Changing performance review dates to the same time every year

mercury · December 2006

I work for a municipality that has traditionally set anniversary dates as the time for annual performance reviews to be done and merit increases to be given. We are developing a new performance appraisal program and would like to change performance review dates to the same month for everyone.

My question is this:

How do you implement this fairly since increases are tied to review dates? For example, an employee could have their review done in October (their anniversary date), get an increase, and then with the implementation of the new system could have another review done in January and be due another increase!

I would appreciate any thoughts and ways to "sell" this idea!

ray a · December 2006

Why do the merit increases have to come at the same time as the performance review? We give performance reviews on the ee's anniversary date or one year from their previous review. That is guaranteed. The merit increases could come at any time of the year. Normally, 12 months from the previous increase, but maybe less or maybe more depending on how well they are doing and where they fall on the pay scale. Rarely do our ee's receive a pay increase at the time of their review.

Keep in mind whatever you do with this change, it will also effect new hires that start at some time other than the review month.

dynamite9551 · December 2006

just because someone has had their P/R and received an increase doesn't mean they would get another increase with the new system. they can still go through the review process w/o $$. we try and give all the employees their reviews and increases in march of each year just so we can get them done and not have to worry about doing them throughout the year. this means that most employees are not getting P/R's on their anniverary date, but are getting them annually. sometimes i have to "tweak" the actual revew date and sometimes even the increase, for ex: ee begins in January; I won't give a review until March of the next year with everyone else. Also, EE hired in July. I would review the next July, but might only give a small increase and tell the EE that I will review again in the March group and reassess their salary then. So far, this has worked well. We are a small office however, so in a larger setting it may not be so easy to do.

good luck

HRinGA · December 2006

we went through this with my last employer. Hourly ee's reviewed in September and salaried in March. Basically, we pro-rated the increase.
Example:

Sue received her 3% raise in June 2006. She is hourly and will not receive another increase until September 2007. Whatever the raise amount is, divide by 12 to get a monthly figure then multiply by 15. This gives her the extra 3 months. (June-Sept). Now she's on track for 2008.

Do the same for salaried. If Sue got a raise June 2006, she's set to get another in March. She should only get 9mos worth.

I hope this makes sense. It worked well for us, took a lot of explaining and some life-size calendars, but it all worked out.

davids · December 2006

The one time I was involved in a similar change of performance merit dates, we prorated the merit increase. So, if an employee received an increase in October, and the new date was January, the employee received 3/12 of the increase. It is extremely cumbersome to implement if you are currently on a step plan as most public sector employers are. Also, if you are unionized, you will want to get the union's buy-in to avoid grievances after the fact.

The other downside of having all reviews due at the same time is the burden on the supervisor who has a large staff. It is hard enough getting a supervisor to do one or two evaluations. It will be a real challenge to get a supervisor to complete 8 evaluations at one time.

Dutch2 · December 2006

I have been involved in switching it both ways. From anniversay dates to once a year and from once a year to anniversay dates. We too used a very similar method for pro-rateing to determine how much to allow for the shorter periods of time. Be sure to put a lot of thought in this and get lots of input from your Superivsor ranks and everyone else that will be involved in the actual process as there will be those that see the pros and cons to each method. It really helps to have the support of those actually doing the reviews when making such a change. Good luck...

Changing performance review dates to the same time every year

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