In this blog, the user will learn to use Initiatives in SAP SuccessFactors Goals Management.

Initiatives:

SuccessFactors Goal Management provides a feature known as “initiatives” whereby administrators can create corporate, departmental, division, business unit, and location-level initiatives and further enable employees to link their own personal goals to those initiatives.

How it works:

HR Admin wants to create corporate initiatives with which the entire workforce should align.

• Prerequisites
• UI version is GM v12
• Enable Initiatives, Enable Generic Objects, Enable the Attachment Manager, and Role-Based Permissions options are enabled in Provisioning
• Manage Initiatives and Share Initiatives permissions

• Enabling Initiatives:

Initiatives can be turned on using SuccessFactors Admin Center.

• Go to Admin Center Goal Management Goal Management Feature Settings
• A list of Goal Management related settings is shown.
• Select Enable Initiatives.
• Click Save.

Goal Management Feature Settings Screen

Once the initiatives are enabled, the next step is to assign permission to the required permission roles.

There are two primary role-based permissions associated with Team Goals:

Manage Initiatives– grants permission to create/edit/view initiative groups and initiatives

Share Initiatives – grants permission to share the initiative with other users that may require administrative control over the initiative or who may wish to cascade the initiative to another group

Permission Role Screen

• Creating an Initiative Group: An Initiative Group with a bunch of relevant Initiatives, which you can assign and share with other employees.

Below are the steps to create an Initiative Group.

Admin Center>Goal Management>Manage Initiatives>Click Create Initiative Group> Enter information about your initiative group.

Manage Initiatives Screen

When you create an initiative group, you can provide a name, set the initiative group to active, and then add a series of relevant initiatives.

Initiatives Group Screen

Manage Initiative Actions: Once you create your initiative group, you can manage it through the below actions.

• Edit
• Assign
• Delete
• Share
• Revoke

Manage Initiative Actions Screen

• Create Initiatives: Once the Initiative group is created, the next step is to create initiatives within the group to assign/share within the organization.

Below are the steps to create an Initiative.

Admin Center>Goal Management>Manage Initiatives>Click Action Next to Initiative Group>Click Edit>Click Add Initiatives>Hit Save button

Create Initiative Screen

• Sharing an Initiative Group: Sharing an initiative group allows users to share administrative privileges with other administrators. Those with shared access can assign the initiative group to others.

Sharing an Initiative Group Screen

• Assigning an Initiative Group: Assigning the initiative group is a two-step process.
• You can assign an Initiative Group to employees.

Assigning an Initiative Group Screen

• Align the Initiative Group to specific Goal Plans.

Link the Initiative Group to specific Goal Plans Screen

• Linking Performance Goals to Initiatives: Once the initiative group has been assigned to users and aligned to a goal plan, it will appear on the user’s goal plan when adding/editing a personal goal.

Linking Performance Goals to Initiatives Screen

• There are certain limitations with Initiatives in SuccessFactors such as:
• You can’t associate goals from goal libraries with initiatives upon creation. However, you can edit the goals to associate them with initiatives later.
• You can’t assign initiatives to more than 15,000 users in a single transaction.
• Initiatives can’t be imported; however, initiative groups can be imported via Import and Export Data.
• Initiatives can’t be localized using 3-Tier Language Architecture.
• Initiatives aren’t integrated with Performance Management.
• Initiatives can’t be marked as mandatory items while creating/modifying the goals.

References: SAP SuccessFactors Goals Management Implementation Guide and SAP KBA-2351341.

Please feel free to provide your feedback or thoughts in the comments.