Unleashing our Employee’s Potential through SuccessFactors’ Personal Profile
by Caroline S. Lewis and Liz Brenner
You have 7 seconds to make a first impression. When you build and live your Personal Brand, you have an opportunity to craft that impression – in person and online. At SAP, our employees use the SuccessFactors People Profile to do just that – reflect their personal brand to their peers and leaders to reinforce their impact and emotional appeal. Personal brand is about knowing and being your authentic self and bringing that authenticity to everything you do.
At SAP, employees live their brands in all sorts of ways, but the people profile is where employees make their online impression. SAP runs SAP – People Profile – and helps our employees Run at their Personal Best.
What is Personal Brand anyway? 
Personal Brand puts definition to your emotional appeal and impact – the “buzz” that makes you memorable. It’s something that can’t be left to chance and crucial in a fast moving, innovative environment where your next role may be one that doesn’t exist today.
Your Buzz…Your Brand
It’s not about YOUR JOB, YOUR BOSS or THE FAD OF THE MONTH – it’s simply about you…the personal qualities that come together to add value your leadership style (and at SAP, we all consider ourselves as leaders) and the impact you have not just in the workplace but it your life overall.
When you distill your impact into three unique words, you’ve defined your buzz.
Caroline Lewis is an HR leader who connects People, Ideas and Information to bring value to the organization. By engaging in and leading high impact projects she brings passion and energy to people and teams, unleashing human potential.
Liz Brenner is a marketing leader focused on bringing innovation to our greatest asset at SAP – our people – through her partnership with the HR team. Liz is passionate about diversity, simplicity, good leadership, and customer-first thinking.
If you read this, you may not know exactly what our roles are, but do you know what we stand for and what we bring both to SAP and our greater communities.
How we live our Brand through the People Profile
There is an “expressive view” of the People Profile for a reason. And everyone at SAP is encouraged to use it. This view tells the story of who we are beyond just our brand statements, but through pictures, videos and audio clips. We customize our titles to reflect what we do, not a system generated title. Employees self-populate their work experience, career aspirations and relocation preferences to provide a full picture of where they want to go and remind how they can deliver value through beyond their current role.
The People Profile is the heart of our SuccessFactors implementation – it’s a vehicle for employees to showcase their brand and ensure that their work is known and respected. It’s how managers share their leadership point of view. It’s the center of our Talent Management Strategy and how SAP runs SAP!
great blog Caroline and Liz. Are these people profiles visible outside of our organization?
Celia, great question. They are not, but eventually we will be using them internally to identify specific interests, skills and experiences as new roles arise so we can make sure we build our talent from within first. Many of our customers do the same and use a hybrid SuccessFactors and SAP implementation to drive their executive talent reviews at the board level, pulling the majority of their data from the people profile!
Thanks for posting Caroline and Liz. I am in the midst of revising my experience in my profile and my expressive profile. I am on version two since we initially implemented Success Map. First step is to create it, then keep it updated (just as one might do via LinkedIn).
question - is there a "push mechanism" whereby you make changes and followers get an update - or is completely a pull?
I am up to speed on the benefits of the profile but need to understand the social aspects better!
Kate - there is a push mechanism with an integrated Jam/Successfactors implementation. As you update your profile, it gets pushed to your followers so they can see how you're reflecting who you are. It's another you keep your brand top of mind with your network and we're on our way to using this functionality internally.