The rise in remote and hybrid work has placed a heightened emphasis on the need to invest in employees’ growth and performance. For organizations to thrive in today’s ever-changing and competitive environment, there needs to be a rich culture of transparency, feedback, and learning – so people can feel confident and motivated to reach their highest potential.
Today, SAP is celebrating an exciting milestone: More than 2,000 customers have adopted continuous performance management (CPM)! Since we first introduced CPM as part of the SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals solution, customers such as Belcorp, Edgewell Personal Care, Interconexion Electrica S.A., and The Timken Company have been able to increase the frequency and quality of one-on-one conversations, thereby improving employee engagement and performance.
CPM facilitates continuous dialogue between employees and their manager, peers, mentors, and project leads, as well as ongoing visibility into their activities and achievements. We first introduced CPM to help organizations transform their performance management processes from a top-down, once-a-year evaluation of past performance to forward-looking, actionable, and ongoing check-ins where employees could take more ownership of their progress and achievements.
The reality is that goals change, for both organizations and individuals. The global pandemic put a spotlight on just how quickly priorities can change and how important it is to have frequent, transparent communication.
Now, with fewer watercooler discussions and face-to-face interactions, encouraging a culture of ongoing, informal, and transparent feedback can help employees feel more connected to their teams and more aligned to broader company goals. CPM encourages routine goal alignment, ongoing feedback and recognition, and in-the-moment coaching to help activate employees to do and be their best. And by engaging with various stakeholders in addition to line managers, employees can paint a holistic picture of their activities and achievements and proactively request feedback to constantly learn and grow.
“At Edgewell, we are committed to diversity and equity and nurturing a values culture that celebrates team and individual successes,” said Colin Emery, global senior manager, HR Systems and Processes, Edgewell Personal Care. “After piloting continuous performance management within HR, we incorporated it into global processes to measure performance and values, which is proving to be an enabler for our colleagues’ career development and professional growth.”
CPM has also helped customers create a more transparent culture, so employees are more aware of what they are doing well and the opportunities to improve. One customer in the manufacturing industry found that after implementing CPM, 75% of employees agreed their leaders create an environment where they can have difficult conversations. Separately, a pharmaceutical customer shared that CPM has helped increase sales performance due to improvements in coaching relationships between managers and employees.
CPM in the Age of Human Experience Management
Continuous performance management builds on two decades of innovation in talent management. In fact, SAP SuccessFactors was a pioneer in “people performance” software and helped create what we know today as human capital management (HCM). As we evolve HCM towards human experience management, or HXM, we are continuing to transform the talent experience to optimize engagement and drive better business outcomes.
Since launching CPM, we have made significant investments as part of our initiative to create a reimagined user experience across SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management Suite. For example, we recently released a new simple, guided approach for giving and requesting feedback to help provide more clarity and context.
Furthermore, employees can access CPM – as well as courses from SAP SuccessFactors Learning and SAP Litmos solutions – within SAP Work Zone for HR, a new HXM solution that provides a personalized digital workplace that brings together multiple applications, processes, and information in a single place.
SAP Work Zone for HR eliminates the need to log on to multiple applications or toggle between tabs and surfaces the most relevant information for individual employees. Bringing together learning, goals, and feedback into one place and surfacing the right information at the right time can help employees check on their progress and access the resources they need to further their development. Together, this helps encourage a culture of continuous learning, supporting employees to further their growth and enabling organizations to meet ever-changing market demands.
Learn more about continuous performance management within SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals. Join SAP for the “Reimagine the Employee Experience with HXM Solutions from SAP” session at HR Tech Spring to view the latest demo of SAP Work Zone for HR with continuous performance management.
Amy Wilson is senior vice president of Products and Design for SAP SuccessFactors.