And an additional problem, especially at larger & lower margin companies, is that managers have an extremely limited bonus pool and probably also don't have permission to issue annual merit increases. This results in shuffling bonus money around in ways that make no logical sense. For example, I'd need a couple additional hands worth of fingers to count the times I've passed over someone for a bonus because they had received a promotion or a significant salary increase in the past few months. Is that fair? Absolutely not. But the alternative was that another solid employee would get neither a salary bump or a bonus, which was worse.

Ultimately, I found the best policy while working under these conditions was to be blunt & open with all my staff over how I planned to handle salary increases, promotions & bonuses, so at least I could assuage their fears that it was n't consistent in addition to not being fair.

Big corporations usually suck at talent management and compensation.