Following on from my previous article where I described what SAP SuccessFactors Job Profile Builder (JPB) is and why you should consider using it, this article will provide a bit further detail into how it is set up.
How do we set up Job Profile Builder?
Before customers can start setting up the framework for job profiles within SuccessFactors there are some settings within provisioning that your implementation partner or SAP support will need to enable. In addition to this you may also need to ensure that permissions are set according to your admin needs, which could include setting permissions to:
- Manage Job Profile Builder
- View elements on people profile.
- Restrict specific areas of the job profile.
- Manage skills and competencies.
Aside from the provisioning tasks, all other aspects of the set up can be done by the customer should they have appropriate permissions, but it may be useful to seek assistance from an implementation partner such as Zalaris for these. You should refer to the JPB administration guide for more detailed guidance, but below are some of the main aspects to consider.
Job Families and Roles <—> Job Functions and Codes
Personally, I would say that the first step for the customer is to think about the family and role structure that they are going to take. Ensuring that every relevant position that will be covered can be linked to a role. They are linked as job codes (or classifications) are assigned to positions, and one or more job codes are mapped to a job role. This is how a position inherits the attributes contained within the profile.
Although they are very similar, functions and codes are used in org management to define organisational and pay data such as working hours, employee class, pay grade etc. whereas families and roles are used to describe job requirements that an employee would understand and fulfil, such as a description, responsibilities, skills, etc.
Ideally families and roles should marry up with the structure that you have for the functions and codes which are set against your positions in the SuccessFactors organisational structure. Job Functions are not essential but can help to structure the job codes together, especially if they are in sync with families and roles.
Functions and codes can be created through the ‘Manage Data’ tool and, if you wish, can be assigned different attributes that the position will inherit. Ensure that you have job codes accurately assigned to positions (through the position org chart and/or ‘Manage Positions’) as they will start to pick up the profile elements once they are allocated.
When you are ready, families and roles can be created in the ‘Manage Job Profile Content’ tool. Families will need to be created first and then the roles are created as child objects. As part of the set-up of these you can map skills and competencies (described below) to both the family and the role. The role set-up also allows you to map the job codes that should be linked to them.
Job Profile Content
More of an optional aspect, the ‘Manage Job Profile Content’ tool within SuccessFactors is exactly what it says on the tin. it is used to add data to content types that populate and provide substance to the job profiles.
These do not necessarily need to be populated but will help to make the job profile feel more complete. Additionally, items such as skills, competencies, and interview questions can be integrated with other areas such as recruiting, performance, and succession, providing further consistency and functionality across the SuccessFactors suite. A job profile can consist of many different content types as described below:
- Certifications – If you have defined certifications that are required for roles then it may be useful to list these here to show what is expected of the employee. For example, IT staff could have or require certifications from different software vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, SAP, etc.
- Competencies – Knowledge, skills, and behaviours that would be required to perform the job well such as decision making, problem solving, requirement gathering, etc. These are organised into different competency libraries consisting of categories and groups.
- Note that since the SAP SuccessFactors 1H 2021 release, Competencies are now set up in the ‘Centre of Capabilities’ feature but are still considered a content type within Job Profiles.
- Education – Setting up degree types and subject areas so you can define in your job profile the qualification that is ideally needed for the role. E.g., a bachelor’s degree in Engineering.
- Employment Condition – If you have set working conditions that would apply to the role then these can be defined here for inclusion in the job description. For example, probationary periods, leave allowances, working hours, employee benefits etc.
- Interview Questions – Here you can define specific or example interview questions that may be asked of candidates. Note these do not currently feed through to Interview Central for rating against.
- Job Responsibilities – Examples of the main duties that an employee would perform in their role that are shared among the positions that would be mapped to the job profile. For example, management responsibility, cash handling, reporting, etc.
- Physical Requirements – Here you can specify different physical and mental activities that might be required for the job such as heavy lifting, subject to noise, computer use, etc.
- Relevant Industries – Here you can specify the industries that are relevant to a role. This could be included in a job profile to identify what industries the profile should be used for, as for example, the profiles may differ between a project manager within IT to a project manager in HR.
- Skills – Specific learned abilities that are needed to perform a job well such as coding, a foreign language, and presentation skills. These are organised into different skills libraries consisting of categories and groups. You can also set up to 5 levels of proficiency against them which employees and managers can rate against.
If you are a multi-country user, it is important to know that this content will need to be defined against each language you have installed in the system, if they are used/needed in that language.
Manage Job Profile Content in SuccessFactors
Job Profile Templates
Now we move on to the structure of the job profiles themselves. A template needs to be created as this determines the layout of the different content types that should be applied to each profile. Using ‘Manage Job Profile Templates’, create a template and assign it to all job families which should use it. You could have multiple templates in use if there are job families which have roles that perhaps need a different amount or type of content within their profiles.
Then add in the different sections and sort them into the order that you would like them to appear. In the screenshot below you can see the different elements that can be added, which is largely the content types explained previously, but includes some free text sections for descriptions, headers, and footers.
You can also define here some basic font styles for the title and content of each section, whether a section is required to be completed, if it is visible to admins only, and if using recruiting, whether it should appear on internal and external requisitions.
Figure 2 – An example of a Job Profile Template
Job Profiles
Now the template is created we can proceed with the final major task of Job Profile Builder – populating the different content types on the profile itself. Using the ‘Manage Job Profiles’ tool, you can create profiles at a job role level or even directly at position level if there is some differentiation here. As best practice, it is best to keep it at role level where possible as this will make them easier to manage (any variations should have a different profile created).
In the profile, you will see the different sections that were defined when creating the template, which you can click into them to edit text or map values from the list of content types that were created earlier, such as the conditions of employment, skills, etc.
Sections with a free text area, such as short and long descriptions, can be formatted to provide more appeal, and as mentioned in my previous article, the Job Analyser can be used here to highlight any potential bias in the job description.
Once the profile is finished, it will need saving and then activating. The job profile and its contents will appear in other parts of the system such as the requisition form, job description (as shown below), performance forms, and succession charts. This concludes the main aspects of Job Profile Builder. The following items are optional additions which may help to further improve the process and functionality within SAP SuccessFactors.
Figure 3 – An example job profile and how this generates on the job description within Recruiting.
Using Workflow
Depending on who you give permission to update job profiles, you may also want to consider adding some form of workflow to them too. For example, if you give managers the ability to update but would like them to be approved by a member of HR.
This can be achieved by configuring a workflow route in ‘Manage Organization, Pay, and Job Structures’ action, and assigning this to the ‘Job Profile Draft’ object in ‘Configure Object Definition’. Once done, when a draft is updated it will prompt you that it will be submitted for approval. The approver will then see the item within their to do list and decide if the change should be approved or rejected.
Figure 4 – Job profile change appears in user’s to do list
Figure 5 – The workflow item describes what changes have been made and by who.
Note that this only works when the profile is updated when directed from the SuccessFactors Employee Profile -> Actions -> Job Profiles. If you make the update through the ‘Manage Job Profiles’ action, the system considers you an administrator that doesn’t require approval, and it will be saved as a new version straight away.
Job Profile Acknowledgement
As mentioned in my previous article, this feature of Job Profile Builder is used if you require your employees to acknowledge that they have read about changes to the job profile assigned to them. The settings to enable this are found in the admin tool ‘Configure Job Profile Acknowledgement Settings’ and they allow the following:
- Specifying when acknowledgement is required; when job profiles are changed; if the job code assigned to the position is changed (and triggers a change of profile); and when the job profile assigned to a job role is changed.
- Sending notifications to the to-do list or not
- Providing a statement which will describe to the employee what they may need to do.
Figure 6 – Job Profile Acknowledgement Settings
When the appropriate action (such as an update to the profile) is made, the affected employees will see a new to do list item and/or tile on their homepage highlighting the change. It will direct them to the confirmation page where they can see the statement that was configured in the settings above alongside all the changes that were made.
Figure 7 – Job profile acknowledgement confirmation message that appears to end users.
Further to this, a report can then be utilised to confirm who has and has not acknowledged the changes to their profile.
People Profile Configuration
If you would like employees to have an overview of aspects of their job profile, there are a few options which may be useful that can be added through the ‘Configure People Profile’ admin tool to appear within the SuccessFactors Employee Profile page.
A link to the job profile itself can be added as a simple addition to the employee’s record. This is simply a case of adding a ‘live user profile information’ block and adding the job code as a user field. When this is done, the code will display along with a link, which directs the user to a read only version of their own job profile.
Figure 8 – A simple portlet on the people profile directing to the job profile.
Another block which can be added is the ‘Skill profile’ which lists all the skills which have been listed in the profile and allows both the employee and manager to rate them. This will highlight where there is a difference of opinion and clearly displays how the skill is rated against the expected rating (specified when assigned to the job role).
Note the below limitations of this block:
- If a skill was rated but then removed from the job profile, it will still appear on the employee’s skill profile block with a rating and cannot be removed.
- A skill can be added manually by an employee or manager (from the skills library list), but it cannot be rated. It is only skills inherited from the job profile which can be rated.
Figure 9 – The skills profile portlet on the people profile can be used to rate associated skills.
Any skills that are assigned to the employee, whether inherited or manually added, can be searched for by utilising the ‘Find other people with these skills” link in the skill profile block. However, it will only search for skills defined in the library of the user’s language.
If you are using Performance and Goals, then ‘Competencies’ is another profile block that can be added to the employee’s record. This will feed in any competency ratings that were completed on associated performance forms. Note that settings within the profile block will allow you to define how the list is sorted and how many items to display as maximum. There are also some useful options within general settings where you can define:
- What date range to include talent data from
- Which data source (that you assign each performance form to) to take talent data from
- And whether forms which are in progress should also be considered.
The above options should be adapted and regularly reviewed, especially if for example you are only including the latest data or a specific subset. As a simple measure you could easily just include data from all sources and for a large date range.
Figure 10 – The competencies portlet shows ratings according to the job profile and performance forms.
Conclusion
Hopefully between the two articles you have gained a better insight into SAP SuccessFactors Job Profile Builder and how it works. It can easily feel complicated, and you may feel overwhelmed due to the number of links within the system and the similarly named features it provides (how many times can I mention the word ‘Job’ in one post?!), but hopefully you can see the benefits that it brings.
There is a lot of up-front effort required to set up this functionality, but once it is done both administrators and users will reap the rewards it provides through seamless integration, consistency, and providing more value to employees.
Note that SAP are working on simplifying this area too with the introduction of the ‘Capabilities Library’ in the latest SuccessFactors support release (1H 2021). They are looking to expand this further with a vision to bring in skills and other capability types, among other enhancements, during 2021-2022. More can be seen on their roadmap in this area.
As always, Zalaris can be here to help with this, so feel free to get in touch and we could talk through how we can help with setting this up in your system.