2351341 - All about “Initiatives” in Goal Management v12

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PLEASE NOTE: All information in this KBA has been moved to the SAP Help Guide at Implementing and Managing Goal Management - Initiatives. This KBA is planned for archival on August 31, 2024.

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Goal Management introduces a new concept known as “initiatives” whereby administrators can create corporate, departmental and/or division level initiatives and further enable employees to actively associate their own personal goals to those initiatives.

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SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management

Importance of Initiatives

• Enables administrators to create/update and cascade goals between departments
• Enables employees to link their individual goals to corporate, departmental or divisional level goals
• Eliminates the need for administrators to create a ‘dummy’ user and goal plan to generate this type of alignment
• Simplifies the experience for top-down goal alignment
• Enables user to align their own goals across multiple initiative groups (e.g., product mgmt. and marketing initiatives)
• Supports the ability to report out (via ad hoc reporting) on goal alignment to corporate, departmental and/or divisional initiatives

Team Goals Permissions

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

1. Manage Initiatives– grants permission to create/edit/view initiative groups and initiatives
2. 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

How it works

Bill is an HR Admin wants to create corporate initiatives to which the entire workforce should align

Initiative Groups

Initiative Groups serve to bundle a series of initiatives under a common theme.

Creating an Initiative Group

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

Note: Initiative Group must be active to add initiatives

1. Initiative Group Name
2. Active Switch
3. Initiative Name

Initiative Actions

Manage Initiative Actions: Once you create your initiative group, you can manage it through a series of actions.

1. Edit: Allows you to update the parameters of the initiative group, add/edit additional initiatives to the group;
2. Assign: Allows you to assign the group to a goal plan and set of users;
3. Delete: Deletes the initiative group and any initiatives as well as those from the goal plan;
4. Share: Allows a user to share the administrative privileges of the initiative group;
5. Revoke: Allows the initiative group owner to revoke their own administrative access to the initiative. The initiative must be shared with another user for this to be executed. 

Sharing an Initiative Group

Sharing an initiative group allows a user to share administrative privileges with other administrators. Those with shared access can assign the initiative group to others.

Assigning an Initiative Group

Assigning the initiative group is a two-step process:

1. You first assign the initiative group to a user or group of users
2. Align the initiative group to one or more goal plans

Aligning Personal 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 add/edit a personal goal.

Limitations

• 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
• Initiative group name and Initiative name should not exceed more than 255 characters.

Frequently Asked Questions

• How do the groups work? Where do the filter fields come from? For RBP and Dynamic Groups it’s configured in the data model with a specific flag. Are these groups going to get their own GM flag, or share with another feature?
  
  The groups are merely containers of either a single or multiple initiatives.
  
  
• What happens when you are no longer part of the group and your goal was aligned to the initiative? Does it break the goal? Does the goal stay and the initiative is disassociated? Is this shown in the audit trail?
  
  If an initiative group was assigned to a user and the user had linked their goal to one or more initiatives within the group –then subsequently the user was unassigned, the initiative(s) within that group no longer appear on the user’s goal. The dissociation between assignee’s goal and the initiative is not indicated in the audit trail.
  
  
• Does this display on the performance form? Or just standalone in GM? If it’s on the form, does the layout need to be configured or is it a default field like category?
  
  At present, the initiatives do not integrate with a performance form. They are singular to goal management at this point in time.
  
  
• Can an initiative be linked to a Goal taken from Goal Library?
  
  Yes, an initiative can be linked to both goals that were created by the user and the goals taken from the Goal Library.

• Can you import initiatives?
  
  At present, there is no ability to import initiatives into the system.
  
  
• Can you multi-select more than one initiative to a goal?
  
  Yes. Users may link as many initiatives to a single goal provided they are relevant to that goal. For example, an initiative group named “Customer Focus” may contain two initiatives that center on customers –e.g., increase customer revenue and meet face to face with customers. The goal level, a user may link their goal to one or both initiatives.

Implementing and Managing Goal Management - Initiatives

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