51��SuccessFactors People Analytics Archives | 51��News Center

Eastman Energizes HR Reporting to Deliver One-Stop Insights to Leaders

Jacqueline Prause — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 13:15:00 +0000

In an ever-changing world, businesses require data-driven, real-time insights from HR reporting and analytics to make informed decisions that affect their workforce. But many HR teams still rely on older technology and struggle to fulfill demands for reports that encompass an increasing volume of metrics and data. The time they spend gathering, extracting, and transforming data across a patchwork of tools and spreadsheets detracts from other urgent tasks. Despite their efforts, the resultant reports are limited in usefulness by past data and often contain inconsistencies that require additional time to resolve.

Global specialty materials company overcame its HR reporting challenges by implementing story reports in 51��SuccessFactors solutions, making its reporting easier and more efficient. For example, a standard talent report – once a labor-intensive task that took several days of precious time – is now generated in under two hours complete with detailed graphics that are continuously updated with live data. Indeed, an 51�� found that with the analytics tools available in 51��SuccessFactors solutions, customers reported a 74% decrease in time spent on report generation, saving days and even weeks on HR reporting.

“The ability to give our [HR] information to leaders as they need it is huge,” says Nina Nabors, manager of Talent Systems, Eastman. She summarizes the transformation in improvement over past reporting methods. “Before, it was lagging data. It was never data that was live. Having that benefit of building the story report in 51��SuccessFactors and it continuously updating with the latest information is very nice.”

Based in Tennessee, U.S., Eastman Chemical Company was founded in 1920 as a subsidiary of Eastman Kodak. It has a workforce of 14,000 employees in 15 countries. Energized in its purpose to “enhance the quality of life in a material way,” Eastman engages with customers in 100 countries to deliver innovative materials found in items people use every day, including safe, durable medical materials; premium plastics for eyewear frames and lenses; food and beverage packaging; sustainable fibers for luxury home furnishings; and energy-efficient window glass for the construction industry, among others.

Cloud HR Delivers Sustainable Value with Exceptional Employee Experience

To future-proof its workforce, Eastman set itself up for success by moving to the cloud with 51��SuccessFactors solutions. Eastman was already using an on-premise human capital management (HCM) solution from SAP, but wanted the scalability and cost-effectiveness of a cloud-based HR solution. “Delivering [HR] services in the cloud gives us an opportunity to make the technology available to our employees in a way that is more sustainable than having it housed on our servers,” says Nabors.

Prachi Sathe, director of Global HR Technology and Solutions, Eastman, underscores the value of receiving the latest innovations and new features with each biannual 51��SuccessFactors release update. “We also wanted to make sure our HR platform is sustainable in terms of how we support it, how we grow it, and how we make more functions available to our employees. Going to 51��SuccessFactors just made sense for us,” she says.

Eastman uses a range of solutions in – including 51��SuccessFactors Employee Central and modules for recruiting, learning, compensation, variable pay, performance and goals, career development planning, and succession – to help harness the efficiency of end-to-end integration and provide an exceptional experience throughout the employee journey from hire to retire.

The 51��SuccessFactors Recruiting solution, for example, is a key driver of Eastman’s talent strategy. “That’s how we bring our new talent into the organization. That’s really their first introduction to our tools,” says Nabors. “We’re bringing great talent into the organization. How we do it is very important, and 51��SuccessFactors is a part of that.”

Accelerating Efficiency with Real-Time Analytics

Eastman needed a streamlined approach to HR reporting that accelerated efficiency and optimized value by fully using the analytics and data in 51��SuccessFactors solutions. “We were using separate tools outside of 51��SuccessFactors solutions to pull our reporting together,” recalls Sathe. “The challenges with that [were figuring out] how we get data out of 51��SuccessFactors solutions and feed it into those reporting tools.”

Eastman’s customer success partner for the plan identified 51��resources to help Eastman increase value from its use of 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics. Eastman also joined a hands-on lab session at SuccessConnect 2022 to gain experience working with story reports, a tool available in the report center of 51��SuccessFactors solutions. Story reports can deliver real-time data analytics and generate reports faster by using live data from across 51��SuccessFactors HXM Suite, displaying presentation-style reports in a clear format with detailed visual graphics that communicate insights in an understandable way. As Sathe notes, “When we saw [story reports], it was so motivating for us that data is already there and tools are there. We came back and started working on our first dashboard.”

“We’re so happy Eastman joined us at SuccessConnect,” says Maryann Abbajay, chief revenue officer, 51��SuccessFactors. “Hands-on lab sessions like the one Eastman participated in are invaluable learning experiences. Eastman is a great example of how customers are applying that new knowledge to unlock value with 51��SuccessFactors. With story reports, they are already able to deliver the type of data-driven insights that transform HR into a strategic partner for the business.”

Data-Driven Insights That Advance People Strategy

Eastman began working with a manager dashboard, one of the many time-saving templates preloaded in story reports, and later built its own version tailored to the information requirements of its organizational leaders, supervisors, and people managers. The HR team also developed custom objects to use in its story reports, including an organizational hierarchy table with extensive drilldown capabilities and a currency exchange table to help executives track international labor costs. The story reports, customized with the look and feel of Eastman’s branding, quickly gained broad acceptance with Eastman’s organizational leaders.

The HR team recently built a dashboard showing a holistic view to help leaders identify opportunities to advance the organization’s people strategy. This dashboard uses data from 51��SuccessFactors Employee Central and will later be augmented with data from the recruiting and learning solutions. A talent dashboard is also forthcoming to Eastman’s HR community, which includes talent partners and leaders. Sathe notes, “By creating the stories, as its name says, we are bringing various data sources together.”

Michael Glenn, talent assessment and analytics manager, Eastman, is building a new learning dashboard that will go out to all learning administrators and supervisors to enable them to see how many people are overdue on their learnings and what learnings are coming up in the next 30 days – and how many hours are required to complete the learning sessions. This information is especially important for production teams that work on fixed schedules, as it enables managers to plan the learning hours into the employee’s schedule.

To ensure the reports provide the right level of information to each recipient based on their role, Glenn intends to use the role-based access permissions available in story reports. So far, he is impressed with the feature, which saves him time from performing manual activities and distribution list maintenance. “We’ve been testing out role-based permissions and it is just working great,” he says.

Empowering HR Administrators with User-Friendly Solutions for Improved Productivity

Nabors says that though she has no background or training in analytics, she found that she was able to get up to speed with stories very quickly. She recalls previously spending several days to build a single report that integrated data from 51��SuccessFactors Employee Central and 51��SuccessFactors Recruiting. In stories, she is now able to generate the same report in just one to two hours.

Also, troubleshooting and addressing gaps in data is much easier. “If there’s an error somewhere – for example, requisition data that shows up under the wrong person’s name – being able to see it in a story is very easy,” she says. “It’s easy to address that error quickly because you can go right to the error without having to dig through lines and lines of data, rows and columns of data.”

Better Analytics for Faster Decision-Making

Eastman plans to build on its early success with story reports to drive more insights for the organization. For example, there are plans to integrate data to track progress towards Eastman’s ambitious inclusion and diversity , which include increasing diverse talent and supporting employees in bringing their whole selves to work. Real-time information from 51��SuccessFactors solutions supports organizational leaders in advancing Eastman’s strategy to build a high-performing organization.

“We really believe in sustainability and sustainable outcomes,” says Sathe. “We want our employees to be self-service reporting employees and create better analytics that give them information versus data. What we were doing previously was giving them data. Story reports transformed this.”

For more information, read “.”

Dynamic Teams: How to Optimize the Outcomes of Increasingly Fluid Work Experiences

Meg Bear — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 11:15:03 +0000

I’m often intrigued by the assumption that new business initiatives require trade-offs. While it’s true that initial discomfort nearly always appears in the pursuit of growth, embracing new perspectives and skills can ultimately lead to better work and more strategic outcomes when executed effectively.

The concept of working in cross-functional, self-managed teams – or what we call “dynamic teams” – is a reality for most employees. In our , we found well over three-fourths (82%) of respondents have participated in a dynamic team more than once, and 64% are engaged in multiple dynamic teams simultaneously.

Despite being created out of necessity, dynamic teams can be either a culture shift or a culture shock. Our research shows that fewer than one-quarter (20%) of employees are satisfied with these experiences and only 36% of managers are motivated to encourage direct reports to participate in a dynamic team in the future. Surveyed managers want clear expectations for their employees’ involvement, real-time updates on challenges and progress, and awareness of skills acquired through the dynamic team experience.

According to Kathi Enderes, Ph.D., senior vice president of Research and global industry analyst at The Josh Bersin Company, the HR technology used often contributes to this misalignment within dynamic teams. “People don’t naturally work in a linear structure. However, teams often fall into the trap of following the rigid hierarchies of their traditional HR technologies, stemming from the industrial age, to manage performance, give feedback, coach, and develop teams,” says Enderes.

Heed the Signs of a Changing HR Landscape

The informality of dynamic teams can provide the flexibility companies need, but it can also lead to trouble for the overall business culture. It’s human nature to lean into the convenience of casually asking people we already know and like to join a dynamic team to tackle a critical business issue or deliver a strategic initiative. But that also means managers are missing out on talented people without the right connections – narrowing the diversity of knowledge, critical capabilities, and compatible traits necessary to deliver positive outcomes.

Management decision-making about personnel based on a biased “who knows who” mindset – rather than a strategically focused one – can limit employee opportunity and reduce engagement, and highly skilled employees suffer. They increasingly disengage when passed over for roles and promotions that can further develop their competencies. The people with the potential, desire, and enthusiasm to acquire and apply new skills who are shut out of any chance to grow eventually seek out a new employer openly committed to their immediate and long-term personal development.

That kind of environment is the perfect breeding ground for groupthink. Over time, entrenched teams are compelled to add more tasks, processes, systems, and complexity rather than subtracting existing ones that do not add value to the project at hand.

C-suite leaders can – and must – find ways to eliminate this risk in their workforce culture. By prioritizing digital strategies for properly skilling and engaging employees and matching them to the right opportunities, they set a foundation that not only creates a future-ready workforce but also future-proofs the business.

As a first step, organizations need to start their HR transformation journey with an understanding of the skills available today and the skills that will be needed in the future. This includes keeping a dynamic team strategy adaptable enough to support a growing list of diverse work arrangements, including hybrid work, the four-day work week, talent marketplaces, internal gig work, or non-linear career pathways.

“People now work in agile teams that come together around customer problems, analyze and solve them, and disband again quickly,” says Enderes. “HR technologies must be as dynamic as the way we work today.”

Enhance Outcomes with Greater Organizational Agility

Cohesive and cross-functional team strategies that support organizational agility unlock the door to dynamic teams that are not only successful but also embody the benefits of empowerment and inclusiveness. With visibility into their existing workforce, organizational managers can construct teams that reflect the diversity of the people impacted by the initiative’s outcomes. Even more, they connect the right people to the right challenges, elevating the quality of the workforce by creating more skilled employees.

The first step is forming a team-based structure – a shared visual representation of the team – to define individual roles and help ensure accountability. In return, dynamic team leaders and their members can pinpoint gaps in skills, functions, and responsibilities and source new colleagues with the skills and strengths that can add value to the overall initiative.

Colleagues across different departments can discover open dynamic team roles through the solution. Leaders can quickly generate an assignment within the dynamic team experience that includes the role description and required skills and qualifications. As soon as the assignment is published, employees throughout the organization can view the open role, consider if they or someone else is a fit, and apply if interested – all from the same view.

The opportunity for organizational managers and business leaders to measure team progress among cross-functional teams with objectives and key results (OKRs) is a significant advantage. Until now, this insight was shrouded in manual reporting and simplistic dashboards, limiting transparency and a complete understanding of how their people – whether seen or unseen – contribute to the business when working in teams. Yet, more importantly, this capability enables individual talent to build on skills and interests enriched by their experience and thinking.

“Integrating dynamic teams functionality with HR technology allows employees to work on multiple projects and help accomplish critical goals,” says Enderes. “With team management capabilities, the ability to source team members through 51��SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace, and an OKR experience integrated with talent management, performance management across cross-functional teams and individual contributors is made possible. It supports the ‘now’ and the future of work.”

This approach allows executives, managers, and employees to become more aware of what efforts and contributions are critical to the business. Employees can connect their team-based OKRs to their individual performance goals in the solution by tying team performance to established business metrics. They can spend their time working on projects they understand are critical for the business and their personal development and growth – all with the confidence that leaders will appropriately recognize their contributions.

The benefits go even further, as organizational leaders build dynamic teams across departmental boundaries with visibility into the volume and composition of successful dynamic teams and OKR data to track team progress and outcomes. Leaders can create report stories with the 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics solution to tap into cross-functional knowledge and foster a culture that confidently achieves program goals and is consistently prepared for new challenges and opportunities.

Embrace a More Dynamic Future of Work Now

Being among a network of people who appreciate and value each other’s work, strengths, and potential can be a very motivating aspect of everyone’s employee experience. It’s what drives people – of all roles and backgrounds – to seize opportunities to develop their skills, contribute more to the business, and establish themselves as highly desirable talent.

This energy across the workforce can become pivotal in how the business grows and succeeds in the long run. Organizations often have a better chance of achieving their goals by building dynamic teams with a mix of internal and external experts. Yet, at the same time, talented professionals can develop new skills and practice existing ones within the safety of a supportive environment.

One thing is true: a business transformation in which dynamic teams are a centerpiece requires transparency and data-driven insights. Together, these two ingredients can optimize dynamic team composition, experiences, and outcomes.

Interested in learning how your investment in 51��SuccessFactors solutions can help you optimize the outcomes of your increasingly fluid workforce? View the and watch the about our dynamic teams functionality.

Meg Bear is president and chief product officer at 51��SuccessFactors.

Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Employees Can Help You Make More Informed and Strategic Business Decisions

Tammie Eldridge — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 12:15:31 +0000

If there’s one thing that knowledge workers have learned throughout the pandemic, it’s that they can be highly productive working remotely. Employees with strong digital skills were abruptly cast out of offices and forced to work from home. Before long, many began relocating away from cities to less populated areas, or from colder regions to vacation destinations – sometimes in other countries. Unbound from the office, knowledge workers became free-range employees – and most don’t want to go back.

According to a pulse survey conducted by the , 76% of employees want flexibility in where they work and 93% flexibility in when they work. The desire for flexible work is strongest among women, working parents, and employees of color who have shown gains in feelings of belonging working remotely. Specifically, 81% of Black respondents say they want flexibility in where they work, compared to 75% of White respondents.

This data is in direct contrast to what most executives report that they want in post-pandemic workforce policies. Of those currently working fully remotely, nearly half of all executives surveyed (44%) want to work from the office every day, compared to 17% of employees. And 75% of these executives say they want to work from the office three to five days a week versus only 34% of employees.

So, what are companies to do? How can they make informed decisions about what’s best for leaders, for the business, and for their employees?

Applying a Sustainability Lens to Work Location Decision

One way of looking at the issues of return to office or hybrid work is from a business sustainability perspective. For example, if forcing people back to the office will make critical employees more likely to leave their jobs, you have a real flight risk issue impacting the sustainability of your business. Your business must have enough people with the right skills at the right time to propel it forward.

Another perspective to consider is how today’s business environment has been transformed by climate change, nature loss, and more. The planet needs change, and people demand change. What if, when making decisions about who comes into the office and when, executives considered the carbon footprint generated by employee travel and commutes, weighed against the energy usage working from home, along with the sustainability causes that their employees support?

This would require implementing next-generation holistic steering and reporting that maps operational and experiential data to show progress on goals such as reducing the carbon footprint of the business. Imagine executives having climate and natural capital accounting at their fingertips, including individual and collective employee carbon footprint tracking.

This is the kind of holistic steering and reporting that groups such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) want companies to integrate into their strategic decision-making. Integrating economic, environmental, and social performance data into decisions – referred to as Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics – can help executives serve their own goals, respect their employees’ preferences for when and where they work, and contribute to reaching sustainability goals that make the world a cleaner, greener place.

How 51��Can Help

In 2020, 51��committed to enable companies to report on the WEF’s Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics. As promised, we have delivered to help enable holistic enterprise-wide sustainability performance management. 51��also made it easier to become a sustainable business and reduce carbon footprints with , which can enable businesses to move toward lower carbon emissions and more sustainable operations. SAP’s data-driven approach lets businesses embed sustainability comprehensively and gain actionable insights across the entire value chain to enable companies to transition to low-carbon business processes.

Faced with an ambitious sustainability agenda and carbon-lowering targets, one 51��customer wanted to go further and consider the employee wishes for home/office work, and the carbon emissions generated from their commute to work against the energy efficiency of their home offices. The company had committed to lowering its enterprise carbon emissions and wanted a mechanism to support managers’ operational workforce planning processes.

51��built a proof of concept (PoC) application in just one day once the employee survey was collected. The PoC decision support application was realized as follows:

Employee address data was acquired from records using the standard delivered API. 51��Data Quality Management and microservices for location data were used for both data cleansing – a big bonus since the customer was able to cleanse inaccurate addresses in 51��SuccessFactors Employee Central – and data enrichment to geocode the home and work addresses with the latitude, longitude, and altitude information. The world of geo-location services was opened.

Demographic measures and dimensions were acquired from 51��SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics using the standard 51��Analytics Cloud connector.

While trying to understand employee sentiment on workplace and flexibility preferences, a survey was created using Employee Experience Management Solutions from 51��and Qualtrics. The survey allowed for employees, whose jobs enabled them to work from home, to answer questions relating to their preferences for the number of days a week they wanted to work from home and their commute (means and time of travel). The insights gathered allowed us to understand that the travel time to work – not distance – is a major factor in determining retention risk amongst various demographic groups and so the information was valuable input for the flight risk tool they had in 51��Analytics Cloud enterprise reporting.

was then able to use external Web services and geo-location services to calculate the travel distance and travel time to work by various means of transport. One of the services was then able to determine the carbon emissions for the means of travel that the employee had specified. The commute travel time by job grade is a leading predictor of flight risk and is easily added to the flight risk prediction dataset.

The systems also gathered information of all the corporate and possible work locations. This opened the possibility for work location optimization, but it was not part of the scope of the PoC.

The data was then blended using 51��Business Technology Platform, specifically 51��Data Warehouse Cloud, and anonymization views were defined to protect actual home addresses from being shown. Real-time 51��HANA data anonymization allowed the application to use actual addresses to accurately calculate the travel metrics while safely anonymizing sensitive data for dashboard visualization and drill-down.

A dashboard was built and refined to analyze and interrogate the employee commute measures and identify specific employee carbon emissions each working day. Geospatial representation and visualization were built and demonstrated with interactive zoom and data filters. A what-if scenario was demonstrated with graphs and metrics calculated in real time to show the specific carbon emission impact of changing the percentage of time spent working remotely.

As shown in the below process, this PoC was achieved using various 51��solutions, including 51��SuccessFactors solutions on 51��Business Technology Platform.

Example of how 51��Business Technology Platform and 51��solutions can help. Click to enlarge.

In Summary

Executives can make better decisions about the impact of employees going back to the office and how often, considering the social and actual carbon emissions from commutes in their people planning. Using 51��SuccessFactors solutions for employee information to geocode the distance of employees from the office and utilizing to layer experience insights to determine preferences, they can analyze carbon emissions for different types of commutes and make data-driven decisions to fuel their sustainability initiatives.

As shown in the below figure, executives can even look at this data by employee gender, race, and age. This helps them better assess, for instance, how many employees have strong preferences and who would become a flight risk should the business choose to mandate regular employee in-office attendance.

A PoC dashboard of employee commute and carbon footprint. Click to enlarge.

Finally, the figure below shows the simple what-if scenario to demonstrate how quickly and effectively analytics interfaces can be built, in this case, incorporating a slider bar and immediate impact of the change for the pre-filtered employees.

What-if scenario to show effects on carbon emissions from more home working. Click to enlarge.

This kind of sustainability data and analysis empowers executives to find the “sweet spot” in decisions that balance their preferences against employee preferences and align them to important goals such as reducing their carbon footprint.

Suddenly, what’s best for all becomes quite clear.

Learn more at .

Tammie Eldridge is part of Solution Marketing at 51��SuccessFactors.

Five Things to Look Forward to at SuccessConnect 2022

Lara Albert — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 13:15:18 +0000

Work is changing and that calls for a different approach to people and culture – one that drives new levels of engagement and creates a more empowered and sustainable workforce.

Moving forward, the most effective leaders will be able to support a constantly changing workforce in light of fast-moving market dynamics. They’ll prioritize an organizational culture that focuses on individuals and creating experiences at work designed around each person’s evolving needs and motivations.

��, we’re coming together to discuss what employees need now, what work looks like tomorrow, and new ideas to change work for good. Attendees will learn best practices to attract and win the best talent, develop a future-ready workforce, and manage and pay their teams with agility. Product experts and thought leaders will share tips for accelerating innovation in the cloud and bridging HR across the business to improve processes and efficiency while creating the kind of experiences that unlock more potential from your people.

For new or longtime 51��SuccessFactors customers as well as companies looking to make a move, here’s what to expect at this year’s SuccessConnect.

1. Join the Keynote and See 51��SuccessFactors Solutions in Action

The 51��SuccessFactors leadership team will take the stage to share new data, new product innovations, and new customer stories that demonstrate how we can change work for good. Aaron Green, 51��SuccessFactors marketing and solutions officer, will share our vision and strategy and unveil new data around people sustainability. Amy Wilson, senior vice president of Products and Design for 51��SuccessFactors, returns for a highly anticipated session to showcase the momentum behind the latest innovations that empower individuals to reach their full potential at work. Plus, Meg Bear, 51��SuccessFactors president and chief product officer, will join Josh Bersin, industry analyst and thought leader, to discuss the importance of skills and how they correlate directly to organizational growth and the power of connecting HR with supply chain, finance, sales and marketing, procurement, and more to create a more empowered workforce and profitable business.

2. Explore Road Map Sessions

Get a front-row seat at our to hear what’s new and what’s coming with our core HR and payroll, talent management and learning, analytics and planning, and sales performance management solutions. Also, learn about the exciting innovations in the technology foundation that supports 51��SuccessFactors Human Experience Management Suite. Topics include integration, extensibility, security, system administration, and more. Product experts will engage in live Q&A sessions as part of their presentations.

3. Discover Hands-on Lab Sessions

For attendees who enjoy hands-on learning, there is no better opportunity than the .* Discover how to configure and use our products and get your questions answered in real time. Topics include writing business rules to drive behavior for custom cards on the new, reimagined homepage, creating compelling stories in the 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics solution, choosing the best performance form rating option for your organization, building an engaging and outcome-based learning experience using standard or custom tiles and custom landing pages, and more.

4. Learn Best Practices from 51��SuccessFactors Customers

about practical tips for automating recruiting, optimizing the employee HR experience, migrating from the 51��ERP Human Capital Management solution to 51��SuccessFactors solutions to take full advantage of the cloud, elevating the skills of your workforce with agile learning, keeping people and organizational culture at the heart of HR transformation, and so much more. HR leaders from companies such as Heineken N.V., PepsiCo, Whirlpool Corporation, Paramount, American Airlines, and many others will inspire you to think and act differently to help ensure your employees are happier and your organization performs better. Plus, engage in live Q&A with each of our customer speakers.

5. Meet Up with Your Peers and Have Fun!

There is no better way to connect with your peers than in person. Grab a drink and join these to exchange information, share knowledge, and make new connections. Take advantage of the many other networking opportunities to engage with HR executives, peers, product experts, partners, industry analysts, and more. Plus, join us for an exclusive evening event at Tao Beach, the hottest club in Las Vegas, on Tuesday, September 13. Come experience a night full of surprises, amazing food, and great music in a Balinese-inspired tropical oasis setting.

on September 13-14, 2022, at the Venetian Convention Center, Las Vegas, and explore the . Registration for specific sessions goes live in mid-August.

Lara Albert is global vice president of Solution Marketing at 51��SuccessFactors.

*Hands-on lab session registration is required. Space is limited so speakers have time to answer attendee questions.

51��SuccessFactors Earns Top Rated Awards from TrustRadius in Eight Categories

Maryann Abbajay — Fri, 20 May 2022 11:15:04 +0000

51��SuccessFactors has been recognized by TrustRadius with eight across the Human Resources software category in 2022. TrustRadius is a free peer research and review platform designed for business leaders to find and select the right software for their needs. Reviews come directly from customers and include their overall satisfaction with software products, use cases, return on investment, and likelihood to recommend.

“51��SuccessFactors won eight Top Rated Awards in the Applicant Tracking Systems, Compensation Management, Corporate Learning Management, Employee Performance Management, HR Management, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics, and Workforce Management software categories,” said Megan Headley, VP of Research at TrustRadius. “51��SuccessFactors earned these Top Rated Awards based directly on feedback from customers. Reviewers on TrustRadius highlight how the combination of performance management, succession planning, and compliance features simplifies HR and workforce management tasks.”

At SAP, strong customer partnerships and feedback drive our ability to continually innovate and invest in bringing our vision of human experience management (HXM) to life. In the past year, we have released a reimagined home page experience; made new enhancements to , , and ; and launched entirely new solutions like . Together, we are delivering human-centered experiences at work to help our customers build sustainable workforces and profitable businesses.

Here are just some of the reviews from our customers:

“Great and worthy product! We have been using 51��SuccessFactors solutions for most of the training and company policy-related learning management internally. It gives us an intrinsic user interface (UI) and good usability. Modules and training are placed in a very great UI-built platform, which can be accessed very easily. It also can be integrated with various ERP and CRM systems to give us a holistic view of the training progress of our members.” –
“[51��SuccessFactors is] our main platform integrated with 51��to manage all employee goals, objectives, payments, learnings, and more. In the past, we used to have separate applications for each segment and now we just have 51��SuccessFactors.” –
“Since it entered our lives, 51��SuccessFactors has completely transformed how we do performance management. We utilized Excel sheets before our HR department introduced us to 51��SuccessFactors solutions, which have helped build transparency into our appraisal cycle. Now, we can see how our ratings are, where improvements need to be made, and suggestions from managers regarding which targets were achieved and which ones were not.” –
“Excellent product for managing payroll and compensations. Running payroll has been a hectic task every month in this part of the world since a lot of taxes and legalities are involved at every state. 51��SuccessFactors Employee Central and payroll management are great support tools for running operations smoothly and by far no product matches its capabilities.” –

Read all the reviews on the . To learn more about this recognition, visit the .

Maryann Abbajay is chief revenue officer for 51��SuccessFactors.

Solving Diversity Problems: One Dream and A Lot of Data

Tammie Eldridge — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 13:15:55 +0000

On the third Monday of January each year, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is honored in the U.S. King was an American Baptist minister and activist in the American civil rights movement. At the age of 35, he was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize.

For many, Martin Luther King Jr.’s name is synonymous with his dream of a United States void of segregation and racism. And while his dream has been recognized globally, there is still much work to do to realize it.

I recently sat down with to discuss how people analytics can support organizations’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) strategy. Dias is the managing director of as well as the chair and founder of the . He specializes in supporting businesses to make better HR decisions using people analytics and enabling data-driven HR culture.

Q: How does people analytics help HR to solve diversity problems?

A: What areas of your business have the lowest levels of diversity and inclusion, and how bad is the imbalance? Over the years, which HR decisions have caused and added to that inequality? Do different types of employees get promoted differently? Rewarded differently? Hired and retained faster or slower? If you do not change anything, how much worse will the inequality get? If you want to reduce inequality within five years, what HR strategies are most likely to achieve that goal?

With or without data, organizations are making decisions to try to become fairer and more equal. The purpose of people analytics is to enable organizations to make better people decisions; in this case, about achieving diversity goals and solving inequality. By using HR data to answer questions, people analytics helps organizations to make better decisions increasing the likelihood of achieving diversity outcomes across the entire employee experience.

What types of diversity questions are 51��SuccessFactors customers answering using their data?

In the 2020 Benchmarking study by the HR Analytics ThinkTank, , which is no surprise given DE&I is a priority for most organizations.

These people analytics functions are empowering their HR leaders to solve diversity problems by supplementing HR expertise with answers gleaned directly from data. From day one, people analytics teams can answer descriptive questions, providing facts about what happened in the past and over time. For example, within a particular job family or location, a specific minority group was three times more likely to be promoted than another. Other functions may go one step further, answering questions that diagnose a problem and use data to answer why an outcome has occurred in the past. For example, they might be able to answer why minority groups are more like to resign in particular locations.

The more advanced functions, which research shows take two to three years to build, will create even more value. Some will be asked to spend more time answering critical questions, predicting how the gender equity gap will increase if nothing changes. The most advanced will provide answers to questions by prescribing what should be done; for example, what strategies are most likely to achieve 25% ethnic minority representation at board level within six years.

How are 51��SuccessFactors customers using Workforce Analytics and Report Stories to tackle diversity problems?

The 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics solutions has the functionality to support organizations to tackle their diversity issues.

In order to support strategic decision-making, they use 51��SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics to transform HR data into metrics and dashboards, showing end users the answers to questions about what has happened in the past, displaying insights and trends over time. For example, where is minority representation worsening? In particular grades, job families or geographies is there a difference in the way in which different workers are promoted or hired? Using 51��SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, HR leaders can create better strategies and track progress over time.

Using report stories, 51��SuccessFactors software can provide anyone in the entire business with a snapshot view of their business area. Stories will allow end users to check an answer at any given moment; for example, whether their recruitment pipeline contains a diverse selection of candidates or if all the resignations in the last month have been women.

What steps can 51��SuccessFactors customers take to prepare for diversity analytics?

The first thing that organizations should do is confirm the objectives that leaders are trying to achieve and identify the questions they need answered to make better choices. In our 2020 study, 94% of 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics leaders said their function was directly sponsored by an HR executive but only 32% were positive that they knew what their leader’s goals were. HR leaders need to clearly articulate what their diversity goals are and establish what questions they would like answered by the people analytics team.

The second thing they should do is audit the foundations for data-driven HR success and prepare for the journey. According to the same study, only 42% of 51��SuccessFactors customers had a plan for what data to capture, only 16% were sure they knew how the people analytics team should be structured, and only six percent were confident that decision-makers understood how to use their insights in decision-making. A lot of diversity questions can be answered on day one using standard 51��SuccessFactors data, but a plan will be required to provide more complex answers over time.

The final tip is to provide answers with evidence to help ensure that decision-makers are empowered to actually use the insight. If given the option, most HR and business professionals will welcome evidence that helps them achieve their goals, but they will only use the evidence if it is easy to access and formatted in a way that makes it easy to use in the context of their job. The organizations most successful with data-driven HR make sure that decision-makers are enabled with the right skills, and their dashboards create the best experience for users to find the answers they are looking for.

To hear more on this topic, for the upcoming webinar (or listen to the recording), “” on January 26, or visit .

Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Creating More-Effective Data Visualizations

Tammie Eldridge — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 11:15:15 +0000

It is widely recognized that the human brain processes images better than words. And research shows that . Even in our personal experience, we know that when information is visualized well, we get the “So what?” of an article or report faster and easier.

Effective data visualizations can also help drive meaningful change — in our own lives, at work, and in the world around us.

Consider one of the earliest examples of an infographic: that proved, beyond the shadow of a doubt, how poor hygiene was killing more soldiers than combat. Talk about persuasive! It didn’t take long for the British government to effect changes in sanitation for the troops, saving countless lives.

Contrast this with the failure of Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis, who in 1846 tried to use overwhelming statistical tables to convince the medical community in Vienna, Austria, that deaths among women in childbirth plummeted when doctors washed their hands before treating them. Because of how he had presented it, even medical experts could not understand the practical application of Semmelweis’ statistical data.

Why Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Words

New studies show that the in terms of what reaches the brain and how quickly. It takes only a few hundred milliseconds for raw visual stimuli to reach the brain and be processed and filtered for what is important. In contrast, reading lots of text takes time and uses different parts of the brain.

However, not all data visualizations are good or effective at conveying the big “So what?” of large volumes of data. You need to apply what is referred to as , which describes how humans perceive visualizations in relation to other objects and environments and see structure, logic, and patterns. Gestalt theory suggests that human brains are built to make sense of complex images — even if that means organizing parts of images and filling in gaps where needed — to create a new, organized system of understanding. This helps to explain how different people looking at the same complex image can “see” and “understand” different things from it.

Brain Science Can Help Create Compelling, Easy-to-Understand Data Visualizations

Whether you are a data scientist that needs to create better human resources (HR) reports or an HR leader seeking to use data-driven insights to persuade or inform more effectively, applying Gestalt principles of design will help you create visualizations that are more compelling and easily understood.

A simple Internet search will take you to content about laws such as:

The law of proximity: People perceive visual elements in terms of their spatial proximity. The more closely positioned elements in a data visualization are to one another, the more the brain will perceive groupings and layer meaning upon them.
The law of similarity: The human brain wants to group together things that look similar, even when they technically are not. To tell a clear story with your data visualizations, use this to your advantage by making elements that you want readers to group together similar in color, shape, or size.
The law of closure: When the human brain sees complex arrangements of visual elements, it will create recognizable patterns and even fill in blanks to create a complete image that makes sense. So beware of incomplete data plots that readers’ brains can potentially fill in incorrectly.

The point is, the readers of reports all have brains hard wired to make sense of complex images such as data visualizations. By applying Gestalt principles to how you create data visualizations, you can make it faster and easier for readers’ brains to interpret your data visualizations quickly and correctly – and thus understand and remember your big “So what?”

When you combine Gestalt design principles with findings from the latest research on design variables, such as using color versus black and white visuals, you can really hone your data visualizations to get readers’ brains firing on all cylinders. For example, studies show that:

Colored visuals vastly increase people’s desire to read content.
Combining content with images drives a spike in view rates.
Posts with images more than double engagement rates.

Next-Gen Reporting Tools Make It Easier to Tell Rich Stories

Next-generation reporting tools such as the , which works across the 51��SuccessFactors solution suite, and the solution, which supports cross-topic analytics, enable these types of data visualizations.

For example, stories in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics allows users to leverage their people data to make better business decisions across all HR disciplines; for example, by visualizing demographic data with recruiting and compensation data. Similarly, 51��Analytics Cloud allows users to cross-reference HR data with other enterprise data, such as finance data, to create revelatory report visualizations that tell stories with real business value.

Imagine, for example, crossing external workforce spend data with finance data to better understand total spend, when spend occurred, and by which departments. The visualizations generated from crossing such data can enable more effective workforce planning and more accurate budgeting.

Visit to learn more.

Telling Your Story with 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics

Tammie Eldridge — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 14:15:04 +0000

In the experience economy, a standard report with a lot of data doesn’t “do the trick.” While it may provide the data we want to share, it doesn’t share the story we want convey – or help how viewers will be able to absorb it. Now, more than ever, data visualization has proven to be a powerful methodology to present the information you want viewers to “experience.”

Data and analytics presented visually make it easier for decision-makers to grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns and are easier for humans to perceive and digest. Where possible, consider using data visualizations over text in reports and always consider how it will look on a computer, tablet, PDF, or a mobile screen.

I recently had the opportunity to speak to Mike Hoekstra, People Analytics lead at GP Strategies, to discuss how to use and create stories to share data that may have traditionally been “just a report.”

Q: I hear a lot about visualizations and storytelling when it comes to data. What does that mean?

A: The brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text and 90% of data transmitted to the brain is visual (“Communicating Through Data Visualization,” Gartner 2019). Simply put, you will not be able to effectively influence others with data dumps alone. Effective data visualizations are imperative!

That said, the amount of data that HR teams are amassing in their 51��SuccessFactors solutions is enormous. There are many potentially impactful insights that can be pulled out of this treasure trove of data, but you need the right tools to create effective visuals and craft stories around these outputs to have an impact on your audience.

How are stories in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics different from the existing 51��SuccessFactors solutions? And how can it help customers create visualizations?

Like the existing reporting tools, stories are included with your 51��SuccessFactors module licenses. Queries are built upon your 51��SuccessFactors transactional data and data access is protected by role-based permissions.

The stories in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics include the capability to create bold, impactful charts and dashboards with data from across the 51��SuccessFactors portfolio. They use modern visualization tools from 51��Analytics Cloud and provide end users with the ability to easily interact with the charts and dashboards created.

In addition, 51��SuccessFactors Onboarding (formerly 51��SuccessFactors Onboarding 2.0) reporting is exclusively available in stories. And beginning in June 2021, learning data will become available.

In this pandemic era, the strategic spotlight has been shone on many HR programs, including employee experience, wellness, and skill development. However, HR is not always perceived as a strategic leader. How can a 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics help change this?

Indeed, HR is often challenged by an administrative or operational perception, and still today the impact of their value-add programs is not always appreciated. In a recent pulse survey, 95% of CHROs felt that they played a lead role in their organization’s response (“The 2020 Lesson for HR: Think Big and Play the Long Game,” KPMG, August 2020).

However, the C-suite is still skeptical of HR’s strategic abilities: About 60% of CEOs and executive vice presidents still consider HR to be an “administrator” rather than a value driver (“The Future of HR in the New Reality,” KPMG, October 2020).

The ability for HR to showcase its strategic side hinges on being able to timely and accurately report on people data to demonstrate its impact.

Who can HR impact with stories in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics?

I’d argue that every single employee in an organization should be using data to make decisions. With stories in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics, you can share reports and dashboards with any employee in your organization and they will see only the data that is permissioned to them. You can get interactive visualizations and stories into the hands of nearly anyone in your organization, including line managers, division heads, and senior leaders inside and outside of HR. The potential scope of influence for HR is nearly limitless!

How are stories in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics different from 51��SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics? Do stories replace 51��SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics?

No, stories do not replace 51��SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics. Both solutions provide the ability to create dynamic visualizations with your HR data. But while story queries are against live 51��SuccessFactors transactional data, 51��SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics extracts your data and transforms it into time-trending metrics and dimensions for more strategic analysis, including benchmarking, and can include non-HR data as well.

Since stories will eventually replace the existing reporting tools, some customers are concerned about needing to recreate dozens or even hundreds of reports. How do you suggest they approach this transition?

First, the sunset of the existing tools is likely years away, so you don’t have to immediately recreate your reports in stories. That said, now is a good time to begin to learn about story features in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics. Upon seeing the dynamic capabilities of stories, customers often quickly think of a dashboard or analysis that would be a good fit and then use stories to develop and share it. Going forward, existing reports can be recreated in stories over time.

To hear more on this topic, be sure to for the upcoming webinar, “” on July 13, at 11:00 a.m. ET, or visit .

Tammie Eldridge works in Solution Marketing at 51��SuccessFactors.

With HXM Solution Updates, 51��Empowers HR Leaders to Take Charge of Change

Jill Popelka — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:30:46 +0000

In the months since we announced human experience management (HXM), the world of work has completely transformed. Companies are grappling with unprecedented disruptions to their business and their workforce.

Human resources (HR) leaders specifically have had to quickly adjust to rapidly changing conditions. They are realigning employees to fill critical roles, reinforcing business continuity by adapting programs and policies to fit evolving needs, and reskilling their workforce so they are ready for what the future may hold.

At 51��SuccessFactors, we have been working diligently to ensure customers have the tools and support to lead their organizations through this unprecedented pace of change. At the same time, we have been developing exciting new products to ensure we are delivering that help HR leaders adapt to their current reality and lead their workforce not just in times of growth but in times of uncertainty.

“We have never been more connected and engaged with employees than at this point in time,” Chief People Officer Twselo Kodisang said. “Our priority is on ensuring our people are staying healthy – mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially – during this period and into the future. After transitioning to remote work, we recognized that roughly 500 employees were not being productive. We shifted to reskilling, with a focus on the jobs of the future rather than current jobs. enabled us to view employee data, understand where different employees are located, and create the appropriate programming, while provides a collaboration platform to keep employees engaged. As an organization, we feel that the crisis has provided us an opportunity to really make a difference to society, and we are seeing that difference being made.”

While the transition to the future of work has undoubtedly accelerated, two things remain the same: is more relevant than ever and digital technologies in the cloud that enable collaboration are essential.

In the most recent phase of its deployment, went live in the U.S. and many countries in Asia. The technology company selected 51��SuccessFactors software, which runs on Microsoft Azure, for its cloud-first approach, global capabilities, flexibility and extensibility, and open platform strategy.

“As we continue the important work of digitally transforming our HR function to better serve our employees, we’re grateful for our relationship with 51��SuccessFactors and its role in supporting our digital platform,” Kathleen Hogan, chief HR officer at Microsoft, said. “They’re a critical partner in helping us evolve our employee experience.”

During , we highlighted some of the latest innovations that are bringing the HXM vision to life for customers.

Reimagined Home Page and Digital Assistant

The reimagined homepage is a simple, beautiful, and individualized entry point. The mobile-first homepage leverages dynamic engagement cards prioritized by importance and urgency and colorful quick actions, such as requesting time off or scheduling a one-on-one with a manager, based on usage. The homepage also uses a digital assistant to answer questions, complete tasks, and find information. We are currently running a beta program to collect hands-on feedback from customers.

51��Work Zone for HR

The 51��Work Zone site for HR delivers an intuitive, digital workplace experience by providing easy access to relevant business applications and processes, information, and communication through a unified experience–with the employee at the center. It empowers teams and departments to effectively communicate and engage with employees without requiring IT infrastructure or support. 51��Work Zone for HR extends across the entire organization to streamline processes with customizable, guided experiences that integrate with disparate systems. Employees can also create communities where they can share knowledge and experiences with rich multimedia and microlearning capabilities, helping to enrich critical programs such as onboarding and training and development. 51��Work Zone for HR is currently available to a limited number of customers and is plannedfor general availability in the second half of 2020.

51��SuccessFactors People Analytics

The general availability of embedded reporting represents a paradigm in 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics. This solution will consolidate all transactional reporting in 51��SuccessFactors software into a single tool for reporting, insights, and dashboards. With 51��SuccessFactors People Analytics, customers will be able to gather insights and gain a deeper understanding of what is happening across their business.

Master Data Integration

Furthering our intelligent enterprise strategy, 51��Cloud Platform Integration Suite now has master data integration that supports out-of-the-box integration for standard HR (or workforce) master data across 51��S/4HANA and 51��SuccessFactors software.

Embedded Experience Management

One of the core pillars of HXM is the ability to listen and act on feedback. We are continuing to build integrations that enable organizations to gather feedback, get insight from the feedback, and provide intelligent actions and recommendations. For example, we have made it easier for customers to embed surveys within 51��SuccessFactors Recruiting and 51��SuccessFactors Performance & Goals. By gathering sentiment data to assess the candidate and employee experience, they can take the right steps to optimize those experiences.

Now more than ever, it is critical that organizations deliver experiences that inspire employees, support their physical and emotional well-being, and enable them to be engaged and productive–even when working remotely. At a time when change is constant, giving employees the right tools to do their jobs–and HR the right tools to support their people–will empower companies to be resilient, sustain momentum, and be profitable.

To learn more about these new technologies and hear how 51��customers are taking charge of change, .

Jill Popelka is president of 51��SuccessFactors.

51����SuccessFactors People Analytics Archives | 51����News Center