employees. These fields do not need to be made visible during planning, but can be hidden so they are available for display in the statement.
Example of a custom field marked hidden during planning but that can be pulled into the statement
2. Take advantage of statement suppression
In 2019, SuccessFactors enhanced the compensation module to allow for statement suppression. Gone are the days of having to generate and recall statements for employees that you wouldn’t need to communicate awards to.
To start, create a custom column in your template to control the suppression based on the customer’s desired logic. For example, to suppress a statement because of a low rating the custom column could include the formula if(pmRating<2, “FALSE”, “TRUE”). Employees with the value “TRUE” will have statements generated, those with a value of “FALSE” will be suppressed.
Enable the setting from Plan Setup –> Settings. Select the box for Enable Statement Suppression and use the drop down to select the custom column you have created with your statement suppression logic. When statements are generated, the job status report will list the names whose statements have been suppressed.
Admin Center –> Compensation –> select template –> Plan Setup –> Settings –> Statement Generation Settings
3. Make use of sections and conditional formatting for the right side data fields
Group fields of data under Sections to consolidate Performance, Merit, Bonus, and Equity fields depending on the templates used in the statement. Conditional formatting can be added to suppress these groups for instance if the customer wishes to suppress the merit section if the employee had zero for their merit award. Conditional formatting can also be done on the field level in cases where customers wish to show the merit section for example to show salary information but not show the merit award field if amount = 0. This also allows for fields such as promotion or lump sum to only show if applicable to the employee.
Example of using sections to group similar compensation fields and adding conditional formatting to a section to suppress if the customer does not wish to show in various scenarios
4. Get the most out of the left side text and logo
Most of the time, the company logo being used throughout the SuccessFactors tool can be used as the logo in the statement as well. If the customer wants a custom logo, plan for this early as it can take time to the custom logo URL setup and to make sure the look and feel is right. Encourage the customer to use their standard logo if possible for a standard compensation statement.
Make use of font sizes and typographical emphasis to draw attention to key elements. Typically I use the small size font throughout for text sections. These text sections can be dragged and dropped depending on the order they should appear.
Conditional formatting can be added here as well to suppress the text section for instance if the customer wishes to only show the section if the amount is greater than 0. The conditional formatting on the left and right side should be configured together so that the logic aligns.
Typically customers can use the left side text to add in text that is applicable to all employees such as overall company results and any disclaimers that are needed around payment dates and rounding rules.
Example of using conditional formatting to only show text sections if conditions apply
5. Keep the statement to 1 page if possible
Keep in mind the more text and fields you add, the longer the statement becomes. Most customers like to see a concise one page statement.
The Signature section is not really needed as you can add this to a text box above if the signature is pretty straightforward. The section itself even with no text configured in it can cause the statement to push to the next page as it shows below the text and data sections, even if it just shows a blank second page. This section cannot be removed, but you can trick the system into shortening it significantly if you simply add a few spaces.
Example of suppressing the signature section by simply adding a few blank spaces
6. Multi-language requirements aren’t necessarily a show stopper
Standard statements do not typically support multi-language requirements. You can however do a workaround and create translated standard statements using the English version as a baseline for the fields and input the required language into the text boxes and field names. If you have a requirement to translate the plan templates, you have a good start to the translations already for the fields. This process can be tedious, so make sure to have a pretty finalized English version before you start creating additional versions in other languages.
Example of a translated standard statement into French
You can then configure statement groups to tie the translated statements to the groups of employees that need the statement in non-English languages.
Actions for all plans –> Group Assignments –> Manage Dynamic Group –> Manage Statement Assignment Groups –> Create New Group using required criteriaAdmin Center –> Compensation –> select template –> Complete Compensation Cycle –> Rewards Statements –> Manage Statement Templates –> Add translated statement templates and associated groups
7. Figure out the roles that will be involved in communicating statements
Planners are typically responsible for communicating the awards to their employees. They can download statements in several ways from their Completed worksheets or within the People Profile if permissions have been set. Additionally, check with your customer if they wish for the employees themselves to have access to their own statements. If this is the case, typically this is a task scheduled out a few weeks from the initial conversations with managers to open access to employees.
SuccessFactors recently added the ability to download statements directly from Executive Review. This allows higher level managers as well as HR managers (assuming role based permissions have been granted to allow access to Executive Review) to be able to download their span of control using the Bulk Print Statements button. The icon for bulk download now only appears if the employees have a generated statements based on the filters in Executive Review. In the previous version, the icon was displayed even if statements weren’t generated from recently filtered list.
To activate statement printing from Executive Review, these settings should be established in Company Settings: Disable Hide Personal Compensation Statements in PDF Format & Enable Display Bulk Print Statement Icon on Executive Review
8. Test early and often
In addition to gathering statement requirements early, plan to test the statements early as well. Ideally the statement would be part of the early iteration reviews to gather feedback before the frenzy of planning occurs. Create examples of statements to show all the different variations that are possible with the customer such as merit only, merit and lump sum, lump sum only, etc. If you wait until the planning is occurring in Production, you are no longer able to add or edit fields that customers may request in the statement.
Also test the role based permissions and the process for how and when the various roles would download the statements. This will prevent any headaches down the road when the timing is tight to review and open statement access to HR, managers, and/or employees in Production.
9. Make use of standard Email Notifications
If the employees will be able to access their own statements, there is a standard email notification that can be sent. The email text can be setup in E-Mail Notification Template Settings. This will allow for Compensation Administrators to send specific text to employees or groups of employees letting them know that their statements are available and how to navigate in the system to find them.
Validate any final changes with the customer. Company numbers and final performance may come in just prior to statement generation so an additional validation of the text sections especially is suggested.
You can recreate the statements in each environment, but I suggest to make all changes in the lowest environment and then download and upload them instead. This takes away some flexibility in making last minute changes in Production but keeps the environments consistent and encourages testing to be done in the lower environments before moving to Production.
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