Setting Development Goals in the Development Plan

The latest version of Goal Management highlights the transition to an advanced version of the Development Plan, thus superseding the previous Legacy Goal Management. It encompasses performance and development goals, offering a renewed approach to configuring, tracking, distributing, and managing development objectives within your organization.

The default Development Plan integrates with various SAP SuccessFactors modules and features such as Continuous Performance Management, Performance Management, Career Worksheet, Calibration, or Succession.

With the Latest Goal Management, the Development Plan is displayed under the Goals menu option. The ability to view goals by status (e.g., On Track, Behind, Completed, etc.) is one of many features available in the latest version.

The Latest Development Goal screen is shown below:

In SAP SuccessFactors, employees create development goals for current or future roles. Managers and HR practitioners benefit from the ability to view goals with or without learning activities.

Development goals can be composed of several fields. The most frequently used are as follows:

• Name
• Measure of success (Metric)
• Status
• Start and Due date
• Attributes (or Competencies only)
• Comments

Goals can be created in a few different ways:

• Create goals from scratch
• Copy goals from another Development Goal Plan
• Import Development Goals (admin only)
• Create goals using Generative AI

With the Goal Creation page, users can create development goals using generative AI capabilities.

End users can use the Assisted Development Goals feature to create development goals using Generative AI. When selecting Create Goal, the Goal Creation Options menu will show a text field where users can provide an input and generate a goal creation using AI technology. With dynamic field generation, AI will analyze the complete goal plan template to interpret available fields and generate content accordingly, except for read-only fields. Make sure field names and descriptions are clear so AI can process the data correctly.

Two additional AI-assisted goal creation options are available:

• Create from Roles: Users can select their current or target role to let AI create a career-specific goal. When the competencies field is configured in the development goal plan template, the role's associated skills or attributes where the employee has gaps will be automatically selected after goal generation.
• Create from Interests: Users can select skills or attributes that they have marked as passionate in Growth Portfolio to let AI create a goal based on the interests. When the competencies field is configured in the development goal plan template, skills and attributes selected by users to create a goal will be automatically selected after goal generation.

Note

AI-assisted goal creation and writing are Premium AI-assisted capabilities that involve complex tasks, intelligent business insights, and measurable business outcomes.

These Premium AI capabilities require purchasing an SAP AI Units license. All features using generative AI capabilities and Joule messages that exceed a customer's annual usage allocation are considered Premium AI.

The Assisted Writing with Text Analyzer can also be used to get assistance from AI technology to enhance the content from text and textarea fields, like Goal Name, Metric or Description. The capabilities for the Assisted Writing available in Goal Management are:

• Enhance Writing: suggests enhancements in grammar, spelling, vocabulary choices, and phrasing in the context of the selected line or paragraph
• Change Tone: provides options to change the tone of the writing of the selected line or paragraph to professional, personable, or constructive to suit the communication needs for different audience groups in the organization
• Make Shorter: shortens a selected line or paragraph to convey the message more concisely
• Make Longer: rewrites a selected line or paragraph by adding more words to provide a detailed explanation based on the original content
• Make Bulleted List: converts a selected line or paragraph into a bulleted list to simplify complex information and enhance readability by breaking it down into easy-to-read points
• Analyze Text: This performs a safety scan on each text box, prompt entry, or Generative AI output in order to detect bias and remove discriminatory or violent language. Users can choose to accept or reject the suggested text presented for replacement.
• Translate: This translates the written text into the target language chosen by the user. One-directional and bi-directional translations are available.

AI-assisted writing is also available for Opportunity Marketplace Assignments and custom Learning activities.

If you've migrated to Talent Intelligence Hub, users can use both skills and competencies in Development Goals. You can link development goals to one or more attributes that the employee is trying to develop.

The attributes field can list competencies or skills in a variety of ways:

• By role
• By libraries
• By categories
• By form

Additionally, you can use a picker to Add Attributes and browse by competency or skills to select one or multiple elements.

Users can incorporate multiple learning activities into their development goal plans from the development goal details page to aid in achieving those goals.

In SAP SuccessFactors, users can construct learning activities in two ways. They can either add existing learning activities from SAP SuccessFactors Learning using a catalog or create customized learning activities. Custom learning activities could include external training, reading resources, or seeking mentorship in line with their development goals.

The default Development Plan can be integrated with various modules in SAP SuccessFactors:

• People Profile can be set up to show Development Goals, contributing to seamless integration with the SAP SuccessFactors Suite.
• Performance supports Development Goal sections in Performance Forms to align personal development with performance objectives.
• Continuous Performance integrates Development Goals with activities and achievements, facilitating ongoing feedback between managers and employees toward achieving development objectives.
• Calibration provides access to Development Plans, ensuring the alignment with employees' skill levels and potential.
• Succession embeds the Development Plan to identify key areas for potential successors and prepare them for future roles.
• Career Worksheet integrates with the default Development Plan to close competency gaps for current and future roles.
• Learning integrates with Development Plans to assign specific learning activities that meet an employee's development objectives.

A Development Goals block in People Profile can be configured and permissioned so that users can view, create, edit, and delete development goals in People Profile. Based on the permissions set for development goals in the development plan XML, users can perform the same actions in the Development Goals block. Actions taken on Development Goals within the People Profile are synchronized with the selected Development Plan across the suite.

With full implementations of SAP SuccessFactors Career Development Planning (CDP) and Succession Management, the development goals can be created and displayed in the Succession Org Chart when adding a potential successor.

If the employee has no development goals within the development goal plan of CDP, then the Development Goals section will appear empty.

If you would like to see the goals in the Succession module, be sure to discuss it with your consultant during your CDP implementation. You will not see this information populated if you do not have the Development Plan template permissioned and set up correctly.

• Development goals can target specific skills or competencies by role, libraries, categories, or forms, ensuring focused development.
• Development goals can be created from scratch, copied, imported, or generated through AI tools for efficiency and personalization.
• Users can add learning activities from catalogs or create custom activities like training or mentorship to meet goals.
• Development Goal Plans seamlessly integrate with multiple SuccessFactors modules and tools for cohesive talent management, including People Profile, Performance Management, Succession, Career Worksheets, Calibration, and Learning.

Based on the content in this section, please review the list of implementation decisions your company may need to make before implementation begins and discuss them with your stakeholders, project team, and SAP SuccessFactors implementation consultants. In this way, you will be better prepared to begin the implementation.

• What roles need to view the development plan with Career Development Planning? In Succession?
• What fields do you want to include in the development plan?
• Do you want to associate competencies and skills with development goals?
• Would you like to have a maximum or minimum number of goals?
• What goal statuses and colors would you like to use?
• Would you like to utilize the learning activities?
• Do you plan to integrate the SAP SuccessFactors Learning Management System?
• Do you plan to integrate with other modules (e.g., Performance, Continuous Performance, Calibration, etc.)?