Guidelines help standardize the recommendation across the organization. It provides the system with rules on how much of an increase planners can give to employees based on certain criteria. If a planner is outside of those guidelines, the system can be set to warn or disallow the submission.
Guidelines are developed as a matrix. The matrix is a set of recommended compensation amounts, or percentages, based on attributes (formula criteria) of the employee. For example, when the attribute is performance rating, if someone has an overall review score of 5 out of 5, then the guideline might recommend an increase from 3% to 5%. However, if the person scored 4 of 5, then the guideline might recommend an increase of 2% to 3%.
Note
When changing guidelines consider the consequences elsewhere. For example, these changes can impact budgets that are based on the guideline default values.
Guideline RulesEach guideline is set for a specific compensation program already defined in SAP SuccessFactors Compensation (Merit, Promotion, Lump sum, and so on). Guideline rules specify the recommendation range allowed for each attribute.
- Rule Name: Unique identifier of the rule
- Type: The compensation component for which the guideline will be created
Formula Criteria: Determines how the guideline range will be measured. It can one or combination of: Rating, Compa-Ratio/Range Penetration, Job Level, Pay Grade, Budget Group and Custom Fields - maximum of 5..
Note
Commonly used criteria are Performance rating, Location, and Range Penetration. Rating is typically used for merit. Use of Range Penetration (benchmark) is common to recommend more dollars to lower-paid, higher performing employees.
Mode determines how the value is going to be displayed, Amount or Percentage. Percent is typically used for compensation programs such as merit, promotion, and adjustment. Amounts are typically used for stock allocations.
Considerations include:
To prevent managers from going outside the maximum and minimum guidelines, enable the Hard Limit.
When Prorating is used, guideline range will be adjusted per employee proration percentage.
Enable Force Default on Rating change if the planner recommendation should reset to the guideline default value if Performance rating is changed.
Force Default on Custom Field change is only applicable when custom fields are used as criteria. If set to YES, the default value populated in the worksheet will reset should data on custom fields changed. Select Warn from High/Low action to display a warning when planners exceed the high and low guideline values.
Caution
Managers may be able to exceed the guidelines, but can be restricted by their budgets.
Guideline FormulasEach formula defines the range amount of recommendation. Administrators can enter minimum, low, default, high, and maximum amount of the recommendation.
If the hard limit is chosen in the rule settings, planners will not be able to exceed the maximum prescribed guidelines or go beyond the minimum. Planners will not be able to move the form forward in the route map.
The low and high values display a pop-up warning to the planner when he/she exceeds the inner limits. The default value automatically populates when the compensation forms are generated.
If you use multiple employee attributes the guideline matrix can become unwieldy. It may be faster to export the matrix, update the values in Microsoft Excel, and import the guidelines into the system.
Guidelines using editable or formula-based fieldsCalculated or editable fields can be used as criteria for defining Guideline tables including the standard fields.
Only editable or formula-based columns of string, percent, or amount type are supported. The following example uses user-entered data (Manager selects whether employee has been reviewed or not), a group of employees, and a custom formula (Total Paid Previous FY).
When creating the formula you can choose criteria that is static (Guideline Group) or non-static (Reviewed) data as well as formulas (Total Paid Previous FY).
