Using SAP SuccessFactors Continuous Performance Management to Increase Work Performance

• Employees can create activities and add attachments to activities to instantly record efforts and provide visibility into what they are working on.
• Display employee achievements in real-time, using the Achievements view.
• Request feedback from and give feedback to other employees, as well as monitor the status of feedback requests.
• Link activities directly to performance goals and development goals, and view them in the Performance Review form.
• Structure 1:1 meetings with manager and employees, and open additional channels to involve other roles in the process, with Multiple Role Support.
• Create topics for discussion between a manager and an employee.
• Capture meeting discussions and track the content of meetings in the meeting history.
• View activities grouped by time or goal.
• Configure status labels and icon colors for Activity and Topic.
• Access feature via the web and on mobile applications (iOS and Android).

CPM consists of three main views: the Activities view, the Meeting view, and the Achievements view.

The Activities view allows employees to create, edit, and delete activities while providing managers a view into these activities. Managers can also create, edit, and delete the activities of direct reports. Additionally, both employees and managers can add updates to these Activities.

In the Meeting view (from Start Meeting button), the employee and manager can review discussion topics, review activities by status or goal, create new activities, and add Meeting Notes only visible to the owner. Additionally, other roles beyond employee and manager can participate with Multiple Role Support. An active channel can be created to invite someone else to participate in a Meeting with the employee.

The Achievements view displays the summary of Total Achievements and achievements from the current year and current month.

The word count of the Continuous Performance Management fields is based on characters. The table below shows the length of fields for Continuous Performance.

The Activities view allows managers and employees to track and prioritize employee activities. With increased visibility, it is easier for managers and employees to coordinate work efforts and ensure activities align with employee goals.

Activities can be created, edited, and, if necessary, deleted by both employees and managers. If any effort has been spent on a particular activity but that activity is no longer relevant, it is better to set the status of that activity to Cancel than to delete the activity. This way, a more complete accounting of employee activity can be maintained. Activity status can be set in this view to any status configured by an administrator in the Continuous Performance Management (CPM) Administration Console.

Activities can be linked to up to 20 goals on goal plans or development goal plans. Goals can be linked from the following dialogs: Create Activity, Create Achievement, Edit Activity, and Edit Achievement.

Activities can also include updates, which can be flagged to signal their importance. Once activities are captured as read-only items when a meeting is recorded, employees and managers can navigate to previously captured meetings and view these activities. A view details option is available for each activity, allowing users to see if a particular activity is linked to a business or development goal.

In addition to maintaining activities, the Activities view can list Discussion Topics. These items should be discussed when managers meet with their direct reports. Both managers and employees can add to this list. Once items have been discussed, they can be marked as discussed. Items marked as discussed are removed from the Activities view when the Capture Meeting button is chosen. Discussed items are visible for review by selecting previous 1:1 meetings using the calendar in the upper left-hand corner of the page.

After a 1:1 discussion, employees or managers can capture a snapshot of the meeting by choosing the Save and Finish button. All meeting contents are captured in the meeting history for future reference. Employees and managers can use the meeting history to review items that are no longer visible on the current Activity View, including completed activities, canceled activities, and discussed topics. This allows for the presentation of both a historical view of archived items for review and a current view of items that still require attention.

Users can request and view feedback on their activities to receive valuable insight in any channels where they are the participant. When a user is the participant in a channel, their activities overview page is titled My Activities with <channel owner's name>. Previously, it was only possible to request and receive feedback for activities in channels between managers and direct reports.

If desired, administrators can set up functionality for users to share their activities across channels where they participate, giving relevant users the ability to view and edit these activities collaboratively. To set up the Share Activities functionality, enable the Enable Cross-Channel Activity Sharing in the Continuous Performance Management Configuration tool. Additionally, administrators need the following permission to access data of users included in their role's target population: Administrator Permissions→Manage Continuous Performance Management→Admin Access to all Continuous Performance Management Data.

Via the web, log in to the application and navigate to the Continuous Performance module. The Activities view appears.

In CPM, an Activity enables employees to track items requiring employee effort. Activities may be related and, therefore, linked to performance or development goals. As an example, an employee might be working on a presentation for a new client or contract. This activity might impact the employee’s performance goal of increasing revenue for the company. Whatever work employees are doing can be captured in activities for better tracking and alignment with goals.

Activities can be created and linked to up to 20 Performance or Development Goals across different goal plans, including those from legacy (unconverted) goal plans.

The status defined to prompt an achievement displays an option to mark the Activity as an Achievement, and when it was achieved.

From the Activities view, the status of the activity can be easily changed using drag and drop.

You can also drill down into the details of each activity to post an update, link an activity to a goal, or even request feedback.

Request Feedback on an Activity is available if Continuous Feedback is enabled.

You can create, edit, and delete goals from the Goal Cards tab in the Activities view.

You can create an activity for yourself or your direct reports and link the activities to performance and development goals.

1. In the Activities view, choose Create Activity.
2. Enter an activity name.
3. Select an activity status from the dropdown list
   • High: The activity is a high-priority item that must be attended to immediately.
   • Medium: The activity is a priority, but can wait a day or two.
   • Low: The activity should be taken up when there is time.
   • Paused: The activity is currently on hold.
   • Complete: The activity has been successfully completed. This option triggers the creation of an achievement if this is the status to prompt this action (defined in Continuous Performance Management Configuration. If selected, it will be required to include the Date Achieved, which can be either today's date or any date in the past.
   • Canceled: The activity is no longer being worked on, but details are preserved.
4. On the Linked Goals section, select Link option to associate Performance Goals and/or Development Goals to this activity.
5. If needed, to add an attachment, in the Attachments section, choose Add , and select the file to upload.
6. Choose Save.
7. To modify the activity status, use drag and drop and place the activity card in a different status.

The default setting allows up to 5 files to be attached to an activity. Users with Edit Activity permission can upload or download attachments. Anyone with edit permissions can delete any attachment, regardless of who uploaded it. Users with View Activity permissions can only download attachments. Attachments cannot be deleted from Activities within a Meeting History snapshot.

Updates can be added to activities, providing additional details or progress information for those activities. Updates can also be flagged to signify their importance. In addition, updates are time-stamped to help track progress on an activity over time. The updates entered on each activity will be sorted from the oldest at the top to the most recent at the bottom. Updates can be edited or deleted, but only by their original author.

Users can share activities across channels where they participate. Only the channel participant who is responsible for completing the activities within a channel can share them with other channels in two ways:

• On the My Activities with <channel owner's name> page, select the Share Activities button and choose activities that they want to share with another channel in the pop-up dialog.
• On the Activity Details page, select the Share button or the Channels (<count>) link in the Shared With: field, and in the pop-up dialog, choose channels that they want to share the activity with.

See both Share Activities options in the figures below.

In the pop-up dialog, users can search for channels, choose which activities to share, and they can also control whether the target channel owners can view and add comments on each activity. After making these decisions, it is essential to select the Save button to save all selections.

This feature expands CPM functionality to be used by roles other than the manager and their direct reports. A user can invite another user to a 1:1 meeting and create activities and discussion topics together. To enable this feature, you must configure the respective target-based permissions.

Users can search for target employees by more criteria and send bulk invitations for 1:1 meeting channels on the Continuous Performance page.

Users can use the advanced and basic search to find and select multiple employees as invitation recipients. The total number of selections is not limited.

The figures below show how a user can invite multiple users to a 1:1 meeting (create a channel) in CPM.

Users (channel owners) and administrators can delete channels as needed to remove unnecessary or outdated channels, helping to keep channel lists organized and relevant. New email notifications are also provided to keep everyone informed of the changes.

Administrators can search and delete channels and declined channel invitations in the new Delete Channels admin tool. However, channels involving the existing employee-manager and employee-matrix-manager relationships can't be deleted.

Users can delete their channels, but channels involving their current direct reports and matrix reports can't be deleted. There are two deletion options:

• Single deletion: Select the trash bin icon when you hover over a channel item in the list or select the Delete Channel button on the channel details page.
• Bulk deletion: Choose the Select And Delete Channels button on the header of the channel list, and in the Delete Channels page, select and delete up to 50 channels at one time. Declined channel invitations can also be deleted there.