When the request period ends, the cycle moves to Under review and the proposals come to you. You decide each one — the increase a manager put forward, the reasoning they gave for it, and whether it goes ahead.
Getting started
Open the cycle from Financial planning → Salary reviews, or from the notification you received when you were added to it.
You see the proposals for the people you cover — the reporting lines you were given when the cycle was set up. Everyone else in the cycle stays invisible to you, including their pay.
What you're deciding on
Each row carries everything the decision needs:
- The person, their current role and current salary.
- What's being proposed, split across Merit, Equity adjustment and Promotion, each with its amount and percentage.
- Their proposed salary once the change is applied.
- Their verdict under the cycle's guidelines — Eligible, Not eligible or Not judged.
- The manager's justification, and any comments on the row.
Open the side panel to see the full performance information behind a verdict before you decide.
A verdict of Not eligible or Not judged isn't a reason to reject on its own. Guidelines flag, they don't decide. Not judged in particular usually means information was missing — someone with two performance reviews when the rules look at three — not that the person doesn't deserve the raise.
Working through the proposals
Read the whole set before you decide any of it. Proposals arrive one manager at a time, but they add up to a pattern, and the pattern is the thing only you can see.
Worth looking at across the set:
- Totals against budget. What the cycle adds up to, and how much room is left.
- Consistency between teams. Two managers with comparable people may have proposed very differently.
- Proposals without a justification. A justification isn't required, so a blank one isn't a blocker — but it's the first thing to ask about.
- Anything outside the guidelines. An increase above the range, or one for someone flagged ineligible, needs a reason that holds up.
Calibrating a proposal
You aren't limited to yes or no. Before you decide, you can change the amount a manager proposed — bringing an outlier back into line, or evening out two teams that were treated differently.
Calibrate first, then approve. What you approve is the calibrated figure, and that's what reaches the employee's contract.
Leave a comment on the row when you change a number. The manager will see the final figure in the cycle, but not why it moved — and the reason is worth having on the record.
Approving and rejecting
Approve a proposal to let it go ahead. Reject it to stop it.
Leave a reason when you reject. The manager who proposed it will want to know why, and so will anyone looking at the cycle later.
Deciding in bulk
You can approve or reject a set of proposals together rather than one at a time. It's the quickest way to clear the straightforward ones — the proposals inside the guidelines, inside budget, with a justification attached — so you can spend your attention on the handful that need it.
Read before you bulk-approve. A set decided together gets the same scrutiny as a single click, which is fine for proposals you've already reviewed and risky for ones you haven't.
Going over budget
The budget guides the cycle, it doesn't cap it. Managers can propose over the limit and you can approve over it — nothing is blocked at any point.
That makes the budget your judgement call rather than the system's. If the set in front of you comes in over, the options are the same ones you'd have on paper: approve it and account for the overspend, or reject enough of it to get back inside.
Closing the cycle
Deciding the last proposal doesn't close the cycle, and only an Owner can do it using Lock cycle.
Until that happens, nothing is committed — you can go back and change any decision you've made, including ones you've already approved. Tell the Owner when you're finished with your part.
Locking moves the cycle to Closed, sends the approved changes to contracts with their effective dates, and records them as updates in Compensation.
Lock cycle is the point of no return. A closed cycle can't be reopened and nothing in it can be changed afterwards. A change approved by mistake has to be corrected in the employee's contract instead.
Best practices
- Decide the set, not the row. Working top to bottom through a list means the first proposals get judged on their merits and the last get judged on what's left of the budget.
- Use the time before the lock. Nothing commits until the Owner locks the cycle, so a decision you're unsure about can wait. Say so rather than letting it be locked in.
- Calibrate rather than reject where you can. A number that's too high is a figure to correct. Rejecting outright gives the person nothing and gives the manager no route back — there's no sending a proposal back for a second attempt.
- Ask before you reject. A proposal that looks wrong often has context that never made it into the justification field. Comment on the row and give the manager a chance to answer.
- Write the reason for a rejection even when it's obvious to you. It won't be obvious in six months, and it's what protects the decision if anyone questions it.
- Treat an unexplained proposal as unfinished, not as a no. A missing justification is a conversation, not a verdict.
- Check the equity adjustments as a group. They're corrections to gaps the system found. Approving some and rejecting others needs a reason you'd be comfortable explaining.
What the employee sees
Nothing of the cycle itself — not the proposal, not the justification, not your decision or the reason for it. An approved change appears on their contract with its effective date, like any other contract update.