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World desk6 min

How to Run Talent Management Workflows in SAP SuccessFactors

A practical guide to using SAP SuccessFactors for goals, performance conversations, reviews, development, learning, succession, and compensation.
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SAP SuccessFactors supports talent management through connected, configurable processes—not one universal screen or workflow. A practical cycle is to align goals, keep progress visible, review performance, turn feedback into development and learning, and use succession and compensation processes where they are licensed and enabled. The exact options depend on your organization’s modules, release, configuration, and your role permissions.

Start with your organization’s enabled modules and roles

Before following a generic procedure, establish which SuccessFactors modules your organization uses and which version and features are active in your tenant. A capability described in SAP documentation may not appear for every customer. Access can also vary: an employee, manager, HR administrator, and calibration participant may have different permissions to create, edit, approve, rate, or view information.

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Ask your HRIS or SuccessFactors administrator to confirm the tenant’s current release, enabled features, available goal and performance experiences, and role-based access. Use your organization’s process documentation for exact screen names and navigation; those details are configuration-dependent.

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Align business priorities with employee goals

Begin with organizational priorities, then translate them into measurable team and individual goals. Agree on an owner, a clear outcome, and milestones that make progress observable. Managers and employees can revisit those milestones during the year rather than treating goal setting as a one-time form exercise.

SAP’s latest Goal Management supports performance and development goals in a unified framework, along with goal alignment, cascading, team goals, milestones, and progress visibility. SAP describes the latest version as the strategic direction and default for new implementations. Some organizations may still have a legacy experience during transition, so confirm which one your tenant uses before applying instructions from a general guide. SAP’s Goal Management documentation describes adding goals and the relevant experience.

  1. Set the direction: Identify the organizational priorities the team needs to support.
  2. Translate priorities into outcomes: Write goals so an employee and manager can tell what success looks like.
  3. Assign ownership and milestones: Establish who is responsible and how progress will be checked.
  4. Align and revisit: Use the available alignment or cascading features, then review progress in regular conversations and update goals when priorities change.

Keep the goal set focused enough to support meaningful follow-up. A goal plan is useful when it connects work to priorities and creates a basis for discussion, not simply when it contains many entries.

Use ongoing conversations to keep progress visible

Continuous Performance Management is designed for ongoing manager-employee dialogue, feedback, coaching, activity tracking, and recording achievements. Use it as a cadence for discussing progress and obstacles during the performance period. Those records can inform a formal review, but continuous conversations do not necessarily replace the organization’s review cycle.

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Agree on a check-in rhythm that fits the work. In each conversation, discuss progress against goals, changes in priorities, blockers, and any support or coaching needed. Record relevant activities or achievements in the enabled process so that important context is not left until the formal review. SAP’s Performance and Goal Management learning course explains how these tools relate to the performance and goal modules.

Run formal reviews, 360 feedback, and calibration for their separate purposes

A formal performance review provides a structured assessment for a defined review cycle. Depending on the organization’s configuration, it may assess goal achievement, core values, and job-specific competencies. Templates may display goals from a goal plan, but whether a form is linked to a plan is determined by configuration.

Formal performance review

Employees and managers should use the review to assess evidence against the stated goals and relevant competencies, and to discuss what affected results. Follow the organization’s instructions for who completes each portion, when it is due, and what information is visible to each participant. Do not assume that a goal plan automatically appears on a review form.

360 Reviews

A 360 process gathers feedback from selected raters rather than relying only on the manager’s assessment. SAP’s described best-practice process includes manager approval of raters. The organization must decide who is appropriate to provide input and how that input will be used; multi-rater feedback is not interchangeable with a manager’s formal rating.

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Calibration

Calibration gives managers or leaders a structured setting to discuss ratings and develop a more consistent shared understanding. It is a distinct process from collecting feedback and completing an individual review. Calibration is intended to support fairer, more objective assessments, but it does not automatically remove bias: outcomes depend on the process design and how participants apply it.

SAP’s learning course and Performance & Goals Management documentation describe these capabilities. Use your tenant’s configured process for the actual steps and access rules.

Turn review findings into development and learning

Use review conversations and competency feedback to identify a specific development need, then connect it to an action the employee can take. Career and Development Planning can support career worksheets, career goals, development goals and actions, and role-readiness assessments that compare rated competencies with those mapped to a future role.

Development actions may include practice, coaching, mentoring, or relevant learning. SAP SuccessFactors Learning can provide training, and SAP describes aligning learning outcomes with performance goals. The connection is conditional, not universal: SAP’s current documentation says that using Development Goals in the latest Goal Management requires Succession & Development licensing and feature enablement in Provisioning. Confirm that dependency with your administrator before planning around an integrated workflow.

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See SAP’s documentation for Career and Development Planning, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, and Goal Management and career development.

Connect succession and compensation without treating ratings as decisions

Succession and Development supports identifying and developing talent for future organizational needs, alongside individual career development. Compensation supports compensation planning and management; related documentation also covers variable pay and reward or recognition processes. These are related parts of talent management, but they have their own capabilities, access controls, and organizational decisions.

A performance score does not automatically determine a promotion, succession placement, or compensation outcome. Those decisions belong to the organization, and any system connection depends on configuration and governance. Limit access to sensitive talent and compensation information to the roles authorized to use it.

Refer to SAP SuccessFactors Succession and Development and SAP SuccessFactors Compensation for product scope.

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Choose a process design that fits the decision

Process choice Use it for What to decide
Continuous check-ins Keeping progress, coaching, and obstacles visible throughout the work period How often managers and employees will meet and what progress or activities they will record
Periodic formal review A structured assessment of goals, values, or competencies for a review cycle Review timing, participants, evidence, and whether the form is linked to a goal plan
Manager assessment A manager’s evaluation of an employee’s performance Which criteria and evidence inform the assessment
360 multi-rater feedback Gathering input from selected raters Rater selection, manager approval, and how feedback will be used
Calibration discussion Building a shared understanding of ratings among managers or leaders Who participates, what evidence is reviewed, and how the discussion is governed
Development and learning actions Addressing a skill, competency, or career-development need Which actions and learning are relevant, and whether the required module integration is enabled

These processes can complement one another, but they are not substitutes. In particular, a conversation intended for coaching may not serve the same purpose as an evaluative review or a compensation decision.

Check release changes before using older instructions

SAP’s learning course, accessed 7 October 2026, says the latest Goal Management became the only option for new implementations as of the 1H 2025 release. It also says remaining legacy Goal Management customers must migrate by the 2H 2026 release, with a universal upgrade planned by the end of 2026. Since the stated migration period is current and release plans or tenant rollout status can change, verify the status in your tenant’s current release information and SAP Help rather than assuming a particular experience is active.

The same course says the latest performance-form experience was released in 1H 2025, is being automatically enabled in the 1H 2026 release for qualifying tenants, and that legacy forms are expected to be deleted in 1H 2027. These are SAP’s stated plans and rollout details, not a guarantee that every tenant has the same form experience today. Check your tenant and current SAP release documentation before training users or changing a process.

Build administrator knowledge by module

SAP’s training catalog lists separate talent-management training for Goal Management administration, performance management, 360 Reviews, calibration, succession, career development planning and mentoring, learning, compensation, and variable pay. The catalog was last updated 4 September 2026; check SAP Training for current course availability and scheduled delivery. The module-based learning path is useful because the work of administering a goal plan, a review cycle, or succession access is not the same task.

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SAP Training: HCM Talent Management course listing

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