If you've been added to a salary review cycle as a Manager, you propose the pay changes for your own team. You work in a table that shows each person's current salary alongside the room you have to move it, and you record why you're proposing what you're proposing.
What you're looking at
The cycle opens on a table with one row per person in your team. For each of them you can see:
- Their current role and current salary.
- The change you're proposing, split across three types.
- Their proposed salary once your change is applied.
- Whether they're eligible under the cycle's guidelines.
You may find proposals already filled in. If the cycle Owner asked One for suggestions, your rows arrive with a suggested increase in them, so your job is to check and adjust rather than start from nothing.
A suggestion is a starting point, not a decision. One works from the cycle's guidelines and budget — it doesn't know what you know about your team. Change anything that doesn't match your judgement. Whatever is in the row when the window closes is what you proposed.
There's one sheet, not a copy each. Everyone with permission to see a reporting line sees the same rows, so an edit you make is the version your approver reads.
Check eligibility before you propose
Each person carries a verdict based on the cycle's guidelines and, if your company uses Performance, their review results:
- Eligible — they meet the guidelines.
- Not eligible — they don't, and the reason is shown alongside.
- Not judged — the guidelines couldn't be applied because information is missing. If the rules look at someone's last three performance reviews and they only have two, there's nothing to judge them against.
Open the side panel on a row to see the full review information behind the verdict before you decide.
A verdict is advice, not a gate. Not eligible and Not judged don't stop you proposing a change — they tell you that you'll need a good justification for it.
Proposing a change
Each change type has its own pair of columns: an Amount and a %. Fill in either one and the other follows, so you can think in whichever you prefer.
Merit
The increase based on performance and where someone sits in their range. This is the usual one.
Equity adjustment
A correction when someone's salary has fallen out of line with comparable people. Factorial flags the gaps it finds, so you can put the correction through in the same pass as the merit decision instead of raising it separately.
Keeping merit and equity in separate columns matters: it keeps a fairness correction from looking like a performance reward, both for the approver now and for anyone reviewing the decision later.
Promotion
A move to a new level or role, and the pay change that comes with it.
The three can be combined. Someone can take a merit increase and an equity adjustment in the same cycle, and the proposed salary accounts for both.
Write the justification
Record why you're proposing the change. The justification travels with the proposal to the approver, and stays with the decision afterwards — it's what answers "why did this person get this increase" months later, when nobody remembers the conversation.
Write it for someone who wasn't in the room. What the person did, what changed, why this amount.
A justification isn't required to submit a proposal, but a proposal without one is harder for your approver to say yes to — and impossible to explain later.
Comments
Use comments for the discussion around a proposal — a question to your approver, context that doesn't belong in the formal justification, a note about timing. Comments stay on the row with the proposal.
Best practices
- Always justify a proposal that falls outside the guidelines. An increase above the range, or one for someone marked Not eligible or Not judged, is the proposal your approver will stop at. Say what the guidelines don't capture — a counter-offer, a role that grew, a correction that's overdue.
- Put the reason in the right column. A fairness correction belongs in Equity adjustment, not folded into Merit. Mixing them makes a pay gap look like a performance reward.
- Decide the proposal before you look at the suggestion. It's easier to accept a number that's already in the box than to form your own view of it.
- Check your whole team before you submit, not person by person. Proposals that each look reasonable alone can add up to a pattern you wouldn't defend.
- Don't promise anything to your team. Nothing is settled until an approver decides and the cycle closes.
Keep an eye on the budget
Running totals show what your proposals add up to against the cycle's budget as you work.
The budget guides you, it doesn't stop you. You can propose over the limit, and it can still be approved — but expect your approver to ask about it.
The deadline
The request period is a hard deadline. Once the end date passes, the cycle moves to Under review and you can no longer create or edit proposals. Whatever is in the table at that point is what goes forward.
If you need longer, ask the cycle Owner before the end date — they can extend it while the cycle is still open.
After review
Approvers decide each proposal for the people they cover. When a change is approved, it goes into that employee's contract with its effective date and appears as an update in Compensation.
You won't be told when this happens — open the cycle to see what was approved.
Your team members see nothing of the cycle itself — not the proposals, not the comments, not the justifications. They see the result on their contract once it's final.