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.

Users can describe the goal they wish to create in a text box and choose Generate to have AI create content based on their input. After reviewing the AI-generated content, they can compare, accept, or discard it.

Employees can also use the AI-Assisted writing tool to enhance multiple aspects of their writing, such as clarity, conciseness, and tone from many text fields throughout SAP SuccessFactors applications.

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.

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.