Promotion & Performance Review – Overview

Purpose & Governance

This page provides a single, authoritative overview of Calab.ai’s Promotion and Annual Performance Review policy.

It is owned and maintained by the HR Management Practice and exists to ensure:

• Transparency and consistency
• Clear decision authority
• Repeatable execution year-to-year
• Alignment across functional practices

Authoritative Artefact
All promotion decisions are based on the relevant Promotion & Performance Evaluation Workbook for the target level. This overview defines the process and governance; detailed requirements live in the level-specific workbooks.

Scope & Audience

This overview applies to:

• All staff applying for promotion or annual performance reviews
• Career Coaches
• Guild and Practice Management Leaders
• Executive Committee members involved in promotion decisions

It intentionally avoids role-specific requirements, which are defined and owned by the relevant Guild Leaders and Management Practice Leaders.

Promotion Process

The promotion process is candidate-initiated and evidence-based.

For the full process, see Career Workbook Progression Process.

Key Rules

• Promotion applications may be submitted once every 3 months
• Outcomes may include approval or a development plan
• A development outcome is a valid and expected result

Decision Authority & Accountability

Promotion Decisions

Final decision authority sits with the Executive Committee.

Inputs are provided by:

• Career Coach
• Relevant Functional Practice Manager(s)

flowchart LR
    CC[Career Coach] --> EC[Executive Committee]
    PM[Practice Manager] --> EC

The Executive Committee ensures consistency across practices and levels.

Functional Practice Involvement Model

Promotion and performance evaluation is coordinated centrally, while requirements are owned by functional practices.

flowchart TD
    Role[Role / Level]
    Primary[Primary Functional Practice]
    Shared[Shared Practices]
    KM[Knowledge Management Practice]

    Role --> Primary
    Role --> Shared
    Shared --> KM

How this works:

• Each role maps to a primary Guild that owns the core competency criteria for that role
• Other Guilds contribute cross-guild criteria defining expectations from their domain perspective
• Criteria are defined in distributed files within each Guild’s Roles/ directory and governed by the respective Guild
• The Evaluation Workbooks aggregate all applicable criteria using the criteria-list rendering plugin, providing a unified view for scoring
• Detailed criteria are defined in the level-specific Promotion & Performance Evaluation Workbooks

Annual Performance Review (Related but Separate)

Promotion and Performance Review are related but independent processes.

• Performance reviews occur annually
• Performance is reviewed in February and effective in March
• Performance outcomes inform promotion readiness
• Strong performance does not automatically result in promotion

gantt
    title Promotion & Performance Review Cadence
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM
    axisFormat  %b

    section Performance Reviews
	    Ongoing Tracking        :2025-09, 2026-03
	    Target Setting          :2025-09, 6M
	    Self Assessment         :2025-11, 3M
	    Manager Review          :2026-02, 1M
	    Leadership Review       :2026-02, 1M
	    Effective Renumeration  :2026-03, 1M

Promotion applications may occur independently of the annual cycle, subject to eligibility rules.

Supporting Documentation

Supporting artefacts include:

• Promotion & Performance Evaluation Workbooks (per level)
• Career pathway documentation

Level-specific requirements are intentionally maintained outside this overview to allow practices to evolve independently while preserving a consistent promotion process.