If an employee is undergoing performance management when they are due a pay-affecting increment date, the increment must be deferred until their performance management is complete.
The line manager should follow the below process to ensure that this is recorded correctly in the Electronic Staff Record (ESR):
- A Pay Progression Meeting should be arranged with the employee on performance management ahead of their increment date. The outcome of this meeting should be recorded for audit as ‘No’ in ESR and the employee should be advised that their increment is being deferred until the end of their performance management.
- A further Pay Progression Meeting should be arranged at the end of the employee’s performance management. The outcome of this meeting should be recorded for audit as ‘Yes’ in ESR.
- An Employee Change Form (ECF) should then be submitted to the HR Shared Services’ (HRSS) ESR team via the Document Transfer Service (DTS) which confirms the increment should now be applied.
- The effective date on the change form must be the date that the performance management concluded.
- The ‘Additional Details’ field on the form must also clearly state the reason for increment deferral as performance management.
- HRSS’s ESR team will then review the change form and apply the increment in ESR from the stated effective date. If there are any problems with the form, it will be rejected and the ESR team will contact the line manager to provide the reason for rejection.
Note: An employee’s increment date will not be adjusted by the length of time the employee was on the performance plan.
E.g., The employee’s original increment date was 01 Feb 2026, but they are on a performance management plan until 01 Jun 2026. Their overdue increment will be applied from 01 Jun 2026 when their performance management ended, but their next increment date will remain scheduled for 01 Feb 2027.
Payroll will be able to see the reason why the increment date has changed.
Exceptions
If an employee is seconded into the role they are being performance managed on, there will be no impact to the progression of the increment date for their substantive post.
Employees who have been redeployed will also not be impacted by this process.
