Describing SAP SuccessFactors Performance Management

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to describe the purpose and goals of Performance Management.

SAP SuccessFactors Performance Management

SAP SuccessFactors Performance Management equips you with the in-depth employee performance information you need to retain, reward, and develop your best people. Its innovative capabilities and intuitive user experience ensure aligned, clear goals and accurate, objective talent assessments.

Deliver relevant formal reviews: Easy, engaging focal reviews expand performance insight and improve employee engagement and retention.
Support managers: Writing Assistant and Coaching Advisor help managers provide feedback and coaching advice that is more meaningful.
Identify top talent: Compare and rate employees across the same dimensions to identify high performers and potential future leaders.

Performance Management Terminology

Term	Definition
Performance	The execution or accomplishment of a task. It is often measured with a rating to determine the quality of the task executed.
Performance Management	This is used to record information, such as the evaluation of an employee’s performance during a review cycle.
Form Template	Form templates define the information about an employee that populates (e.g., goals; personal information), the information collected on a form (e.g., ratings; comments), and who is involved in providing some type of feedback on the form (e.g., manager(s); employee).
Competency	Competency refers to the ability to perform a specific task or achieve a certain result, often involving a combination of knowledge, experience, and personal attributes. It encompasses a broader range of attributes, such as problem-solving abilities, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to adapt to new situations.
Skill	Skills are specific, teachable abilities that are acquired through training, practice, or experience. They are typically more focused and concrete, such as technical proficiencies, language fluency, or computer programming expertise.
Attribute	In the context of the Talent Intelligence Hub framework, attributes refer to both competencies and skills.
Competency Library	Organizational links within SAP SuccessFactors containing the individual competencies for your organization. In Talent Intelligence Hub, it is referred to as the Attribute Library.
Job Family	A Job Family refers to a group of jobs that are similar in nature and require similar skill sets and competencies. For example, the HR job family may include roles such as HR generalist, HR manager, HR specialist, and HR director.
Job Role	A Job Role refers to the specific responsibilities and duties associated with a particular job within a Job Family.

Performance Cycle

The performance cycle involves setting employee goals, reviewing, and rewarding performance. Managers and employees use a performance review form to evaluate the employee’s effectiveness in achieving goals, core values, and specific competencies. SAP SuccessFactors populates goals from the employee’s goal plan into the performance review form and allows you to create and distribute performance review forms when it is time to start a performance cycle.

Performance Cycle Steps

Performance Cycle Steps	Description
Set Goals to Plan for the Future	Formal goal setting, where managers and employees identify skills for development in areas that would add value to the organization.
Provide Ongoing Feedback	Managers and employees regularly meet to discuss goal progress and the quality of completed work.
Assign Challenges to Inspire Development	Managers provide assignments that grant a higher level of responsibility or introduce new skills to challenge and develop employees.
Evaluate Quality of Performance	Formal performance review where managers and employees assess performance on defined goals.
Recognize and Reward Achievement*	Managers recognize employees’ performance and contribution to the organization through incentives. *Incentives are outside the scope of this learning journey. SAP SuccessFactors Compensation and Variable Pay are two products often used to provide monetary incentives during or at the end of a performance cycle.

Forms and Form Templates

A form is used to record information, such as the evaluation of an employee’s performance during the review cycle. Forms are generated from form templates. The form that each employee receives contains all the elements of the form template on which it is based. Forms are launched by you, the administrator, and follow a process that is dictated by a route map. Sometimes changes occur during the life cycle of the form that you need to address. This guide covers these changes.

What is a Form Template?

Form templates are the basis for all forms in SAP SuccessFactors. Form templates contain the layout, sections, and workflow for each form. The form templates that your company is using were uploaded when SAP SuccessFactors was implemented.

When to Edit a Template

Your existing form templates are ready to use as-is, and in most cases, minimal modification is necessary. SAP SuccessFactors provides a library of form templates and a wide range of capabilities available in the instance, from Manage Templates, to customize forms if you desire. Editing form templates is discussed in detail with this guide to make you aware of all available features.

Performance Management Permissions

In the following tables you will learn about the main Administrator permissions related to Performance Management and those intended mainly for end users.

Note

The following is not a comprehensive list of all permissions, but the most relevant for Performance Management administration and end user tools, as well as some platform tools that are mentioned in exercises or steps in this course.

User Permissions		Give access to	Comments
Performance	Performance Management Access	Home→Performance	If user receives a form, they can access anyway regardless of this permission.
	Restrict Data Access of Inactive User’s Forms	Restrict access to inactive user’s forms that were not removed and still visible in the inbox.
	Team Overview Access	Access to Team Overview to overlook direct report’s progress in the performance review.	Granted to managers
General User Permission	Permission to Create Forms	Create forms individually for self, direct reports, or others in Home→Performance.	This permission also determines which form templates are available in Launch Forms.
	Hide ‘All active/inactive employees’ option in Launch Forms wizard	Hides the option to launch forms for all active/inactive employees in Launch Forms	Only relevant for administrators with Mass Create Form Instances (Launch forms now) permission

Administrator Permissions		Give access to	Comments
Manage Documents	Approve Document	Approve Form - Move a form one step forward (modify stage).
	Change Document Date	Change Form Dates (for in-progress forms).
	Delete Documents	Delete Forms.
	Manage Document Visibility	Remove visibility to forms for certain users.
	Mass Route Document Forward	Send forms to next step from Home→Performance.
	Mass Route Document Backward	Send forms to previous step from Home→Performance.
	Modify Form Route Map	Modify route map options for in-progress forms.
	Restore Deleted Documents	Restore forms that were deleted.
	Route Completed Documents	Route completed forms back to evaluation or signature stage.
	Route Document Include Completed Documents Allow Adding of a Step	Route forms, including complete documents and move forms to a new step.
	Sign Document	Sign forms which are already in the signature stage.
Manage Form Templates	Form Templates	Access Manage Templates.
	Comprehensive template configuration for PMv12	Allows to create and edit Advanced Options section in Manage Templates, which includes form template permissions (sections, fields, actions, etc).
	Mass Create Form Instances (Launch forms now)	Launch Forms tool access.
	Schedule Mass Form Creation (Launch forms later)	Launch Forms tool access defining a schedule (based on hire date or anniversary, or at a later date).
	Rating Scales	Rating Scales access
	Routing Maps	Manage Route Maps access
Manage System Properties	Email Notification Templates Settings	Enable/disable and edit email notification templates.
	Performance Management Feature Settings	Enable/disable Performance Management general features.
Manage User	Manage Users	Manage employees (to make quick changes to employees instead of Export/Import UDF).	This option is not available in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central enabled instances.
	Documents Transfer	Transfer forms to new manager manually, as an administrator.	Forms can be transferred automatically
	Employee Export	Export User Data File (UDF).

Performance and Goal Management Feature Settings

In SAP’s long-term goal of implementing or configuring SAP SuccessFactors HCM to make it easier and faster and empowering customers, some Provisioning (Back end) settings have been added to the instance (Front end). Since administrators do not have Provisioning access, this allows the administrator to turn features on and off without the need to request them through an SAP SuccessFactors consultant.

This screenshot shows the current options in the Performance Management Feature Settings.

Performance Management Feature Settings	Description
Enable Continuous Performance Management	This feature enables users to get quick feedback on work through requests and structured conversations with their manager. It helps managers to track their team members’ progress effortlessly and offers a simple way to provide simple coaching advice.
Team Rater for Performance Management – Enable display of all forms but self	Enable display of all forms but self: Controls whether Stack Ranker (also known as Team Rater) can be used by raters other than the Direct Manager. When enabled, other raters (e.g., Matrix Managers, EMM, etc.) can rate a user using Team Rater.
Enable Performance Management Access Permission	This feature provides the ability within RBP to determine which roles have access to the Performance menu.
Enable Team Overview Access Permission	By default, the Team Overview is available to all users regardless of whether they have direct reports. For users without direct reports, the Team Overview tab contains no information. Customers can turn on this access permission and then permission the Team Overview tab to be accessible only to certain groups or roles (like managers). Then, permissions need to be added for the necessary roles in the role-based permission system under the User Permissions→Performance.
Team Rater for Performance Management	Enables the Stack Ranker (also known as Team Rater) feature. Stack Ranker allows raters to quickly review the rating for those they are evaluating and visualize how subjects compare with or stack up against one another.
Enable PM Form Search Competencies	By enabling this feature, when the user is in the competency section, they are provided with the ability to search for any competency beyond those associated with their job role.
Rich text editor for PM and 360	Enables a Rich Text Editor (RTE) for both Performance Management and 360 Reviews. An online rich-text editor allows users to edit rich text and presents a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editing area. The aim is to reduce the effort for users trying to express their formatting directly as valid HTML markup.
The rich-text editor cleans up text pasted from Microsoft Word (currently, this only affects pages that use common Performance Management code)	Provides an option to users to override the universal functionality of automating the text cleanup from MS-Word. (NOTE: with IE 11 – when copying from MS Word to IE – the cleanup is handled automatically by the browser and the confirmation is not rendered).
Hide Delete Icon inside a form	Enabling this flag removes the delete button from inside the form (assuming the delete button is enabled in Form Template Settings). It would still be visible from the Inbox view.
Disable the internal scrollbar next to forms (Only available for PMv11)	Checking this flag disables the internal scrollbar but enables the browser scroll bar. Conversely, unchecking this flag enables the internal scroll bar, but disable the browser scroll bar. This option is obsolete and not applicable to PMv12A.
Enable the Goal Management-Performance Management Sync up	This feature enables the Performance Management table to fetch the goals from the Goal Management table even when the performance form is not opened. This is useful when we make a report based on the Performance Management domain that should include goals, even when the forms are not opened.
Enable Capability Picker (Prerequisites: Job Profile Builder is enabled and data migration to Job Profile Builder is successful)	This option allows users to select capabilities (competencies) by capability libraries or job roles in a hierarchy structure and to search for the capabilities using keywords.
Automatically Fix Document Transfer and Change Engine Issues	When this option is enabled, the document transfer and change engine issues that are caused by the RBP refresh failure are automatically fixed every day.
Enable user experience enhancements to Performance Management forms	When Enable the latest experience of Performance Management forms is not selected, you can use this setting to enable enhancements to the legacy form experience, including the maximum form width is reduced, the Achievements tab, EZ rater view and rating gap analysis are redesigned; the buttons Show More, Show Less and the fields weight, status are repositioned, and the Ratings from Others view is rearranged.
Allow users to view details of forms that have never been in their Inbox	Applies to the forms listed in Performance History on the latest People Profile. Users need to be granted the permission under User Permissions→Performance→View Overall Ratings from Forms. Additionally, the permission View Goal Ratings from Forms allows the display of calculated average goal ratings when viewing forms.
Enable the latest experience of Performance Management forms	The latest Performance Management form features a streamlined, flexible layout, including a vertical table of contents, table-view sections, dynamic side panels, and a configurable General Information group. Additionally, various enhancements have been incorporated to further improve the review experience.
Use RBP to control visibility of filters on the latest My Forms page	When this setting is enabled, you can control the filter's visibility for end users in a new permission found under User Permissions→Performance→Form Filters.
Enable the latest version of Stack Ranker for Performance Management	This option enables a new look and feel as well as a different experience to edit ratings and comments for the Stack Ranker feature, applicable to Performance Management.
Enable business rules in Performance Management	This option enables the rule scenarios in Performance Management to Change Field Visibility, Editability and Required Status on Forms, as well as the Add Review Steps Upon Form Routing.
Remove HTML tags from form review input in Table and Story reports.	When enabled, content provided on the Performance Management or 360 Reviews form using rich text editors, such as comments, is displayed as plain text in Table and Story reports.

Mobile Related Features

SAP SuccessFactors Mobile features are not discussed in detail in this course. However, customers should be aware that these features are continually being developed. As customers rely more on mobile devices for increased productivity, SAP SuccessFactors Mobile continues to evolve to meet this demand. iOS and Android features may differ so please review the latest updates in the Mobile Features Matrix that includes the basic features that are supported for SAP SuccessFactors Mobile applicable to Performance Management as well as other modules: Mobile Performance Management Feature Support.

Summary

SAP SuccessFactors Performance Management equips you with the in-depth employee performance information you need to retain, reward, and develop your best people.
The performance cycle involves setting employee goals, reviewing, and rewarding performance. Managers and employees use a performance review form to evaluate the employee’s effectiveness in achieving goals, core values, and specific competencies.
The Performance and Goal Management Feature Settings allow administrators to turn features on and off in Admin Center without having to request them through an SAP SuccessFactors consultant.

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