This was tucked away in a Perfomrance Management email:
To optimize and reward employee performance, we are introducing a change in timing for our new, harmonized merit cycle. The new effective date for merit increases is January 1 and sets the new integrated annual cadence.
They're basically saying... Hey, we're postponing the merit increases for 2 months (as they usually occur on November 1st). That's 24,000 employees times 2 months of not having to pay (the already sh---y) merit increase. Calculate it, and that's almost 9 milion dollars saved over the backs of employees. But we call it something like "optimizing and rewarding employee performance" and "harmonizing the merit cycle". This is simply a method to reduce costs. Just call it that, shall we? Instead of all the bull-sh-t? Also.... They did this trick a few years back as well, when they moved the yearly merit increases from October to November. Do this often enough, and you can save a year worth of merit increases on all the employees. Very, very dirty trick.