Implementing SAP SuccessFactors Performance and Goals software can help make performance review season easier. However, taking the time to develop a performance review plan that utilizes that technology is equally important if you want long-term benefits.
The following is a checklist to help you breeze through the preparation for the upcoming review process.
1) Create next year’s goal plan. Many people come out of the annual performance review cycle with ideas for goals. Give them a place to log those goals so they don’t lose them. Create the next year goal plan and permission them to see it in SAP SuccessFactors.
2) Communicate timing early and often. Knowing what your performance review timeline looks like keeps your HR team on track. It also helps employees plan the time they need to complete their duties. Be mindful of the natural ebb and flow of your organization. Pick the best time for the majority of people to complete the review. You will never be able to satisfy everyone, so satisfying most is certainly an acceptable goal.
3) Review your rating scale and make any adjustments to the wording or number of rating options. While it seems like an easy task to go in and make performance review rating scale changes in SAP SuccessFactors, the change management it takes to get your employee and management population to use the new rating scale effectively can be monumental. It often takes several communications, examples and training programs to really get a new rating scale put into place and widely used consistently.
4) Review your competency structure and update any competency names, descriptions, and writing assistant text. Creating a competency model for your company is a lofty task. Typically, once you have established a competency model, there is not a lot of work that needs to be done year after year. The piece you can continue to enhance in SAP SuccessFactors is the competency writing assistant text. Talk to your employees about the writing assistant and for which competencies it is most needed. Start there when making updates and improvements.
5) Review your route maps in SuccessFactors. The route map concept in SAP SuccessFactors is the path a review takes from the moment the form is created until it is complete. Were there any bottlenecks in the performance review process last year that you want to avoid this year? Does any of text need to be tweaked? If you supply “step due” dates for each part of the process, have you updated those review dates for the upcoming year timeline?
6) Review your user data to ensure the manager and human resource representatives are correct for each employee and people who are no longer with the company have been inactivated. Most of the SAP SuccessFactors performance and goals product relies heavily on these two relationships for the most of the process to function accurately. Have your managers and your HR team complete a quick spot check of their reporting relationships before the form launch is critical to avoiding rework.
7) Review job specific competency mappings. As prep work for performance review season, you need to ensure that any new job titles that have been added throughout the year are created in the families and roles structure within SAP SuccessFactors, they have a job code attached, and they have competencies associated to it. In addition, you need to ensure that all employees do in fact have the appropriate job code tied to their record. Reviewing and updating this information before you launch your annual performance review will ensure that employees are not receiving a review where the competency section is blank.
8) Review the layout and design of the performance review form. This item is the one you really want to do some careful thinking and advance planning around. Making changes to a form in SuccessFactors can happen a few different ways. Customers, if they are comfortable, can make some changes themselves by contacting SAP SuccessFactors support, or a partner like Rizing, to assist with the changes. Detailing out what is necessary, making the changes, and testing the changes can take a good bit of time to get correct and working smoothly. Please be sure you leave enough time to vet out all the changes before it is too late and you want to launch the form the next day!
9) Just before form launch, review the form template to ensure all pieces are accurately connected. In Form Template Settings, ensure that the form title is correct, the correct route map is associated to the form, the performance review start, end, and due dates are correct and all the appropriate switches for your process have been enabled. In Manage Templates, review the form title to ensure it matches what is used in Form template settings, review the correct rating scale is being used, and that the appropriate goal plan and development goal plan are attached to the form where applicable.
10) Avoid Surprises for Employees. SAP SuccessFactors now offers a tool called Continuous Performance Management that encourages and enables on ongoing dialogue between managers and employees. With this consistent communication, managers should have an easier time evaluating at the end of the year, and employees should see fewer surprises on their reviews.
Alleviate Stress with a Performance Review Plan
While this list is not meant to be all inclusive, it is a really good starting point for most companies to get them thinking about their own performance review process and what they need to coordinate and complete to have a successful performance review cycle. Having a plan for each part of this process will eliminate some of the stress that is typically associated with the review process during an already busy time frame.