With the����1H 2026 release,��we’re��deepening those connections across the HR lifecycle. This release focuses on��four��core priorities:��connected,��suite-wide��AI; unified experiences that adapt to how organizations work;��processes designed for clarity, accuracy, and compliance; and stronger foundations for skills and long-term growth.��Together, these innovations help organizations��anticipate��needs earlier, reduce friction in daily work, and move forward with greater confidence.��

Connected AI that works across HCM

AI in HR delivers the greatest impact when it works continuously across the entire workforce lifecycle—not as isolated features, but as connected capabilities that share context and insight.

The 1H 2026 release expands��suite-wide��agentic AI��across 51����SuccessFactors solutions, helping��employees��get clearer answers, act sooner, and keep��work moving��across roles and responsibilities.��A connected network of����now supports areas such as recruiting, workforce administration, payroll, learning, performance, and talent development—working together behind the scenes to help��anticipate��next steps and surface relevant guidance.

This release also introduces a growing��workforce knowledge network, bringing trusted external expertise and research directly into the flow of work through Joule.��Teams can now access expert-backed global employment guidance and��research-driven��insights without leaving their workflows—supporting��faster, more��confident decisions.

To��further��support learning in the flow of work,��intelligent Q&A in����now helps employees find information more easily. AI��can deliver instant,��context-aware��responses drawn directly from an organization’s learning content,��along with relevant links and resources,��so employees can get answers quickly without searching through courses or documentation.��

Unified experiences that adapt to how work gets done��

As HR��tasks��become more embedded in��day-to-day work, experiences need to feel intuitive, connected, and responsive��wherever work happens. In the 1H 2026 release,��51����SuccessFactors solutions continue to unify experiences across the suite, giving employees, managers, and HR teams what they need��in��the moment.��

• Connected recruiting and onboarding:��Native integration between�� solutions, , and����can bring AI-enabled��recruiting, core HR, and onboarding together into a single, continuous experience, helping hiring teams move faster while��maintaining��consistency from candidate through new hire.��

• Tailored experiences,��built faster:��The new��extensibility wizard��can provide guided, step-by-step support for creating custom extensions on����(51����BTP) directly within��SAP��SuccessFactors solutions, making it easier to adapt experiences to unique business needs while preserving governance.��
• Simpler, clearer employee moments:��A redesigned, configurable 401(k) experience��in����for U.S.��employees helps simplify enrollment and management by clearly explaining employer contributions and guiding deferrals and beneficiary setup, helping employees make informed decisions with confidence.��

Processes designed for clarity, accuracy, and compliance��

In the 1H 2026 release, 51����SuccessFactors introduces new capabilities that help organizations bring greater clarity and rigor to pay practices.

With��pay��transparency insights��in the , organizations can analyze compensation patterns and potential pay gaps, supporting transparent, data-driven pay practices in-line with evolving regulatory expectations,��including in the EU.��

Skills governance��for sustainable growth��

Preparing for��what’s��next requires trusted, consistent skills data that organizations can rely on across HR, talent, and workforce planning.

In the 1H 2026 release,��we are��strengthening��the����with enhanced��skills governance, providing a centralized interface to help manage skills, apply governance standards, and ensure alignment across 51����SuccessFactors solutions and partner applications. This helps organizations improve��skills��data quality, maintain consistency at scale, and make more confident,��skills-based��decisions.��

A connected foundation for the future 

This��release��reinforces��SAP’s continued focus on an intelligent, connected HCM��foundation—one designed to evolve with your organization and support confident decisions at every stage of work. By bringing together data, AI, and experiences across the HR lifecycle, these��enhancements help organizations reduce friction today while��laying��the groundwork for��tomorrow.

To explore what’s included in this release, check out the or watch the overview .

Bianka Woelke is group vice president and head of Application Product Management for 51����SuccessFactors.

gives organizations the tools to lead with confidence. Part of the , 51����SuccessFactors brings together global core HR, AI-driven insights, and a unified skills foundation to connect people and processes, close skills gaps, simplify compliance, and build a workforce ready for what’s next.

With the second half 2025 (2H 2025) product release, we’re excited to introduce hundreds of new features and enhancements in 51����SuccessFactors, many enabled by AI. Together, these innovations help HR teams, business leaders, and employees work smarter, move faster, and stay future-ready.

Drive better people and business decisions

Data about people, skills, performance, and business outcomes exists everywhere, but without a clear view, it’s difficult to act. , now generally available, is designed to help organizations make better workforce decisions by unifying 51����and third-party data. Through intuitive dashboards, AI-assisted insights powered by Joule, and hundreds of HR metrics, leaders can now move from insights to action with unprecedented speed.

With pre-built use cases spanning critical areas like skills, compensation, recruiting, learning, performance, and succession, People Intelligence makes it easier to uncover trends, identify opportunities, and take action. By bringing together clean, centralized HR data and powerful AI, it equips HR and business leaders with the intelligence they need to drive meaningful workforce transformation.

Build a future-ready workforce

To stay competitive, organizations must continuously evolve alongside their people. This release introduces new innovations that align skills, performance, and development with future business needs.

We are excited that the in 51����SuccessFactors is now available. This agent empowers managers to lead consistent, high-impact performance conversations by analyzing employee data, such as performance goals, activities and achievements, and continuous feedback, to create tailored conversation prompts for each employee. Using Joule, managers receive AI-guided insights like goal progress summaries, key accomplishments, growth focus areas, and development recommendations. Users can ask follow-up questions to dive deeper into any of these areas. 

Additionally, business rules integration in performance management support consistent and transparent performance reviews by automating feedback prompts and actions based on predefined conditions, such as dynamically exposing a comment field only when a rating condition is met.

Succession planning is also getting a boost with skills-based successor recommendations in , which analyzes skills, proficiency levels, and internal work experiences captured in employee growth portfolios to recommend potential successors who might have been overlooked using traditional metrics. And with the new person-based model for talent management, organizations can drive smarter talent decisions, faster reskilling, and greater workforce agility by unifying learning and talent data in a person-based view that follows employees across changing roles, teams, and assignments. 

Enable agile and compliant HR 

As regulations evolve and business needs shift, HR must stay both agile and compliant. This release introduces new capabilities to help teams adapt quickly while ensuring accuracy and trust.

The new solution,available to early adopters in January 2026, supports optimized shift planning in manufacturing and other production industries by aligning workforce skills and staffing levels with operational demand. Geofencing in 51����SuccessFactors Time Tracking helps prevent fraud and ensure compliance by defining work site locations and ranges to govern where employees can clock in and out. 51����SuccessFactors Employee Central simplifies U.S. leave management by connecting with FMLA service providers to automate leave deductions and improve tracking accuracy.

Across the suite, our updated home page delivers a more intuitive and personalized experience for users with streamlined navigation, targeted communications, and real-time insights across desktop and mobile.

Extend applications to easily adapt

As workforce expectations and business priorities evolve, flexibility is key. This release delivers new capabilities to help seamlessly connect and optimize HR processes, maximizing investments while supporting the changing needs of people and the organization.

is now enhanced by Joule and generative AI to deliver faster access to information, improved self-service, and more informed decision-making. Joule streamlines tasks with role-based self-service, workflow automation, and real-time insights, while generative AI simplifies feedback, coaching, and goal updates with context-aware insights. Employees can also quickly find company-specific knowledge through Joule for accurate, relevant information when they need it.

Lead the future of HR

With the 2H 2025 release, 51����SuccessFactors HCM helps HR leaders navigate complexity with ease. By uniting global HR, AI-driven insights, and a unified skills foundation, organizations can make smarter decisions, develop future-ready talent, and stay agile in a rapidly changing world.

To learn about our latest innovations and enhancements, check out the or . ��

Bianka Woelke is group vice president and head of Application Product Management for 51����SuccessFactors.

As organizations adapt to these changes, HR teams must lead the way in building a future-ready workforce that can meet the business demands of today while preparing for those of tomorrow.

With strong global core HR, embedded AI capabilities, and a unified skills foundation, connects HR across the organization, unearths key workforce insights, and provides the flexibility organizations need to succeed in a world that never stands still. 

In the first half 2025 (1H 2025) product release, we’re excited to introduce more than 250 innovative features and enhancements, many assisted by AI, that are designed to help organizations address any business need and stay ahead of the curve.

51����Business AI

51����continues to be at the forefront of business AI with new capabilities to help drive organizational efficiencies.

With this latest release, we are announcing Joule on 51����SuccessFactors mobile. , the AI copilot from SAP, helps employees and managers to quickly find information, complete tasks, and gain valuable insights — all through a self-service interface they can use at the office or on the go. In the new release, Joule helps employees easily understand their pay statement and create and update time-off requests, while managers can gain quick access to status of required learning for their teams and more.

In addition to English, Joule is now available in 10 new languages, including Chinese, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

Recruiting and onboarding

With this release also comes a redesigned application experience in . A guided, modernized user interface helps applicants dynamically enter their information while simplifying and accelerating the application process, reducing application drop-offs. The new experience gives candidates access to a refreshed applications dashboard, enabling them to view their submissions, complete post-application actions, and easily access, navigate, and update their information.

As part of the offboarding capabilities in , alumni can now manage personal information and gain access to support, documents, and resources, even after termination. Additionally, AI-assisted offboarding through Joule helps enable task completion and provides departing employees with a well-structured offboarding experience.

Performance and goals

We are excited to unveil the new performance form experience in , now with a dynamic, intuitive design for a more engaging user experience. The new interface enhances performance tasks by providing contextual information and optimizing screen space, minimizing cognitive load and scrolling to boost focus and efficiency.

To further enhance the experience, we are introducing new AI-assisted features, including:

• Comment suggestions based on the skill and rating selected, helping evaluators provide constructive, growth-centric feedback
• Performance insights for managers, which analyzes talent data and summarizes employee’s strengths, achievements, and areas for improvement
• Sentiment analysis for 360-degree reviews to help employees quickly identify negative or mixed feedback, highlighting areas that need improvement and enabling focused professional development.

Learning

As organizations face growing skill gaps, continuous learning remains critical for employees to stay competitive and adapt to evolving challenges.

New skills-focused learning offers a curated list of learning opportunities to improve key skills and competencies. Users can discover filtered learning options tailored to their upskilling needs, supporting organizational transformation.

Core HR and payroll

51����provides industry-leading solutions spanning core HR, payroll, and time that give organizations the flexibility to meet any business challenge.

Building on the successful launch of our updated people profile in , we’ve continued to enhance the user experience by bringing in additional content from across 51����SuccessFactors solutions, including benefits, payroll, and learning.

To further support the unique requirements of public sector organizations, we are introducing a new portlet that displays the financing status of an employee.

With this release, we are also introducing the integration of the position budgeting control workbench with , previously announced at SuccessConnect. Along with existing integrations with 51����SuccessFactors Employee Central and 51����S/4HANA Cloud, this provides payroll administrators with real-time insights into position budget utilization and costs. The wider visibility enables better management of allocated funds and grants, offering a comprehensive view of salary costs, committed budget, and available funds for personnel expenses.

Additionally, we are enhancing our payroll control center, delivering a comprehensive, end-to-end view of the entire payroll process. With this enhancement, payroll administrators can optimize operations with a flowchart of tasks and their sequence in each payroll cycle. This improved experience provides real-time insights from pre-payroll activities to post-payroll processing.

We are also releasing a new local payroll version for Bulgaria, bringing the total number of natively supported locales to 53, with more supported by partners.

Learn more

These are just a few highlights from the 1H 2025 release. To learn about all of the more than 250 innovations and enhancements designed to give organizations the flexibility to address any business need, check out the or .

Bianka Woelke is group vice president and head of Application Product Management for 51����SuccessFactors.

The 51����SuccessFactors 2H 2024 release introduces over 250 innovative features and enhancements, along with over 30 new purpose-built AI capabilities.

51����Business AI 

51����continues to be at the forefront of business AI with new generative AI capabilities that span the entire human capital management suite, all aimed at transforming how organizations engage and support their workforce.

Within this release, new AI capabilities can recommend roles to candidates by matching extracted skills from resumes to open jobs. This helps candidates more easily find opportunities that align with their strengths while helping organizations to reduce candidate drop-off, decrease time to hire, and increase the quality of hiring.

To boost efficiency, a new text analyzer feature can assist employees to create more carefully worded text content for their people profile, goals, comments, and more. A new translation feature is also available, translating text within 51����SuccessFactors solutions to help preserve key messages and tone across languages. 

We are also introducing over 15 new capabilities to Joule, the AI copilot from SAP, designed to bring a more conversational approach to getting work done. For example, new hires, hiring managers, and HR colleagues can now navigate onboarding tasks in a more engaging way, streamlining the onboarding process and boosting productivity.

Talent Intelligence Hub 

With the 51����SuccessFactors 2H 2024 release, we’re enhancing our AI-driven skills foundation, guiding organizations toward a skills-focused approach. The new AI-assisted skills architecture creation feature can enable organizations to enrich their job profiles and build a skills library by extracting relevant skills from 51����SuccessFactors Recruiting. Additionally, the growth portfolio inbound API can facilitate the seamless integration of external skills data, helping to ensure that employees’ growth portfolios are closely aligned with their roles. The first partners to integrate with the talent intelligence hub will include Beamery, Degreed, IMOCHA INC, Korn Ferry, Lightcast, Phenom, TalenTeam, and TechWolf, with more in the coming months.

We’re also introducing the AI-assisted skills identification feature, which helps learning administrators maintain skills-based attributes by extracting skills from course descriptions and automatically linking them to the corresponding learning items.

51����SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development

We are excited to announce 51����SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development, our fully integrated solution aimed at empowering individual career advancement while driving greater organizational agility. Here, we bring together the robust capabilities of 51����SuccessFactors Succession & Development and 51����SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace into one solution to help intuitively guide career and development experiences and talent planning. Fueled by the single skills foundation of the talent intelligence hub, employees and managers can shape careers, set career goals, and receive personalized recommendations. These recommendations include skills, jobs, learning courses, mentors, and more – with clear suggestions for areas to improve. The recommendations are based on an individual’s aspirations and skills, along with career paths set by the organization.

User Experience 

Employee experience continues to be a priority for HR leaders. We have continuously improved how employees interact with our technology by reimagining our user interface, embedding 51����SuccessFactors solutions into work tech applications like Microsoft Teams, and improving the mobile experience.

With this release, employees can now:

• Submit and approve time-off requests, view upcoming absences, and sync holidays to their calendar in Microsoft Teams.
• Delegate performance appraisals to colleagues to help manage responsibilities on each other’s behalf.
• Use an improved natural language search to simplify finding tasks and information with just a few spoken commands.
• Enjoy new features on our mobile app, including in people profiles and time tracking.

Core HR and Payroll

51����provides industry-leading core solutions spanning core HR, payroll, and time that are globally scalable with sophisticated country-specific support and compliance. In this release, we have several new innovations and enhancements. Within 51����SuccessFactors Employee Central, the people profile has a new modern design across both desktop and mobile. It features an intuitive card-style layout for quick and easy access to information as well as comprehensive summaries of key sections, such as compensation. A new position budgeting control workbench is also available for public service organizations, offering a streamlined view of employee financing activities. This user-friendly tool helps simplify error handling and can ensure efficient and accurate execution of financial commitments. Additionally, the refreshed benefits overview page gives employees a single place to view their benefits details and take necessary action, such as reporting a life event, managing family members, or enrolling in benefits.

Within 51����SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll, we now provide country-level support for Croatia, bringing the total number of natively supported locales to 52.

For more information, read the 51����SuccessFactors 2H 2024 release or watch the .

Bianka Woelke is group vice president and head of Application Product Management at 51����SuccessFactors.

And for you and your business, you can tell all those success stories – and more – with the 51����SuccessFactors HCM suite and our first half 2024 release.

As your organization and employees begin to embrace AI, HR has the opportunity to drive new levels of employee productivity, engagement, and growth. 51����SuccessFactors HCM can give you everything you need – the global foundation, skills framework, people-first experiences, and purpose-built AI capabilities – to help take HR to the next level. With the 51����SuccessFactors first half 2024 release, we are delivering more than 250 innovative features and enhancements.

51����Business AI

In 1H 2024, we are thrilled to introduce more than 25 new AI capabilities to enable better employee experiences and new levels of productivity.

Among these capabilities include the ability for applicants to provide skills during the application process. This can enable recruiters to see a skills compatibility for each applicant based on matching the applicant’s skills and the job requisition, helping improve applicant screening and time to hire. Furthermore, personalization in 51����SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace is enhanced with new AI-driven recommendation categories, “Ignite Your Role” and “Reach Your Aspirations.” These guided experiences can enable employees to proactively take steps to reach their development goals.

Generative AI continues to be embedded across the 51����SuccessFactors HCM suite, including new capabilities to help employees create ready-made performance and development goals and AI-assisted writing to help improve the quality, clarity, and conciseness of writing across a variety of areas within 51����SuccessFactors solutions.

Further, with this release, insights based on an employee’s compensation and job history are available to help support managers in having effective and well-informed compensation discussions. 

We have also added more than 15 new capabilities in this release to help both managers and employees get work done in a conversational way, such as creating or changing a position, creating spot awards, clocking in and out, and viewing pay statements as well as time capabilities like requesting time off, checking leave balances, and syncing holidays to Outlook calendars while managers can review and approve time off. Further, employees can now clock in and out using Joule, Microsoft Teams, or the 51����SuccessFactors Mobile app.

51����SuccessFactors Employee Central

We are excited to unveil two new people profile experiences – the profile preview and the spotlight view. The profile preview can provide a snapshot of key areas of the employee profile, including job, manager, location, and contact details, to quickly view and connect with others. Additionally, the spotlight view can showcase employee skills and competencies, mentoring and target roles, and other relevant personal and organizational information.

We are also introducing a new org chart experience with a refreshed look and feel. Available on desktop and mobile, users can explore their organizational structure with improved expand and collapse capabilities, which helps provide full accessibility to an employee’s profile preview, with an option to open the new spotlight view.

Customers can now automatically process new hires from 51����SuccessFactors Recruiting and 51����SuccessFactors Onboarding into 51����SuccessFactors Employee Central. This capability helps further reduce the time to hire, which is especially important with mass, seasonal, and high-volume hiring.

51����SuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits

With this release, we are pleased to introduce a new benefits enrollment experience for insurance, savings, and pension benefit types. Available on both desktop and mobile, the guided experience for benefits elections can give employees increased convenience with improved navigation and increased confidence with side-by-side plan comparisons and embedded instructional text. Additionally, employees can update dependent information and manage beneficiaries directly from the benefits enrollment process, which helps further streamline the enrollment experience.  

51����SuccessFactors Time Tracking

We are thrilled to share the launch of a new time sheet experience that integrates the latest version of My Timesheet in 51����S/4HANA with 51����SuccessFactors. Employees can now record time for payroll, as well as against activities and cost objects, from a single time sheet across applications. This helps organizations leverage real-time connectivity between HR and finance operations to keep track of employee activity and labor costs and to pay employees accurately and on time.

Additionally, a new monthly calendar view for time sheets can give employees and managers a complete picture of recorded time over a month. Users can drill down into specific days and submit or approve time for pay periods beyond a week, such as biweekly or monthly.

For managers, a new time approval center helps simplify approvals with a centralized dashboard highlighting anomalies for swift resolution. Managers can monitor team working hours effectively, helping to ensure accurate and timely payroll processing.

51����SuccessFactors Onboarding

With enhancements to the onboarding journey experience, new hires can now use the new Your Onboarding Checklist page to reference and complete all tasks – onboarding data collection, compliance tasks, additional onboarding tasks, and exploring the onboarding guide – from one place with a single view. Available for new hires, rehires, internal hires, and employees with global assignments, this improved experience can save time for onboarding participants while helping to ensure productivity from the start.

And that’s only a fraction of all the innovations we’re bringing to customers in 1H 2024. There’s much more in the release, including new and exciting updates in:

• Generative AI and Joule capabilities
• 51����SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace
• 51����SuccessFactors Compensation
• 51����SuccessFactors Succession & Development
• 51����SuccessFactors Incentive Management
• 51����SuccessFactors Work Zone

Read the and watch the to find out more.

Bianka Woelke is group vice president of Application Product Management at SAP.