Submitting a promotion

Propose a promotion for someone on your team, alongside their merit increase. You need a worksheet that’s In progress or Returned. A promotion can be entered only on a cycle that funds a promotion pool: on a cycle that doesn’t, the worksheet doesn’t offer one.

Mark the promotion

1. Select the person’s row to open their details under it.
2. In the right-hand column, under Guidance, tick Promotion. Four labelled fields appear, each with a tooltip explaining what it changes.
3. Enter the increase as a Promotion amount in the person’s pay currency, or as a Promotion percent. Type in one and the other fills in beside it when the row saves; the one you typed is the figure that holds. The percentage is a share of the person’s current base.
4. Choose the new Grade. The list offers your workspace’s grade codes, each beside the name of its pay band, and you can search it by either; you can also type a code. You don’t need access to the pay bands to pick one — if the grade you type matches none of them, the details note that this grade has no pay band, but the value still saves.
5. Type or pick the New title from the suggestions, which come from titles already in your workspace. A promotion needs a title: until one is entered, the details say so, and the promotion amount or percent and the grade you’ve typed stay unsaved drafts. The moment you give it a title, they save together in one request.

Once the promotion has a title, each field saves on its own when you leave it, and the row’s Increase and Proposed base update. Before that — on a fresh promotion with no title yet — the amount or percent and the grade stay unsaved drafts, and leaving the title saves them together in one request, as above. The promotion increase is applied first and the merit increase on top of it, so adding a promotion to a person whose merit you typed as an amount leaves that amount as it was and changes its percentage — see Entering a merit increase. Your compensation team can set a range for the promotion on its own, and the promotion is measured against it apart from the merit increase: a promotion outside its range reads Promotion above guide or Promotion above maximum on the row, and never changes what the merit increase reads — see Reading the guidance and guardrails.

To take the promotion back, untick Promotion. You’re asked to confirm, because this clears the amount, the percent, the grade and the title together: confirm to clear them, or cancel to leave the tickbox and the fields exactly as they were.

Explain it

A promotion always needs a reason code and a rationale, whether or not it’s inside its range, and whatever the merit guardrail asks for. Anything that makes it a promotion counts: a promotion increase, a new grade, or a new title that differs from the current one. Until both are there, the row reads Justification needed and the worksheet can’t be submitted.

A promotion outside its soft range needs nothing more than that pair. With the pair given, the row reads Promotion above guide or Promotion below guide and owes nothing else. A promotion past its hard range reads Promotion above maximum or Promotion below minimum and is refused at submit until you change the percent. See Providing a rationale.

Where it goes

The promotion travels with the rest of the worksheet when you submit it: your approvers see it in their review as an amount with its percentage, and the person’s award letter carries the promotion increase and their new title. The promotion pool is charged the promotion amount — see Entering a merit increase.