Using SAP SuccessFactors Mentoring

Mentoring is partnering with a more experienced colleague to enhance knowledge, skills, and self-awareness in a certain area.

The mentor supports the employee by giving advice based on their own experiences or other structured ways to transfer knowledge.

Through Career Development Planning you can formalize your mentoring process by using the program wizard to identify details, determine mentor and mentee groups, and set timelines for each individual program.

Mentoring helps you create and administer mentoring programs, with automated recommendations and matching.

In order to use this feature, you must utilize the Metadata Framework (which is also called Generic Object), Role-Based Permissions, and the Attachment Manager.

Most organizations have mentoring programs but no integrated way to administer them. Hours of work are required to match by hand or import data and configure niche solutions. SAP Success Factors Mentoring is integrated with the entire suite.

There are two ways to activate Mentoring.

1. Enable the Mentoring feature in Provisioning.

2. Turn Mentoring on via the Upgrade Center in the Admin Center.

The following lessons provide the actions necessary to activate Mentoring in your instance and give you the ability as an Administrator to modify the configuration options.

Keep in mind that Mentoring requires Role-Based Permissions, and the role you are using may vary the options viewable. For example, an Administrator role with all permissions will have broader access than an Employee role with more restrictive access.

Although Mentoring can be enabled via a Provisioning switch in Company Settings, the best practice is to utilize the Upgrade Center when possible.

To use the Upgrade Center, complete the following steps:

1. Log in to your instance.

2. Go to the Admin Center.

3. Click Upgrade Center.

4. Click Mentoring.

5. Click Upgrade Now.

If your upgrade is successful, you should see the message illustrated in the figure.

Note

Be sure to allow five minutes for the changes to take effect. Log out and back in again to view the changes.

The next steps after the Upgrade Center are as follows:

1. Log back into your instance.

2. Go to the Admin Center.

3. Click on the Upgrade Center and on View recently completed upgrades.

4. Navigate to Mentoring and click View Next Steps.

Next, there are two important follow-on steps to move forward with Mentoring.

Give yourself the proper permissions to view the Mentoring options and begin the setup.

Note

You are able to Undo Mentoring within 30 days by going back through the Upgrade Center.

1. Navigate to the Admin Center.

2. Set User Permissions.

3. Select Manage Permissions Roles and Appropriate Role.

4. Click the Permission button.

5. Scroll to Manage Career Development.

6. Enable Manage Mentoring Program.

7. Click Done and Save.

Under the Administrator Permissions section select the following:

• Manage Career Development → Manage Mentoring Programs

• Manage Integration Tools → Allow Admin to Access OData API through Basic Authentication

• Metadata Framework → Access to non-secured objects (previously known as 'Read/Write Permission on Metadata Framework')

• Manage User → Manage Employee Dynamic Groups

This permission allows you to create employee groups for use with mentoring programs.

Under the User Permissions section, select the following:

• Career Development Planning → Mentoring Programs Access Permission

  • This permission provides users access to the Mentoring tab under Development.

• Employee Data → First Name → View

• Employee Data → Last Name → View

• General User Permission → Company Info Access → User Search

  • This permission allows users to search for mentees and mentors.

You can restrict mentor and mentee searches by setting a target population.

Note

If your solution includes integration with SAP Jam, select General User Permissions → SAP Jam Access. This permission allows you to access SAP Jam and create groups associated with your mentoring programs.

Once the appropriate Administrator Permissions are granted, the Manage Mentoring Programs options should appear in the Admin Center under the Career Development menu.

Under the Administrator Permissions:

• Metadata Framework → Access to non-secured objects (previously known as 'Read/Write Permission on Metadata Framework')

Under the User Permissions section:

• Career Development Planning → Mentoring Programs Access Permission

  • This permission provides users access to the Mentoring tab under Development.

• Employee Data → First Name → View

• Employee Data → Last Name → View

• General User Permission → Company Info Access → User Search

  • This permission allows users to search for mentees and mentors.

You can restrict mentor and mentee searches by setting a target population.

Note

If your solution includes integration with SAP Jam, select General User Permissions SAP Jam Access. This permission allows you to access SAP Jam from Mentoring.

The Mentoring Access Permission grants permission to the Mentoring area within CDP. It is located in the Admin Center. Navigate to Set User Permissions → Manage Permission Roles.

Within Development, you can see the mentoring program if your role is granted the Mentoring Access Permission.

Select the buttons to learn about the types of Mentoring Programs.

A system administrator is given three options of mentoring programs to choose from when creating a new mentoring program.

1. Supervised: allows administrator high structure and control over the program, timelines, and matching experience. This type of program requires more interaction and management from the administrator.

2. Unsupervised: allows administrator more flexibility while maintaining some structure around the matching process. The mentoring wizards for this type work similarly to those for the supervised type, but do not require as much oversight.

3. Open Enrollment: the most flexible type of program for all, this program type allows the administrator to provide some broad parameters around the program, and then step out of the matching process. Open Enrollment gives mentors and mentees the freedom to match and participate more fluidly.

Depending on the desired program and audience, the organization may choose to use one or all of the types at one point or another.

To create a program, navigate to Admin Center → Development and select Manage Mentoring Programs.

Follow the wizard and begin filling out the necessary information such as the following:

• Program name

• Program description

• Program owner

You can also brand your program and upload an image if you like.

The administrator can designate whether program matching is supervised or unsupervised. Supervised matching means that the Administrator kicks off the matching and makes any desired changes. Unsupervised matching means mentees must choose preferred mentors when signing up.

Mentors approve/decline match requests from mentees. There is also an option which allows participants to end the mentoring relationship over time, if needed.

Administrators can define a maximum number of mentees per mentors, and a maximum number of mentors per mentees.

After the program is created and in-progress, admins and program owners can still change the limits in program overview pages. In addition, when mentors sign up for a mentoring program, they can also adjust the number of mentees they wish to be paired with, up to the limit you have defined for the program.

It means that a particular mentee, in a specific mentoring program, can have more than one mentor. Similarly, a particular mentor, in a specific mentoring program, can have more than one mentee.

When a Mentoring Program Administrator defines the parameters within Manage Mentoring Programs, a maximum threshold of mentors and mentees determines the number of mentors per mentee or mentees per mentor allowed. These guidelines create a hard stop to the number of mentors or mentees a participant can have within this program. If allow participants to end the mentoring relationship is enabled, the system will automatically adjust the number allotted to create opportunities to continue accepting new relationships.

Adding mentors and mentees can be accomplished one at a time or by dynamic group.

Simply begin typing the name of the employee or search for the correct person.

When managing the participation of mentors within a program, filter options in the Mentor tab allow Administrators to review all pending requests by status and approve conveniently from this area. The filters give the Administrator the ability to see the status of the following:

• Pending
• Declined
• Accepted
  • Available
  • Unavailable

For each mentoring program you create, you also design the sign-up form which generates the mentor and mentee sign-up pages.

Now within the Create New Program wizard in Admin Center, mentoring provides more matching options in the Signup Form step. The Signup Form is where an administrator defines questions presented to the mentor or mentee when registering for a program.

Select the buttons to learn more about Matching Rules.

In the signup form, you also define a matching rule for each question.

Matching is based on the criteria defined below:

• Preferences- You define questions both for mentors and mentees. They are matched based on the answers to the questions.
• Mentee's Preference- You define questions for mentees only. Mentors and mentees are matched based on mentees’ answers and mentors’ employee profiles.
• Mentor’s Preference - You define questions for mentors only. Mentors and mentees are matched based on mentors’ answers and mentees’ employee profiles.
• Profiles - You don’t define questions for mentors and mentees. They are matched based on employee profiles.

Note

For matching based on preferences, you can use both standard and custom picklists. For matching based on mentee's preference, mentor's preference, and profiles, you can only use standard picklists.

Key questions may also be set up in the Signup Form of the wizard. Enabling key questions is as simple as a checkbox. Yet, this functionality plays an important role in the matching process. If mentors and mentees do not satisfy the matching rule of the key question, they will not be matched. To ensure that mentors are recommended to mentees, you cannot define all questions as key questions.

Administrators may also decide on the matching type.

Weighting questions allows the administrators to give higher or lower emphasis based on importance. You cannot give weights for key questions or the questions that are answered with free text. If you want to apply different weights and do not want a specific question to be included for matching, leave the weight field of the question empty. Make sure that the weights of all required questions add up to 100%.

As the system starts matching, it finds the best fit between mentors and mentees based on those matching rules.

Even with previously launched programs, a message displays to warn the administrator of the new matching rules and options.

For the Answer Type, select whether participants will enter a free text answer or choose from a picklist. If Pick List is selected for the Answer Type, then choose a category from the Selection Values list. This setting determines which field is used for selecting answers and is a subset of the fields configured in the solution.

The following standard fields are supported:

• Competency
• Location
• Country/Region
• Department
• Division
• Gender
• Job Family
• Job Role
• Job Code
• Job Level
• Job Title
• Skill

To add a custom picklist for Mentoring, go to Admin Center → Manage Mentoring Programs. On the top right hand side, there is a link to access the Settings. There will be an option add a picklist to be used for the Mentoring Signup Form.

Free text answers are supported but not included in matching criteria.

You have to type questions to indicate what users you are choosing. As the same text displays to both mentor and mentee, it is best to make the question fairly generic.

On this page you can also access and edit invitation e-mails.

Although many notifications are not configurable, invitation notifications sent to mentees and mentors in supervised and unsupervised programs can be customized as part of the program configuration process.

Within Admin Center or the Action Search, locate Manage Mentoring Programs and create a program which utilizes invitations. Within the program creation wizard, go to the Signup Form step and next to Email Template select the Setup link to modify the templates.

Once you click on the Setup link, the invitations can be configured with specific text and tokens.

When using a program that matches Mentors and Mentees, automatic emails are triggered based on actions taken during the matching process.

E-mails are generated based on several events in addition to invitation events. Matching requests, matching confirmations, matching declinations/rejections, and other events trigger e-mail notifications in Mentoring. The email notifications can be customized in Admin Center → Email Notification Templates Settings. You can customize the email subject and body in all supported languages or disable certain types of email notifications.  A complete list of e-mail notifications and triggers is provided in the Mentoring Administration Guide (section 9) found on the SAP Help Portal.

Navigate to Admin Center → Development → Manage Mentor Programs → Create New Mentoring Program. At this point, the administrator has the ability to choose one of the three types of mentor programs available. Select the Open Enrollment option and complete the wizard.

Within this screen, the administrator can create many of the same options available in the other types of mentor programs, such as details, description, and branding. However, other choices, such as Mentor Approval Method and Target Participants allow the administrator to set the flexibility and audience of the program. After making selections, the wizard offers the opportunity to define the matching questions as in the supervised and unsupervised programs.

Deep links enable administrators to share open enrollment programs conveniently with potential participants. You may include a deep link to the specific mentoring program in the communication to be used in e-mail, an intranet page, even an LMS item, or any other medium. Clicking on this deep link takes the user directly to the sign-up page for a mentoring program. Links can be generated for mentee and mentor sign-up pages as well. However, the links will not be seen in this area until after the program has moved to the in-progress state.

Once all details and questions are completed, the summary form appears with all of the program information. Be sure to verify the information before launching the program. Once the program is launched, it is difficult to edit or modify the program.

The Open Enrollment mentor program is now active and available for reference in the Administrator view of the Manage Mentor Programs section. If there is no approval process selected, the program will automatically move to the IN-PROGRESS status.

After the program is launched, the mentee sees the program details and decides whether or not to participate. If the mentor program is an Open Enrollment one, it will not have a start date or end date and the notice states this.

Note

After the open enrollment program is created, admins and program owners can still change the limits in program overview pages. In addition, when mentors sign up for a mentoring program, they can also adjust the number of mentees they wish to be paired with, up to the limit you have defined for the program.

When joining the program, the mentee gives preferences to the questions and potential mentors.

The mentee can select from the recommended mentors, or search for someone specifically.

Once the steps are finalized, the mentee receives a message in the system and awaits the mentor’s confirmation or decline.

Simultaneously, the mentor receives a notice of the mentee request. Based on the configuration of the program, a mentor may have multiple mentee requests or only one.

At this point, it is up to the mentor to accept or decline the mentee request. The system provides additional information, such as how many openings are left for mentees and their preferences. This assists the mentor in making a more informed decision, which is captured electronically in the system.

If the mentor accepts the request from the mentee, the mentoring relationship is fully acknowledged in the system and activities may be added for the mentee. These activities may include: weekly or monthly meetings, special assignments, and simple task tracking. To access this section, navigate to View Mentoring Details.

Select the + (plus) sign to add your activities. This allows communication of actions necessary to create and track a productive mentor relationship. It also provides an avenue to end the relationship should the relationship become unhelpful, which can happen due to a variety of reasons such as time constraints, lack of follow-through on actions, or one member of the relationship leaves the organization.

A program is in a draft status when it has been set up but not "launched" yet (not the same as starting a program, more like saving a program to a read-only state).

You leave a program in draft state by clicking the Save button, rather than Save and launch. In this state, all elements are still editable.

A program is in a Confirmed Status when it has been launched but no invitations have been sent yet. The blue action button shows Send Email to Mentors Now.

A program is in Mentor Sign-up Status when it has been launched and mentor invitations sent out. You can see how many invited mentors have signed up so far on the program card.

The next step on the blue action button is Send Email to Mentees Now.

A program is in Mentee Sign-up status when it has been launched, mentors invitations are sent out, mentors signed up, mentees invitations are sent out, and mentees can sign up.

When we click on the Mentoring Program Details icon, we will see if additional mentors declined or signed up, and we can also see the number of mentees who signed up or who declined.

• For unsupervised programs, there is a button Start that will move the program to in-progress.

• For supervised programs, there is a button Match Now to initiate the matching process once mentors and mentees signed up. Once the administrator starts the matching for a program, no more mentees can sign up. Any mentees attempting to sign up after matching has started are redirected to a landing page explaining that they have missed the deadline for sign up. The matching algorithm goes through mentor and mentee records to find matches based first on preferences and then on the data from the Profile. Once administrators confirmed the matches, they will have the option to start the program to move it to in-progress.

To ensure optimal system performance when the system matches mentors and mentees, do not add more than 3,000 mentors or 3,000 mentees to a supervised program. A program wizard will validate the number of invitees and prevent the saving and launching of a program with too many invitees.

The original concept of supervised mentoring programs assumed they would be closely monitored by administrators and therefore small. However, some customers also want to use this type of program with larger numbers of participants than originally anticipated. Since there is a limit to the performance of the algorithm, there will be an error message if the user tries to add more than 3,000 mentors or 3,000 mentees into supervised programs.

It is however fine to have more than 3,000 participants in total if they are distributed between the mentors and mentees and respect the limit of 3,000 in each group.

When you run matching on a supervised mentoring program, the system uses an algorithm to compare preferences and profile data to suggest matches for mentors and mentees.

Once a program has mentors and mentees signed up, you can click on Match Now and a backend matching job will start.

1. With the Action Search, go to Manage Mentoring Programs.

   

2. Locate the mentoring program in the Set Up section and click Match Now.

   

3. There is a pop-up message to confirm that we want to proceed and that the system should start the matching job. Click on Continue.

   

4. A very quick message shows up on the program card saying Success. The job starts. The program is still in the Not Started section but the button Start is not clickable.

   

5. Click on the Program Name to review the matches.

   The matching algorithm goes through mentor and mentee records to find matches based first on preferences and then on profile data. The system assigns the following match levels to the resulting matches.

   • Preferred (four stars): The mentee has been matched with one of the preferred mentors selected during sign-up.
   • Excellent (three stars): The mentee has been matched with a mentor with whom he or she has a 75% or higher matching score.
   • Good (two stars): The mentee has been matched with a mentor with whom he or she has a 74.99% to 50% matching score.
   • Average (one star): The mentee has been matched with a mentor with whom he or she has a 49.99% or lower matching score.
   

6. After the matching job completes, review and edit the matches on the program overview page.

   You can adjust matches from the program overview page after the mentoring program has started.

   1. To change a match, go to the mentee card and click the Remove icon to remove a match or the Assign icon to assign a new mentor. The mentee and mentor move to the Not Matched tab where you can assign a new match.

      If the mentor is matched with more than one mentee, then the mentor is only moved to the Not Matched if you remove all mentee matches.

   2. Review the Not Matched tab for any mentees remaining unmatched. The matching algorithm may return initial results with some mentees and mentors unmatched. The circumstances for this result may include:

      • More mentors than mentees signed up for the program.

      • Not enough mentors signed up for the program.

7. If necessary, refresh the page and the button Start becomes clickable.

8. When ready, go to the program card and click Start. From the confirmation popup window, click Continue. This moves the program status to In-Progress. The Mentoring Match e-mail is sent to all matched mentors and mentees informing them of the match. They can view the match details on the Mentoring page.

When assigning mentors or mentees, only 200 participants are listed on the Assign New Mentor/Mentee pop-up. If more than 200 participants are available, the administrator can refine search criteria to find target participants.

When the administrator assigns mentors or mentees, or removes mentees from matched mentors, the system updates your changes automatically. The adjustments are saved immediately with an autosave functionality.

The Matched page shows the first 200 matches and the Not Matched page shows the first 500 participants. The administrator can then search participants among all matched and unmatched lists by name. For supervised mentoring programs, it is also possible to select a matching level to filter the matched results.

Employees navigate from their home page to Mentoring, which is found under Development.

When employees are invited to be a mentor, the invitation often has important program information such as description, duration, and deadline dates for sign up.

Employees who sign up as mentors choose their preferences which may include what location or locations where they would prefer mentees to be. This can help with scheduling especially in a global company.

Key questions are marked with a red asterisk in the mentoring sign up form. Participants must answer these questions before they can complete sign up or check recommended mentors. If mentors and mentees don't satisfy the matching rule of key questions, mentors won't be recommended to mentees. This enhancement makes sure that participants won't miss these questions, which may improve matching results.

Mentors can be required to upload documents that demonstrate their qualifications as a mentor.

Mentors do not need to complete all sign up steps at one time. They can save their progress and return at a future time to complete the sign up process.

If a program is configured to require approval, mentors will see a participation pending message above the program until permission is granted by an administrator or manager. For customers using the Latest Home Page, managers can approve or decline employee requests to be a mentor on the latest home page. For more details see the Home Page Guide on the SAP Help Portal.

The Mentee sign-up experience is similar to the Mentor sign-up experience. After selecting preferences from the Welcome Screen, mentees can view suggested matches or search for mentors.

After a mentor signs up in an unsupervised or open enrollment mentoring program, mentees send mentoring requests to that mentor. Then, the mentor can either accept or decline. When a mentee requests a potential mentor, the mentor receives an e-mail notification and they will see a Mentoring Request tile on their Home Page. They can also see a new pending request notification within the mentoring program. Mentees can review mentor requests they have sent from within the mentoring programs. They can see accepted requests as well as declined requests along with explanations provided by mentors.

Mentors can also see mentee requests along with the option to approve or reject them.

When a mentor chooses to decline a mentoring request, that mentor can add a note that will be included in the notification e-mail to the mentee.

When a mentor chooses to accept a mentoring request, the mentor-mentee relationship continues until one of them ends the relationship or the mentoring program ends.

Once a match is designated or approved, the mentee and mentor can view information on the Mentor Quickcard including:

1. User's name

2. User's title or job title (depending upon whether or not Employee Central is used)

3. Job family (either from Legacy Families and Roles or from Job Profile Builder)

Administrators need to confirm that employees in mentoring programs have the correct RBP permissions to see details about others employees. This is controlled in permission roles under Employee Data.

Mentors in open enrollment or unsupervised programs can receive up to 20 mentoring requests at a time.

When the setting is enabled during the creation of the mentoring program, either party (mentor or mentee) may end the mentoring relationship by simply clicking on End relationship option. And if you have our Qualtrics solution, a survey can be launched to gather feedback on the individual experience even if the mentor program is ongoing.

You can send a Qualtrics feedback opportunity to all mentoring program participants when the program ends. Using this feature requires a Qualtrics Employee Experience license so that you can create Lifecycle projects. You also need to integrate SAP SuccessFactors with Qualtrics and enable Intelligent Services and Integration Center.

You can learn more about this feature on the SAP Help Portal in the guide Integrating SAP SuccessFactors with Qualtrics.