Welcome to Comp Cycles with Aeqium! In this guide, we will walk you through all the steps required to complete your comp cycle successfully. We will show you how to configure your cycle, provide reviewers with all the data they need to make informed decisions, submit reviews, and export your cycle’s results. If you’re having trouble with any of the steps described below, please visit our Aeqium Help Center or reach out to us at [email protected]!
Compensation cycles are typically a planning process that takes place once or twice a year in which employees’ compensations are reviewed and updated. Compensation changes can happen for many reasons: budget constraints, market adjustments, inflation, performance, promotions, role changes, etc. During compensation cycles, managers evaluate and submit adjustments for their direct reports, and higher-level managers can accept, edit, or send reviews back to managers for adjustments.
Aeqium provides a centralized place to collaborate on compensation planning. Instead of your decisions getting lost in spreadsheets, instant messages, and emails, you will be able to work in a single platform that provides you with the data you need to get to the best outcomes for your team.
Administrators (you) are responsible for creating and configuring a compensation cycle, overseeing the review process, finalizing reviews, and exporting results to update third-party applications (e.g. payroll, HRIS, equity). Later sections of this document cover each of these steps in detail.
Reviewers are responsible for filling in review fields that have been configured by administrators. Once all review fields have been filled in, reviewers submit their reviews, at which point their work is complete (unless reviews are later returned to them for modifications). When a compensation cycle is created, Aeqium automatically assigns employee reviews to direct managers. Administrators can reassign reviews to anyone in their organization.
Detailed compensation cycle guidance for reviewers can be found here: Comp Cycles Reviewer Guide
Reviewers of reviewers are reviewing at least one person who is also a reviewer. This means they have indirect reviews - reviews they are ultimately responsible for, that are not directly assigned to them.
In the “Cycle Monitor” comp cycle tab, which only admins and Reviewers of Reviewers can see, we can tell that Anna Lee is a “Reviewer of Reviewers”, because they review at least one person, in this case Ashley Martinez, who is also a reviewer.
All indirect reviews can be edited by a Reviewer of Reviewers. When submitting reviews, they submit both direct and indirect reviews. When a lower-level reviewer submits their reviews, the RoR will be notified and can send reviews back to their report for modifications. This will email the reviewer to let them know that their reviews have been sent back and require modification.
Reviewers of Reviewers can also submit reviews without any lower-level reviewer having submitted, at which point the lower-level reviewer’s work is considered complete. However, they should only do so if they do not wish the reviewers beneath them to provide input.
Before delving into the exact process for creating a comp cycle later in this guide, we first want to give you a picture of what a comp cycle with look like to your reviewers.