Managing Talent Pools

Once the Talent Pools have been enabled and permissioned, you can begin using them. Managing the actual Talent Pools is often a separate activity from nominating users to those Talent Pools. For example, you may have a central HR user who creates and manages the Talent Pools while managers are responsible for nominating individual users to the subset of pools to which they have access.

To access Talent Pools, navigate to Succession using the Menu, and then select the Talent Pool tab.

When entering the Talent Pools page, the list of Talent pools will be displayed. Several actions are available from this page, such as:

• Sort the list by Talent Pool Name or by Owner.
• Filter the list based on Talent Pool attributes.
• Add a new Talent Pool.
• Show and Edit an existing Talent Pool.
• Delete an existing Talent Pool.
• Select a Talent Pool to view and manage its nominations.

Before successors can be nominated to a Talent Pool, the Pool must be created:

1. Navigate to the Talent Pool page in Succession.
2. Choose Add Talent Pool(+) in the top-right corner of the screen.
3. Enter the information for the Talent Pool fields:
   1. Enable Readiness: Decide if you want to use a Readiness level in the Talent Pools.
   2. Code (Required): Enter a code for the Talent Pool.
   3. Status (Required): Select a status.
   4. Effective Start Date (Required): Enter the date that you wish the Pool to become effective.
   5. Name: Give the Talent Pool a name.
   6. Description: Enter a more detailed description of the pool, if necessary.
   7. Owner: You can select an Owner for the Talent Pool.
   8. Type: Indicates whether the Talent Pool is used for Succession or Default purposes.
4. Choose Save.

To delete a Talent Pool, select the Action menu within the Talent Pool card and choose Delete Talent Pool. You are asked to confirm the deletion.

Once a Talent Pool has been created, select the Talent Pool or Show and Edit Talent Pool from the Talent Pool’s action menu to:

• Add a new nominee to a Talent Pool.
• Delete a nomination from a Talent Pool.
• Edit a nomination from a Talent Pool to change the readiness or the notes.

Employees can also be nominated to Talent Pools from other areas of SAP SuccessFactors:

• Talent Search - One or many employees can be nominated at a time.
• Talent Card - Add the Nominations section to the Succession Talent Card to add that employee to a Talent Pool.
• People Profile Nomination Portlet - Manage succession nominations from the People Profile.

The following elements can be found in the Sales Pipeline Talent Pool screen example:

1. List of nominees in the Talent Pool. Choose a nominee’s name to open the Talent Card. Multiple Talent Cards can be opened to compare nominees.
2. Nominees are sorted by Name. Select a column name to sort the nominees in ascending or descending order by the values in the column.
3. Add a nominee. Steps for adding nominees follow.
4. Edit the nominee in that row. Make your changes and choose Submit.
5. Delete the nominee in that row. Confirm you’d like to delete the nomination.
6. Open the change history for the Talent Pool. Additional information about the change history is included later in this lesson.
7. Show and Edit Talent Pool. Opens the Talent Pool object so you can edit or manage the object.
8. Define the column properties. Select the fields you’d like to see as columns on the Talent Pool screen. Additional fields can be added using Manage Talent Pool Field Settings in the Admin Center.
9. Approve or Reject a pending nomination. User must have the Approve/Reject Talent Pool nominations permission in Succession Planner RBP. Additional information about nominee approvals is included later in this lesson.
10. Open the Talent Pool filter. Additional information about filtering the nominees is included later in this lesson.

Adding Talent Pool Nominations

To add nominations to a Talent Pool:

1. Select a Talent Pool to open the nominations page.
2. Choose Add Talent Pool Nominee ().
3. Enter the name of the user that you want to nominate, select them from your search results, and then choose Next.
4. Choose a Readiness level (if the Talent Pool is set up with readiness enabled).
5. Optional: Choose whether to set the employee as an Emergency Cover for the Talent Pool if the emergency cover feature is enabled in Nominations Setup.
6. Optional: Enter a note for the nomination.
7. Choose Submit.

Employees can also be nominated to a Talent Pool from the talent card when working with the Succession Org Chart or Position Tile view, and you can nominate one or many employees at once from the Talent Search results page.

The Nomination History displays any action made to the user such as which nominee was added to a pool at which time by whom; and has been changed by whom/when. Thus, customers can benefit from transparency in the process of Talent Pool management.

The history page defaults to only showing active pool nominees. If you wish to see the history of employees that have been removed from the Talent Pool, select the Show Removed option.

Check that the date range in the top-right corner includes the dates for which you wish to see the history.

There are two filters available with Talent Pools to assist with searching the Talent Pool data:

• Search the Talent Pools from the main Talent Pool screen.
• Search the nominees within a selected Talent Pool.

Searching within the Talent Pools

From the main Talent Pool screen, if you have many Talent Pools, you can choose which ones appear in the list by opening the filter from the top right of the screen. By default, the Talent Pool Code and Name fields are already included as filters, but you can also include other Talent Pool fields to the filter list.

To add additional search fields, the fields must be configured as Searchable Fields in the Talent Pool object:

1. To navigate to Configure Object Definitions, use the Action Search.
2. In the first dropdown, select Object Definition and in the second dropdown, select the TalentPool object.
3. Choose Take Action → Make Correction.
4. Under Searchable Fields, you can define fields as filters in the Talent Pools page.
5. Save your changes.

Note

Only fields of data type "picklist," "string," "Boolean," and "date" are supported as filters.

Searching Talent Pool Nominees

After you select a Talent Pool, you can also filter which nominees are shown in the list by selecting the arrow centered above the list of nominees. By default, Readiness and Job Title are selected as filters, but you can add additional fields to filter the nominees.

To add Talent Pool Nomination filters:

1. Navigate to Manage Talent Pool Field Settings using the Action Search.
2. Select the fields you’d like to add to the screen. Besides the Division, Department, and Location, configurable fields include employee’s talent flags and 16 custom fields from the employee profile.

Once the fields have been added as filters, from the nominee filter section, select Adapt Filters to add those new fields to the filter screen. After entering the data you’re using to filter the nominees, choose Go to run the search.

Users with the appropriate permissions can approve or reject pending Talent Pool nominations. Only nominees who belong to the user’s target population can be approved or rejected, and at most 1,000 pending nominees at one time can be approved or rejected.

To approve or reject nominations, the user must have permission to View Talent Nominations and Approve/Reject Talent Pool Nominations within Role Based Permissions. The Apply target population to Talent Pool Nominations Permissions must also be enabled in the Succession Nominations Setup screen. Once these preferences are enabled, the Approve and Reject options are available on the Talent Pool Details screen for users with approval permissions.

There are three pending status options with Talent Pools:

• Pending: The addition of a nominee to the Talent Pool hasn’t been approved yet.
• Change Pending: The change to an existing nomination hasn’t been approved yet.
• Deletion Pending: The removal of a nominee from the Talent Pool hasn’t been approved yet.

Enabling the Approve/Reject permissions also enables a To-Do item on the Home Page for the Talent Pool Owner.

The approval process for Workflows follows:

Viewing Talent Pool Nominations

Talent Pool Nominations may be viewed with the proper permissions through role-based permissions and Talent Pool object level permissions. However, users without the Talent Pool object level permission can also view Talent Pool nominations of employees in the following:

• Nomination Block in People Profile
• Nominations section of the Talent card

To use this function, simply enable the Provisioning switch View Talent Pool nominations in People Profile and Talent Card without having the Talent Pool object level permission: