SAP SuccessFactors H1 2021 Release Updates for Succession

It’s finally here! As of April 9, 2021, SAP has released the documentation for the H1 2021 release. The preview release will be April 16 and the move to production will be May 21^st. You can view the full set of documentation in the W hat’s New Vie wer here. For full details on the release cycle, check out the SAP SuccessFactors official product updates blog here. New to the release process? For tips on how to manage a release, check out our blog here.

In this release, we saw a wide range of enhancements across the Talent modules – some specific to Succession and others that lay across the modules but help out succession planners. Let’s take a look at what’s new in the Succession module below!

Succession Management Specific Changes

Let’s start with what’s new just for Succession Management before we take a look at some general talent improvements that are relevant to Succession.

Nomination History

The main new feature exclusive to Succession Management is the ability to view nomination history in the talent card and in the people profile. Users will with Succession Planning permission can click a history icon on these screens to see a list of positions for which the employee has been nominated and information about the nomination history for each including the date, nominator, readiness level, status, change type, and notes. The information includes deleted nominations as well.

Hide Pending Nominations for Talent Pools

Succession configurators have had the ability to hide pending nominations from succession planners for some time now, but the ability was only extended to position nominations. Now, this feature works for talent pool nominations as well. This configuration setting remains in the same in Admin Center -> Nomination Setup.

Form-Based Nomination Deleted

Another update specific to succession with this release is that form-based succession nomination will be completely deleted as of May 21,2021. This was a legacy method of approving nominations – if you never used it, then don’t worry because no action is required. If you are still using forms to approve nominations, you have little time left to switch to the newer permission-based method!

General Talent Management Updates Relevant to Succession

There are also numerous updates across the talent modules in general that affect not only Succession, but also Performance, Goals, Development, and/or Calibration. Let’s take a look at these briefly below.

Editing Talent Info Directly on a Talent Card

It seems like every customer for whom I’ve implemented Succession has asked why they need to switch between the employee profile view and other views to edit talent information. Why can’t customers just change the information right on the talent card that shows up across the different views that contain the talent card? This way data like impact of loss or risk of loss can be updated when the user has the contextual information they need to make the decision. Well now, customers can!

Users can now click the icon shown below to open a popup that allows these fields to be changed.

My Jobs Downloads

Previously Succession (and other talent reports) could be downloaded from the Scheduled Reports page in Classic View. Reports may now be downloaded from My Jobs page within Report Center. This eliminates the need to switch to Classic View prior to downloading.

A report with multiple files can be downloaded in a compressed .zip file or downloaded individually.

Numerous Calibration Session Improvements

There are a variety of calibration session feature that have been added/updated as well. For example specifying default facilitators or allowing managers to more easily create calibration sessions for their teams. For more information on these improvements, check out our blog on What’s in in H1 2021 SAP SuccessFactors Calibration Release.

That’s a Wrap!

That’s all of the updates for H1 2021! We hope you found this blog informative!

Do you need help managing your SuccessFactors Release cycles? Download our support services brochure or email info@worklogix.com to see how we can help!

SAP SuccessFactors Job Profile Builder Talent Management Integration

SAP SuccessFactors Job Profile Builder (JPB) is a tool used to create and maintain job profiles associated to job roles. Job profile content can be used when creating job requisitions but it can be used for much more. JPB is integrated with many HCM modules and the key that ties all of these modules to Job Profile Builder is job roles.

The job profile components can be used in many modules. These components are useful in many areas of SuccessFactors including:

Performance Management
Career Development
Succession
Employee Profile

First, let’s look at a job profile. Job Profiles are tied to job roles within a job family. The profile can include education, skills and competencies to associate with a job role. This information can get pulled into a req and the position associated with a job will inherit its properties.

An example of a job profile is shown below.

Job Profile

Competencies are a very critical component of a job role. The competencies are selected from a competency library, most notably the SuccessFactors 2.1 Competency Library. Once the job roles are created, competencies are selected to map to roles. Positions associated with a job will then have these competences that can included as requirements on a job req or a way for an employee to track progress on goals.

As you see below, for a role, a competency library is selected and then competencies can be added.

Mapping Competencies to a Job Role

Job codes, skills, competencies and talent pools can be mapped to a job role. Job codes associated with the roles will inherit the skills and competencies. An example is shown below.

The job role below has a job code, 8 competencies, 4 skills and a talent pool mapped to it.

Job Role with Mappings

This means that all positions associated with a job code will then have the associate skills and competencies.

Performance Management
Any job related competencies can be included on performance form template. This allows an employee to be rated on their job specific competencies.

When a form is generated, all competencies associated with the employee’s role will be pulled in when a performance form is generated.

Role Competencies on PM Form

Development Goal Plans

Development goals can have have competencies added. This is especially useful when using Career Worksheet which we will look at next,

Competencies on Development Goal

Career Worksheet
The Career Worksheet is a component of Career Development and is used by an employee to discover development opportunities based on roles that may wish to grow in to. The Career Worksheet is also dependent on job roles and their job role definitions, mapped competencies and expected competency proficiency ratings.

Job profiles will appear throughout the career worksheet, when browsing roles, viewing suggested roles, viewing career paths to name a few.

The employee selects future or targeted roles to view along with the job role’s associated competencies. The worksheet identifies competency gaps which highlight development areas that the employee needs to work on. The worksheet also illustrates how ready an employee is for the targeted role based on their competency proficiency. The worksheet may also be used to view career paths and suggested future roles.

Competency mappings to roles are the sole source of competencies listed on the career worksheet. Only ratings from completed forms are displayed in the career worksheet.

A job role will require a number of competencies and each competency should have an expected proficiency level rating. An employee’s readiness for the role depends on whether the employee’s proficiency rating for the competencies meets the expected ratings.

The system uses the Career Worksheet readiness calculation to compute a competency match score which compares the employee’s competency rating with the expected rating for the role.

An employee can browse career paths and suggested roles from their Career Worksheet. Employees can proactively prepare for that next step. By discovering the competencies and skills needed to exceed in a job role, the employee can create development goals that align with a targeted role. This gives employees a sense of empowerment to develop skills, behaviors and competencies to prepare for future roles.

Suggested Roles

Suggested roles can be based on career paths or through an algorithm based on a set of criteria. The suggested roles can be a combination of competencies, targeted roles, career path and roles selected by peer. Clicking within any role will will display the job profile, Selecting a role will add it to the employee’s career worksheet in order gauge their readiness for the role.

Suggested Roles

Clicking the plus sign will add the role the employee’s career worksheet.

The employee can view job roles based on job family. Selecting any will add the role to career worksheet.

View

Career Path

Once a target role is selected, the career path for the role can be viewed. This gives the employee a chance to see the job role progression. Job profiles for the roles in the path may be viewed as well.

On the Career Worksheet, the job profile of a targeted role may be viewed.

Career Path for Target Role

All of the job roles that have been configured for a career path will display. The targeted role will be highlighted. Clicking on the information icon give the employee a view of the job profile which can be used to help them decide if that is a job they may like to grow into.

Job Profile

Role Readiness Form

The Role Readiness form is launched from the Career Worksheet by the employee and is used to rate how proficient they are in the competencies needed for any future roles that they selected. The form is used to help employees plan their career development and identify areas of development needed for the future roles.

Role Readiness Form

Readiness Meter

Once the form has been completed, the readiness meter on the career worksheet will show how ready the employee is for the targeted role.

Readiness Meter

Gap Graphs

There is a gap graph for each competency comparing the last competency rating of record for the employee with the expected rating for that role. All job roles mapped to a competency will be included. The graph shows the actual competency rating from the latest rating form against the expected rating for the competency.

For any large gaps for the competencies, the employee may decide to add a development goal to help them become more proficient. This will add the development goal to their development plan. The development goal will also show the linked competencies.

Succession

Job roles can be tied to talent pools. When a talent pool is mapped to a job role, all positions tied to the job code will then become members of the talent pool. Talent pools associated with a position display in the position card when accessed from the Succession Org Chart or Position Tile view.

An employee’s talent card will also show the talent pools their position is associated with as seen below.

Talent Pool on Talent Card

The Position card will also show talent pool successors.

Position and role information may be viewed as well. Within the Succession Org Chart, when viewing a position, the associated job role details may be viewed. Clicking ‘View Role Details’ will open the job profile associated with the role.

Role Details

Employee Profile

The skill profile is linked to JPB.

Employees can add skills whick can be used for employee development and succession planning,

Skill Profile

Conclusion

I hope you can see that Job Profile Builder can be used beyond Recruitment. The job profiles created can be extremely useful in developing the people within your organization and not just for finding new talent.

For more information on the Job Profile Builder and Talent Management Integrations, check out o ur book here!

An Introduction to 360 Evaluations in SAP SuccessFactors

As year-end approaches, it is common for many companies to take a second look at their employee performance and goal setting processes. In the past few weeks, I’ve been helping multiple companies revamp their employee performance processes. While some are just tweaking current forms and processes, others are considering including a new and often enlightening process – 360 evaluations.

What is a 360 evaluation?

The idea behind a 360 evaluation is to get a picture of how others view your performance from all angles. This means that in addition to getting feedback from your manager (top down), you also get feedback from your own direct reports (bottom-up), peers (side), and even external sources (vendors, business partners, customers, etc.).

Why do companies implement 360 evaluations?

Receiving feedback from a variety of sources helps create a more complete picture of how an employee is performing and/or perceived to be performing from different angles. 360 evaluations can help uncover trends and gaps in these different angles. For example, a manager may consider an employee a top performer, but when feedback is asked from peers or external sources on an anonymous basis, the employee might get different feedback (“He’s always on top of his own tasks, but sometimes at the expense of the team as a whole when we need his support”). Similarly, an employee may not be considered a top performer by a manager, but feedback from others could reveal a lot of solid performance feedback into which the manager never previously had sight (E.g. “She’s been so helpful in getting my career on the right path and helping me with work tasks at the expense of her own!”). Allowing this feedback to come to light can help employees and managers work to truly improve employee performance. We’ll take a look in a moment at how SAP SuccessFactors 360 evaluations aid in attaining this kind of feedback.

Walk-through of a 360 form in SAP SuccessFactors

360 forms are launched just like performance forms are. However, it is important to note that 360 forms use a separate screen for launching (don’t worry, this screen pretty much works the same as the other launch forms screen you are used to. After picking a target population, the admin can launch just like a normal performance form.

Search bar showing separate launch screen for 360 forms

360 forms will also show up in the performance inbox like other performance forms, but with a different icon. It is important to recognize that 360 forms use a template type than regular performance forms and get treated slightly differently in these respects.

View of Performance Inbox with both 360 and regular performance reviews

Once the first person in the route map gets the form (in this case the employee), they need to choose who will be involved in the evaluation. The system can be configured to default in people for categories like direct reports, manager, and peers.

Employee nominates raters step of 360 review

Users also have the option to add external participants as shown below by simply providing a first name, last name, and email and then choosing in what category the person should be included.

Once the user is finished adding participants, there is usually an approval step prior to the evaluations being sent out. Evaluations can be designed using sections similar to those you are used to seeing in a standard performance review form. There are sections for objectives, competencies, as well as an introduction and a section for the subject’s information. Unlike regular performance forms that can be configured heavily on the online editor in “Manage Templates”, 360 forms can only be fully setup by partners or SAP (though much of the config is done in the online editor).

For internal participants, the evaluation is sent to the user’s performance inbox like the typical performance reviews where they can then open the form as shown below.

In the case of external participants, after approval of the evaluators, an email is sent with a link that allows external users to access the form. This can be a security consideration for some organizations since the link is only as secure as the receiving email system.

After all evaluations have been completed, the form is put in the completed status and the employee / manger / etc can view the results depending on permission settings. You can see an example completed performance form below.

Completed Review showing Anonymous ratings

One key advantage of the 360 form in SuccessFactors over the typical annual performance review is that the 360 feedback comments and ratings can be made anonymous. Obviously the user would know who their manager is, or they might be able to derive who the other evaluators are based on category if there are only one or two – so the forms allow you to configure minimum counts in each category as well as rollups to combine categories to help keep anonymity. The user can click on the link for each reviewer to see the details of each review and create an HTML or PDF printout of the details as shown below.

Printed Detail of Individual Review Feedback

The form also has a nice detailed report showing the combined feedback comments and overall ratings by category. This can help the employee and manager understand where any gaps between self and manager evaluation ratings may exist along with other types of ratings from other categories. For examplem we can see below there is a large gap between the manager’s perception and the employee and other’s perception of “Prioritizing and Organizing Work”. Perhaps the manager is getting too much priority and the employee needs to focus on the work the team as a whole needs completed!

Wrap Up

After this quick walkthrough, hopefully you can now see the advantage of 360 forms as an insightful tool to get employee performance feedback from a variety of sources and understand what a typical end-to-end 360 process looks like.

For more information about 360 forms and other talent management modules in SAP SuccessFactors, check out our book here!

Do you need help implementing or changing your 360 form or other performance and goals processes? Contact us at info@worklogix.com.