Nobody likes to fly blind especially when there’s a lot on the line.
When it comes to reaching your goals, you want to know how you’re doing, what’s working, and what’s not so you can improve faster.
Without guidance, without feedback, without coaching along the way, essentially you’re flying blind. All the while you’re hoping you’ll reach your goals – but it’s not clear whether you’re on target and there’s no guarantee you’ll succeed.
The secret to employee engagement
The good news is that when it comes to engaging employees and getting them to perform at their best, most organizations understand the value of feedback and coaching even if they aren’t fully using it. Research has consistently shown the importance of regular feedback for effective performance management, future performance, and job attitudes.
Feedback is critical to a successful performance management program and particularly beneficial if employees can get effective feedback on how they’re progressing toward their goals.
This is where our Continuous Performance Management capabilities come into play – to help organizations increase employee engagement and improve workforce performance by stimulating more continuous and effective dialogue and feedback between managers and employees.
More immediate feedback from peers
Effective feedback can come from many different sources – not just managers and supervisors, but also peers.
Peers can provide employees candid and constructive feedback, sharing in a timely manner what they’re doing well, and what they can do better. They can also offer managers unexpected insights into an employee’s performance and the dynamics of a team.
All of this brings me to why I’m particularly excited about the Q3 release of SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals.
Now as part of the solution’s Continuous Performance Management capabilities, employees can request feedback from peers. This enhancement supports the need for feedback to be specific, timely, and ongoing. Employees can request feedback on their achievements from anyone in the organization at any time. Managers may also request feedback on behalf of employees.
Requests for peer feedback are supported by email and mobile notifications. Users will also see feedback requests as to-do items on the Homepage (v3 only).
Some of the advantages of the peer request feedback feature:
- Helps employees get a quick and timely read on how others perceive their work
- Allows managers to gain visibility into specific aspects of an employee’s work
- Provides managers a better overall picture of employee’s strengths and development needs
- Supports the dynamic nature of talent conversations with just-in-time performance insights
- Low effort as both the mobile app and desktop application are remarkably easy to use
- Increases employee engagement and allows for more meaningful ongoing performance conversations with managers
With continuous feedback, managers gain additional context around an employee’s performance. They can use the feedback for ongoing coaching and recognition and as input for the performance review. In summary, employees are more engaged and managers get the insight they need for more meaningful performance conversations.
Linking employee achievements to goals
Also new with the Q3 release is the ability to link Achievements captured within Continuous Performance Management to an employee’s performance review form. Now these Achievements are displayed on a new Achievements tab in the Performance Goal and Development Goal sections of the form.
This makes it easy for managers to reference the information and use it during the performance review cycle e.g. when rating employees, commenting on goals, etc. Employees benefit from more accurate and fair assessments.
A modern look and feel for mobile
I’m also excited to share that Continuous Performance Management has been completely redesigned for the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile solution (IOS and Android). Those using Continuous Performance Management on their SAP SuccessFactors Mobile phone App can enjoy optimal performance and the best user experience possible. The simple, modern interface reflects the latest trends in mobile app design making it intuitive for both employees and managers to use.
More flexibility when it comes to creating goals
With the Q3 release, we’ve also extended our goal creation capabilities. Now users can create Team Goals that do not appear on their goal plan but that they can manage and assign to others. This allows managers, for example, to monitor a goal without being responsible for achieving it, which is particularly relevant in matrix organizations. Employees may have multiple managers which requires more flexible ways of creating and tracking goals. The fact that the management of a Team Goal can be shared provides additional benefit.
In addition to Team Goals, the Q3 release introduced a new concept known as Initiatives. With Initiatives you can more easily align organizational values, missions, and behaviors. Once Initiatives are cascaded, employees actively associate their goals to them. Employees may associate their goals to one or many Initiatives at once.
To gauge top-down alignment, HR leaders can run ad hoc reports to determine, for example, which Initiatives have been assigned to a specific group, how many employees have been assigned an Initiative, how many employees have aligned their goals to an Initiative, etc.
Check out the new features across our HCM solution suite
These are just a few of the great enhancements you will see in this latest version of SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals. Learn more about the new features and enhancements for the full SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite here. Also, don’t miss our Q3 2016 Release Highlights document and Q3 2016 release video on YouTube.
For detailed information on the Q3 release, navigate to the product update pages in our SAP SuccessFactors customer community (registration required). And, if you want to join industry thought leaders and SAP SuccessFactors customers to hear innovative best practices and forward-looking ideas, join us at SuccessConnect in Las Vegas taking place August 29-31 at the Venetian!
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