Has anyone heard about funding pools? It seems weird that it’s January and we don’t even know if the bonus pools are going to be funded.
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There is always a chance that your boss's boss or boss's boss's boss will give part of your team's bonus pool to a different group they deem more valuable. So 100% funding doesn't necessarily mean your manager has access to your full bonus.
@yd (This is x2 previous comment poster). Well said! Yes the pool is the pool. Where you give 105%, someone else gets lower. You have to hope that the allocations make sense. 105% is appropriately awarded, and the 95% makes sense for the person who gets that. As an example.
@wt It's not new and bonus pool allocation isn't based precisely on what your individual merits warrant. It's possible for high Meaningful to be awarded less than 100% target even when the pool funds at 100%. Happened to my coworker last year. We have a small team so it was painfully obvious when we were discussing it amongst ourselves that my 102% award for Extraordinary was at her expense.
In theory, with the increase of arbitrary Needs Improvement ratings this year, the Meaningful crowd should pan out decently. But considering the ruthless nature of the current MC, your best bet is to lower your expectations.
@wt I would not say confirmed levels but meaningful is not a one sized fits all bucket. There are people who truly fall very close to extraordinary. They might be considered a high meaningful and yes, often warrant at the 100% range. Then there are those that by results met the goals, but may have had some big needs of growth in how they collaborate or their time management that affected team aspects. So they are meaningful but fall closer to a needs improvement. The point is meaningful rating has a range of %payout that is where the manager uses discretion. Extraordinary does too.
@wg are there 3 confirmed levels of meaningful? Is that new this year? Would you expect high meaningful to possibly get over 100% if funding was at 100%?
This will be interesting. Just a reminder, while funding may be 100%, if you were a meaningful rating your leader still holds discretion on a range of payout. I think it’s 80% up to 100%. So that low-meaningful to high-meaningful ‘ghost’ scale still exists.
I only mention this to keep expectations in check. Funding at 100% is fantastic. Far better than funding at 70% and then still getting less due to the meaningful performance scale.
Also keep in mind that the extraordinary scale was higher this year too.
Heard 100% today from our HR rep.
Amazing because of all the accounting tricks needed to squeeze out a good performance, I.e. pension reset, layoffs, cost cutting, etc.
@tr just curious why that's amazing? We had great quarterly results so isn't that expected?
I’m also in risk and am hearing 100+% for pool funding. Amazing if you think about it.
Comp portal opens next Monday
I saw today that bonuses this year aren’t being paid on a paycheck cycle. Looks to be a week after the normal last paycheck in Feb. Curious why they changed this one.
Merit and LTI still on same schedule.
@ev helpful, thanks. I'm in risk too.
@b4
No, I'm not in HR. My groups director told us that on a call with 75+ people. I don't think they had a reason to tell us that if it was not true.
To be ambiguous I am in "risk". The exact words were "it is expected to be funded around 100% and more likely slightly over than slightly under". I verified with various people on the call and that is exactly what was said.
Managers find out next week to make bonus recommendations
Word is cr-p
I've been working here forever and never find out AIP until late January at the earliest.
@b0 are you from HR? Just curious
~100%. More likely slightly over than slightly under.
@OP management usually gets notified in the middle of January what the numbers are for the payout