Dear Retail001, It appears that you do not have a proper Policy on Performance Appraisal (PA) well in place. When employees join the company, during induction itself, they should be told when their appraisal will take place. The salient features of the policy could be as below:
a) Appraisal may be done quarterly. An appraisal cycle of one year is too long. Nevertheless, a salary hike may be done on 1st April or 1st Oct.
b) For employees who join in between, the timing of their first PA can be decided in the policy.
c) The percentage of the salary hike should be linked to the score of the PA.
The important point is that PA concentrates only on individual performance. We need to go beyond and measure business performance. For this, you need to have a well-designed policy on Performance Management System (PMS). There was a query in this forum on PMS, to which I have replied. Click the following link to refer to the reply:
https://www.citehr.com/511936-pms-company.html
Though the heading of the link is for an IT company, the contents are applicable to all industries. In the above link, you will find several other links. Go through all the links patiently; it will improve your awareness of the subject.
For further doubts, you may call me on my mobile number [Phone Number Removed For Privacy Reasons].
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar