Configuring and Using Continuous Feedback

Continuous Feedback represents a comprehensive set of capabilities that allows employees to request and give feedback in one central place and also allows reviewers and requesters to view and manage feedback.

Employees can be more aware of their strengths and weaknesses by reaching out to others to get feedback or by receiving unsolicited feedback from others, administrators can control who can give feedback and who can request it.

Capabilities of Continuous Feedback

Note

The latest version of Continuous Feedback includes some limitations as it pertains to data privacy and protection. Refer to the Implementing and Managing Data Protection and Privacy guide for more information. https://help.sap.com/viewer/2becac773fcf4f84a993f0556160d3de/latest/en-US

Legacy reporting tools (Ad hoc table reports) are not supported with some features in the latest version of Continuous Performance Management, including Continuous Feedback. The Feedback Request Text and Feedback Response Text reporting entities will not return data when using Ad hoc reports on the latest version of CPM. The latest version of CPM allows for Story reports in People Analytics, which is not supported by the legacy version. More information can be found in the SAP Help Portal https://help.sap.com/viewer/product/SAP_SUCCESSFACTORS_PEOPLE_ANALYTICS/

The following settings control feedback capabilities across an organization:

In Manage Templates:

This main setting enables Continuous Feedback and allows employees to give feedback and to request feedback from others.

• Enable Activity-Feedback Linking: Allows employees and managers to request feedback on activities and to link feedback messages to activities.

• Disable Deleting Feedback: This child setting prevents users from deleting feedback that they have received.

• Enable Continuous Feedback Outlook Integration: To create an Outlook add-in for users to directly provide Continuous Feedback, enable this option. Then choose Save Configuration to activate the download file. After you have downloaded the file, follow the instructions in the Continuous Performance Management guide to create the add-in for your users.

In Role Based Permissions:

When a manager requests feedback for someone to provide to a recipient, that feedback cannot be deleted by either the manager or the recipient. However, an administrator has the ability to delete this type of feedback given to users.

To enable this option, select Manage Permission Roles → Administrator Permissions → Manage Continuous Performance Management → Admin Access to Delete Continuous Performance Management Page.

The administrator granted permission to delete feedback:

• Cannot view the content of the feedback, only the date, giver and receiver names, and the topic title.

• Can only search by giver and/or receiver of the feedback.

Any feedback in the system can potentially be deleted. Deletion is permanent and cannot be restored.

The are several types of Feedback Requests.

Types of Feedback Requests

Feedback requests can be made regarding an employee’s work in general.

They can also be made about a specific activity of an employee.

In each case:

• Both the manager and the employee can request the feedback provided they have the appropriate permissions.

• The feedback request can be sent to one or more people at once.

• The requester can specify a Feedback Topic and edit the questions before sending the request.

In the Home Page, the Quick Actions include an option to Request Feedback directly and send a feedback request without going to Continuous Feedback.

Once a feedback request is created, an email notification can be sent to requestees to notify them about the new request and provide them with a link to respond to it.

To manage this notification, do the following:

• Navigate to Email Notification Template Settings from Action Search, and select Continuous Feedback Request Notification.

• Intelligent Services must be enabled in the instance for this email notification to work. Intelligent Services can easily be activated from the Upgrade Center.

• Note that the text in the email body can be changed.

Requestees can access pending feedback requests from the To-Do panel on the Home Page or reply individually to requests received via Email Notification.

Viewing Pending Feedback Requests

If using the option from the Home Page, they can view all pending feedback requests at once. Requestees do not need to have access to Continuous Performance Management to respond to feedback requests. They just need to be part of the target group for the feedback requester’s Request feedback from others permission.

Requestees can read the feedback request and are informed about who will be able to view their response. There are two options for this:

• Responses to feedback requests made by an employee will be only visible to the employee.

• Responses to feedback requests made by managers about an employee will be visible to both employee and manager.

Once a feedback response is given, an email notification can be sent to requesters to notify them about the response and provide them with a link to access it and read the feedback message.

Accessing and reviewing returned feedback depends on two types of feedback:

Review Feedback on a Specific Employee Activity

Feedback provided after a request on activities will be accessible from the Activities tab and next to its linked activity. The link will take you to the Feedback Received tab.

Review General Feedback on an Employee

Feedback received after a general feedback request about an employee will be accessible to the employee from the employee’s own Feedback tab. Feedback provided after a general request about a direct report will be accessible to the manager from the direct report’s Feedback tab.

The manager can access all the feedback which includes:

• All the feedback messages received after a manager has sent a request about the employee, about an employee’s activity, or an employee’s achievement.

• All the feedback messages that have been made visible to the manager by the employee.

Employees can access and manage all the feedback that they have received in the Feedback Received tab. This includes feedback messages received after either the employee or the manager have sent a request about the employee in general, or about an employee’s activity.

Feedback received upon an employee’s request is private to the employee. Employees have the option to make such feedback visible to the manager by selecting Make visible to my manager.

After feedback has been received, employees can edit the link between a feedback message and their Activities. Feedback requested from an activity is automatically linked to that activity. The ability to link and re-link feedback is only available to employees and not to their managers.

Employees are also able to give unsolicited feedback to others within their organization. Feedback given directly by a manager to a direct report is set to ‘visible to manager’ by default and the direct report cannot delete it or make it invisible to the manager.

Users with Give Feedback permissions can provide feedback either by responding to feedback requests listed in the To-do panel on the Home Page or from Continuous Feedback using the Give Feedback button. All feedback given to others will be visible in the Feedback Given tab. 

In the Home Page, the Quick Actions include an option to Give Feedback directly and send feedback to others without going to Continuous Feedback. 

Once feedback is sent, an email notification can be sent to recipients to notify them about the feedback received and provide them with a link to access it.

When users add multiple recipients when giving feedback, the recipients’ names will be included in the email notification. Users can also see the job titles of employees when selecting them as recipients. 

Feedback recipients can access received feedback from their Feedback Received tab.

Users will be able to display all the feedback requests that have been sent from the Requests Sent tab including the following statuses:

• Request Pending
• Request Declined
• Feedback Received

You can also drill down using View More to see more details, and whether this request is linked to an activity.