Workday-Pro-Talent-and-Performance Questions and Answers

In Workday Talent & Performance, when you want to assign goals to a group of employees (such as everyone in a talent pool), you must use the“Add Goal To Employees”task.

Here’s why:

Create Goal for Worker

This task is specific toone workerat a time. It would not allow you to mass-assign goals to multiple workers.

Suitable when you want to add a goal for an individual employee.

Manage Organization Goals

Used to defineorganization-wide goals(e.g., company objectives).

These can be cascaded, but they are not tied to an action that assigns two goals directly to all members of a talent pool.

Maintain Goals Setup

This is forconfiguring goal settings(e.g., categories, weights, behaviors) at the tenant level.

It doesn’t execute the action of assigning goals to workers.

Add Goal To Employees

Specifically designed formass goal assignment.

You can select multiple employees (for example, all 10 members of your talent pool) and assign the same goals in a single event.

This is the only option that fulfills the requirement of assigningtwo self-development goals to all membersin one step.

????References

Talent & Performance Study Guide topics:

Goal Management: Covers the difference between worker-specific vs. mass goal actions.

Talent Pools: Workday documentation explains that pools are often used for succession planning and development, and “Add Goal to Employees” is the correct bulk action for assigning development activities.

External Training Reference: ERP Cloud Training notes that“The Add Goal To Employees task allows administrators to assign multiple goals across groups such as talent pools or organizations, enabling faster alignment with development plans.”【web source on Talent & Performance training】

Workday Pro Talent & Performance Flashcards: Confirm that the correct way to mass assign goals is viaAdd Goal To Employeestask, not Manage Organization Goals (which is only for defining org-level goals).

Comprehensive Detailed Explanation

When creating anorganization goal, Workday defaults theGoal Periodfield to themost recent goal periodused in the specific supervisory organization.

It does not inherit from superior organizations, worker records, or the first goal period created in the tenant.

This ensures consistency within the supervisory organization’s existing goal cycles.

ADynamic Talent Poolautomatically updates membership based on the results of a saved search.

Making itRestrictedensures that access is limited—so onlyManagershave visibility/permissions to the members of their supervisory organization.

Incorrect options:

Open Dynamic→ open visibility, not restricted by role.

Open Static→ membership is manual, not automatic, and visibility is open.

Restricted Static→ membership is manual, not dynamic.

Before creating a review template, you must define thesection typesavailable in reviews.

Since the template requirestwo different goal sections (professional and personal), you must configure them asEmployee Review Section Types.

Incorrect options:

A. Maintain Goal Periods → defines timeframes, not template sections.

C. Maintain Goal Setup → configures goal rules, not review template sections.

D. Maintain Employee Review Setup → overall setup but does not define section types.

In theAdd Goal to Employeestask, managers can cascade or assign goals to groups of workers.

The available grouping option is byOrganizations(e.g., supervisory organizations, cost centers, custom organizations).

Succession Pools, Job Profiles, and Job Familiesare not selection criteria in this task. Those are used in talent or competency management contexts but not in mass goal assignment.

ForAdditional Managersto evaluate, the template must include aCompetencies section.

If a review lacks competencies, additional managers cannot complete evaluations, and the system throws an error.

Incorrect options:

A. Feedback section → does not block additional managers.

B. Manager security group → any nominated reviewer with correct access can be added; not restricted only to security group membership.

D. Up to two additional managers → there is no hard limit of two; multiple can be assigned.

To allow other users (besides the direct manager) to rate competencies:

UseGet Additional Reviewers for Performance Review→ allows nominating additional evaluators.

Then useComplete Additional Evaluation for Performance Review→ routes the evaluation step to the selected additional reviewers.

Incorrect options mix up “Additional Manager” with “Additional Reviewer.” Managers are a subset, but to include broader participants, the correct subprocesses areReviewers + Evaluation.

Behavioral indicatorscan be tied to proficiency rating levels on a competency to describe expected behaviors at each level.

These indicators are assigned byJob Profile.

Other options (Supervisory Organization, Management Level, Talent Pool) are not used to define behavioral indicators.

Linking by Job Profile allows organizations to customize behaviors expected for different roles.

To make specific goal fieldsmandatory(such as requiring a goal description), you must configure this in theConfigure Individual Goals sectionof theMaintain Goal Setuptask.

In this section, administrators define which fields are:

Required(must be completed by the worker),

Optional, or

Hidden(not shown to users).

TheMaintain Goal Categories taskonly sets up categories such as Innovation, Financial, Productivity.

TheMaintain Goal Units taskconfigures measurement units (e.g., percentages, dollars).

TheConfigure Organization Goals sectiongoverns how enterprise-level organizational goals behave, but does not control whether an individual field like “Description” is required.

Therefore, to enforce that workers must always provide a goal description, you configure this requirement in theConfigure Individual Goals section.

When creating aCompetencyin Workday Talent & Performance, the system enforces certain required fields.

Name:

This is themandatory field. Every competency must have a name so it can be identified in job profiles, performance reviews, and talent pools.

Without a name, Workday will not allow you to save or proceed.

Proficiency Rating Scale:

This is important for measuring competencies (e.g., Basic → Intermediate → Advanced → Expert).

However, it isnot requiredat the point of creation. If you don’t assign one, the system can still save the competency, though you may not be able to rate employees effectively without linking a scale later.

Competency Description:

Highly recommended for clarity and reporting.

But this field isoptional, not enforced by Workday.

Category:

Used to group competencies (e.g., Leadership, Technical, Communication).

Again,optionaland for organizational purposes only.

Thus, while other fields add functionality and structure,the only required field to create a competency is the Name.

????References

Talent & Performance Learning Material: Competencies are created with“Name” as required, while “Description, Proficiency Scale, and Category” are optional metadata used to support evaluation and reporting.

Workday Pro Talent & Performance study outlines: Under theCompetencies section, it explicitly states:“The only mandatory field is Name. Description, Proficiency Rating Scale, and Category are optional fields that can be configured for richer competency management.”【web source Talent & Performance training + community notes】

ERP Cloud Training – Workday Talent & Performance course: Highlights that“Name is required when creating a competency; all other fields are optional depending on business needs.”