Salary review (revision cycles)

Salary review (Lönerevision) is a collaborative budget process (enabled per organization): an administrator creates a cycle with a budget (% of current salaries), picks which employees take part, and can set per-unit budget caps and nominate Final-Say users. At creation time, the administrator can also set an effective date, link the cycle to an existing salary policy, and choose a default currency for the cycle. Managers then propose raises for their own teams within the budget and submit per unit; higher managers, Final-Say users and administrators review, adjust and approve. A proposal is only final once it is finally approved (by Final Say or an administrator).

New cycle in seven steps: the create-cycle form is organized as a clickable step tracker at the top — Policy & period, Pay mapping, Employees, Reviewers & groups, Budget per unit, AI comparison, and Review — showing exactly one step at a time. “Back”/“Next: [next step’s name]” navigate between steps; step 7 shows “Create cycle” instead, which actually creates it. Clicking an already-reached step’s dot jumps directly to it; a step not yet reached can’t be skipped ahead to. Step 7 shows the same read-only summary described below before the cycle is created.

Reviewers & groups (step 4): a read-only “Review chain preview” shows, per employee, who would review their proposal — based on the org chart, virtual groups, and the chosen Final-Say users. Under “External / virtual groups”, the administrator can create standalone groups of any people (e.g. a cross-functional team) with their own assigned reviewer, independent of the line organization — a group’s reviewer replaces the normal manager in the approval chain for that group’s members. Any existing group can be edited (name, members, reviewer) or deleted via the icons on the group’s row; deleting requires confirmation and cannot be undone. Groups are a reusable resource that persists across cycles, not part of any one cycle’s draft. The Final-Say list below the groups requires typing a search before any names show (so it never dumps the whole organization at once).

The workspace in five steps: the Workspace tab is organized as a clickable step tracker — Preparation, Create, Propose, Review, and Completed — which can be switched manually for an ongoing cycle, jumping automatically to “Propose” when it’s opened. A completed (closed) cycle shows no step tracker at all — there’s nothing left to navigate between — and goes straight to the read-only “Completed” view instead. “Propose” shows the employee table with exactly the extra columns the administrator chose under “Columns for the manager” when creating the cycle. “Review” shows one card per employee with their full approval chain — a row of chips showing each level’s status — and whoever is awaiting a decision at YOUR level sees three buttons: Approve, Modify + comment, and Deny + comment (the latter two require a comment). “Completed” shows a completion banner, four KPI figures (Updated, Avg. raise, Cost/month, and Pay gap avg.), a bar per department showing the gender pay gap before → after the cycle (the same anonymity-gated calculation as the Salary review pay-equity guardrail — a department too small isn’t listed at all), a clearly labeled “Write to Employees (N)” button (the same confirmed write-back described below), and two shortcuts into the Letter Generator (Open letter generator / Send letters).

The Workspace is admin-only: the Workspace tab under Cycles & approvals shows “All salary reviews” — a list of every cycle (ongoing and closed) across the organization with Cycle, Period, Status, Step, Employees and Budget columns. Clicking “Open” switches to that cycle’s detail view with a simplified header (a back link, a status label, the cycle’s name, and “More actions”/“Complete cycle” for an ongoing cycle) — the content below the header is the exact same Propose/Completed view described above. A manager (non-admin) opening the page instead sees a short notice pointing them to Salary proposals in the menu.

Salary proposals — the hierarchical approval tree: managers work their own salary proposals on the separate Salary proposals page in the menu (not under Cycles & approvals), which shows the same view for everyone, derived from the org chart. A manager with only direct-report employees sees a flat list with each employee’s “current → new salary · +X%” and a status pill. A manager with sub-managers instead sees a collapsible tree — one row per sub-manager with team size and average raise, expandable (chevron) one level at a time the higher up the tree you are. The row awaiting a decision at YOUR level shows three buttons instead of a pill: Approve, Change + comment (also reveals a field for the new salary), and Deny + comment — the latter two require a comment before they can be submitted. An employee whose salary hasn’t yet been set by their manager instead shows an editable field pre-filled with the proposed amount and a “Lock in” button. When the cycle has extra “Columns for the manager”, each row shows an info icon that expands a light-grey panel with the chosen columns’ values. Only admins see a “View as” picker to open the tree as any manager in the organization (from the same Salary proposals page) — a plain (non-admin) manager always sees only their own position, with no picker. A manager with no active cycle simply sees a message that there’s no active review cycle right now.

Import from the pay-gap mapping: when enabled, a button on the create-cycle form previews which employees are already flagged as underpaid in the existing pay-gap mapping (the same calculation the individual analysis uses) — for reference only, nothing is written or linked into the cycle automatically. Next to the button, the administrator also chooses who can later see the imported gap on the workspace’s proposal table: “Only HR/Admin & Final-Say” (default) or “All managers”. When the feature is disabled for the organization, the step shows an explanatory card instead of a blank page. The preview requires permission to see salaries (the same rule as the individual analysis) and only includes employees paid in the organization’s currency. When the cycle is created, the server recomputes the gap itself — numbers from the browser are never used — and stores only values for comparison groups that meet the anonymity threshold, because managers can see them. A gap only you may see is shown in the preview but not saved on the cycle; the text under the button says how many this applies to.

Columns for the manager: the administrator can choose which employee columns the manager will see for each proposal later in the workspace. Name, Department, Manager, and Base salary are always preselected and greyed out in the list — they can’t be removed, but more columns can be added on top. The included-employees list also shows a “Benchmark salary” column when one is recorded on the employee.

Completing the cycle: when all proposals are done, an administrator presses “Complete cycle” in the workspace. A confirmation dialog appears first and explains what happens: every finally-approved employee’s new salary is written to the employee record, and an entry is added to that employee’s salary history (tagged with which cycle it came from). This changes live employee data and cannot be undone automatically. After completion, the number of updated employees is shown, and the cycle disappears from the list of active cycles. Proposals that never reached final approval (drafts or manager-approved only) are not written back.

Context in the proposal table: when the Variable pay and Salary history features are enabled for the organization, the proposal table shows two read-only columns to support the decision — “Variable pay this year /mo” (this year’s bonus/commission converted to a monthly amount) and “Last salary change” (date and amount of the most recent salary-history entry). The columns only appear for employees whose base salary you already see in your workspace, and are hidden entirely when the features are off.

Get-started checklist: an administrator opening the page for the first time sees a checklist at the top (“X/4 done”) listing what’s still missing before a cycle can meaningfully be created — add employees, record base salaries, set up organizational units, and start the first cycle. Each row has a shortcut to the right page and an X to dismiss it (it then moves to a collapsible “Completed” section regardless of whether the task is actually done). The checklist updates automatically from real data — nothing needs to be checked off by hand.

Letter Generator: once a cycle is completed, an administrator can open the Letter Generator from the workspace. Here you create and save reusable, named letter templates (with placeholders like {{EMPLOYEE_NAME}} and {{NEW_SALARY}}) instead of rewriting the text every time. A searchable, checkable list shows every finally-approved employee in the cycle with name, department, and new salary; you can assign a template per employee, or select several and assign one template to all of them at once. “Save letters” generates a real PDF salary letter for each selected employee and archives it in that employee’s Documents tab. “Send letters” then sends out the already-saved letter: the manager gets a short summary email, and the employee gets a separate email with the salary letter as a PDF attachment — a confirmation dialog appears first, since this goes out to real recipients and cannot be undone.

Who can use the Letter Generator: access follows the Salary review (Cycles & approvals) permission, not the permission to edit staff. Admins, a role with write access to Cycles & approvals, and the cycle’s Final-Say users and cycle managers can save and send letters. A role with read access and the cycle’s viewers can only see the list and the templates. A delegated role only sees employees within its access area. If salary visibility is restricted, the list is shown without salary amounts. When you send letters, employees outside your access area are skipped — the rest are sent, and the result shows how many were skipped.

Who can edit the letter templates: the letter templates are shared by the whole company. Only Admins and roles with the Letter templates permission (under Salary review in Roles & Permissions) can create, edit and delete them. Cycle managers and Final-Say users can pick a template and send letters, but cannot change the templates.

Salary revision planner and missing base salary: an employee without a base salary never gets a raise in the planner — not even a flat amount. They are not counted in the pay gap, the budget or the number of affected employees. Instead the planner shows “N skipped – no base salary” with their names, so you can fix the data in the staff list. Every planner raise is also saved as a dated row in the employee’s salary history (effective today, in the employee’s currency, with the planner as its source), so it shows up in analyses and exports even for employees who already have a salary history.

Raises from the action plan. When an employee has a correction plan in the pay-equity action plan (classified “Unjustified”), this year’s share of the plan is pre-filled as their proposal when the cycle is created — the “Pre-fill raises from the pay-equity action plan” box in step 2 is ticked by default. The share is cumulative: the proposal takes the employee at least to the plan’s floor for the year (the salary the plan started from plus every share up to and including this year), so a raise missed in an earlier year is made up, and nothing is proposed when the salary is already at or above the floor. Which plan year it is follows from the year the plan was created and the cycle’s effective date. The proposal is marked “From action plan” (hover it for the year and the floor). HR can change the amount as usual; lowering it below the floor shows “Below the action plan’s floor”. The amounts are reserved in the budget and shown as “of which reserved for the action plan”. For a cycle that is already running, the “Apply action plan raises” button in the Propose step raises draft proposals to the floor (never lowers them) and marks the others. The cycle is written back onto the correction plan and onto its action-plan item (an item is created if there is none and you may edit the action plan), and on completion whether the raise was carried out is recorded. The marker, the floor and the reserved amount are only shown to people with access to the action plan; a line manager only sees the amount. Someone who creates a cycle without that access gets no pre-filled raises. The feature can be turned off per organization (it is on by default) and needs server-side pay-equity justifications.

Budget per currency. The budget is never calculated on salaries in different currencies together. Each employee counts in their pay currency (their own, else their legal entity’s, else the organization’s), and the percentage budget applies to each currency’s own salaries. The headline figures (total budget, allocated, remaining) are in the cycle’s primary currency — the default currency when anyone is paid in it, else the largest group — and other currencies get lines of their own. A per-unit budget cap is in the unit’s currency (the one most of its employees are paid in) and is checked against that currency’s budget. The pay gap in the guardrail, the budget scenarios and the Done step’s summary are also calculated within one currency at a time.

Pay gap warning when approving (the 5 % rule). The Review step shows a warning when the cycle makes an equal-work group or a job category cross a 5 % pay gap between women and men, or widens an unjustified gap that is already over 5 %. It is the same rule as the pay-equity analysis: at least 5 % in mean or median pay, either way, on exact values and within one currency at a time. The warning blocks nothing — you can still approve — but it is saved on the approval. It is shown to administrators and to whoever approves the proposal. Groups below the anonymity threshold are not assessed and never shown. While you type, the guardrail next to the salary field shows “over the 5 % line” based on mean pay; the median is only assessed at approval.

Select employees by pay policy. If the cycle has a pay policy (step 1), click “Select by pay policy” in the Employees step. Only the people the policy’s “Applies to” covers are then included, and the server checks every employee when the cycle is created. “Show everyone again” removes the limit. If you link a policy without using the button, the cycle still records how many people are outside the policy. Needs scoped policies to be turned on.

When the cycle is completed. Every employee who got a new salary and has a pay-equity justification is marked “To review” with a link to the cycle. The justification is never changed or deleted automatically — you decide. Save the justification again in Individual analysis and it counts as reviewed. For an employee with a correction plan, the action item moves on even if the cycle was not pre-filled from the plan. The home page shows “Review N justifications”.

Salary letters when Documents is off. Saved salary letters are stored with the employee’s documents. In the Salary mapping product mode the Documents tab is off, so you open a saved letter directly in the Letter Generator with “Open”. The button needs the same access as the letter list, plus permission to see salaries.