In my previous two blog posts I covered several misconceptions related to the prerequisites of and the migration to Talent Intelligence Hub (TIH), which is the latest framework for managing competencies, skills and more within SAP SuccessFactors.
The last part of this three-part series will analyze misunderstandings related to the features and functionality of Talent Intelligence Hub and provide clarity on what’s truly possible with this new framework.
All statements are true as of the latest 1H 2024 release.
Myth #1 – You can't attach competencies or skills to job roles anymore when you turn on TIH
While I was never able to identify the source of this myth, I can safely say it is not true. Quite the opposite applies to this scenario! Conceptually, Talent Intelligence Hub and Job Profile Builder are closely connected, as can be seen below.
JPB enables customers to build their entire job architecture, including job profiles, within the system. With TIH enabled, you can link competencies and skills to the job roles you created in JPB.
It is possible to manage your job architecture on the old Job Description Manager (JDM) framework and be on TIH for competencies and skills. In this case, you can’t attach skills to job roles. We highly recommend that all customers move away from JDM and enable JPB and TIH to benefit from all recent and future innovations.
Myth #2 - Competencies are no longer relevant
This misconception is not a technical one, but very important to address. Let’s start by saying that SAP doesn’t plan to abandon competencies or deprecate any functions related to them. Competencies have been part of our product capabilities for a very long time and most customers have embedded competencies in their talent management processes. There is no reason to move away from this as long as it adds benefit for the business and their employees.
The perception that competencies are irrelevant might stem from the strong focus on skills which was identified and discussed in our HR-meta trend analysis in 2023. Skills remain top of mind in 2024, as described in our HR meta-trend analysis in 2024. However, if your organization’s processes rely on competencies, continue to use them, and simply consider looking into how skills data, too, could help you identify, attract and retain talent.
Myth #3 - TIH automatically figures out your skills and competencies
While Talent Intelligence Hub is capable of a lot, it can’t determine which skills and competencies your organization needs. This will always be a process that requires a thorough analysis of what information matters the most to understand the abilities and knowledge of your organization and help you design talent processes in a way that will attract and develop top talent.
However, there is a brand-new functionality that can speed up identifying skills by analyzing existing data. With the latest release, SAP SuccessFactors introduced the AI-assisted skills architecture creation feature. This feature can create an AI-based skills library by extracting skills from job profiles in Job Profile Builder. Soon, it will also be capable of extracting skills from existing job postings managed within SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting.
You can easily activate this feature from within the Upgrade Center. Please carefully review the release information about the AI-Assissted Skills Architecture Creation feature before you proceed.
Myth #4 - TIH automatically attaches competencies and skills to job roles
The answer to this is a continuation of the response to the previous myth. The new the AI-assisted skills architecture creation feature doesn’t just extract skills, it also attaches them to the corresponding job roles. This way you can quickly build your skills library and associate your skills to your job architecture.
Please note that this only applies to skills. Competencies still need to be attached manually to job roles, which you can do one by one or as a mass change via an import.
Myth #5 - Career Worksheet / Career Explorer become obsolete
This misconception came up several times when presenting Growth Portfolio, the employee-facing component of Talent Intelligence Hub. I understand that Growth Portfolio might seem like the new place to perform a fit-gap analysis related to job role requirements, but it isn’t meant as a replacement.
Let’s compare the two features to see differences and commonalities:
- Growth Portfolio is the single source of truth for everything related to competencies, skills and any other knowledge and abilities of the employee. It allows adding and updating data quickly and takes into account skills and competencies linked to the employee’s job role. The focus of this feature is to show what the employee knows right now. Most importantly. Growth Portfolio can be used fully without any job architecture in place
- Career Worksheet / Career Explorer, on the other hand, requires a job architecture and focuses on future roles. It is specifically meant to help employees identify job roles they could develop into and show which skill or competency gaps they need to work on. While it can show gaps for the current job role, too, the emphasis lies on future roles
It’s important to understand that these features are not mutually exclusive, so you can have Growth Portfolio and Career Worksheet in place in parallel. In fact, we introduced a new experience for Career Worksheet which I like to refer to as the new blended experience for Career Worksheet, Growth Portfolio and Opportunity Marketplace. It perfectly combines these different functions on a single page to provide a one-stop shop for everything related to development and career progression.
Did I miss any myths or misconceptions about TIH? Please share them in the comments section and I’d be happy to comment on them.
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