How to Transition to a Company-Wide Annual Appraisal Date and Handle Prorated Increases?

From an HR practitioner's perspective, the "anniversary" cycle of appraisal is a very demanding job, as HRD will have a "year-round responsibility" to attend to. Imagine if your organization has a small HR department and several hundreds of employees marking their anniversary each month. If this is your situation, then you will be constrained to assign one or two staff on a full-time basis to administer it.

Moreover, good and sensible performance appraisals are supposed to be based on annual performance plans or targets. These plans/targets are generally prepared on the normal annual (Jan-Dec) and/or financial/fiscal calendar (Apr-Mar) of an organization. Hence, doing an appraisal on an anniversary that is off-tangent with the calendar/fiscal year may not just be difficult but also irrational.

How to Convert from Anniversary to Annual Appraisal

On the question of "how do you convert" from anniversary to annual? Well, just make the announcement after top management has officially approved the shift/change.

On the computation, this is not an issue because companies implementing appraisal systems are supposed to have performance-based adjustments. The amount of increase should be clearly defined by the policy attached to the appraisal tool. Those who performed well are expecting to get more than those who didn't.

Computing increments based on "tenure" or "time"-based is not actually using a performance-based methodology. These organizations are actually implementing a "seniority-plus-merit"-based system, regardless of the system used.

Regards,
Ed Llarena, Jr.
Managing Partner
Emilla International Consulting Services
Manila, Philippines