To be fair, the company's goal is to pay enough to attract and retain the right talent, not to keep up with inflation. e.g. if everyone else in the market is giving 0%, why would they give 6%?

Also, I assume employees would be pretty upset (I would be) if they got -2% if there is deflation happening, so seems a bit of a double standard there.

Long way of saying I think tying increase to inflation is kinda silly.