Merit cycles are an important moment for your company. It’s your opportunity to review and reward employees for their contributions over the past 6 or 12 months. But from updating your bands to enabling managers to communicate the results to employees, there’s a lot to do. And outdated tools and workflows aren’t going to set you up for success.

Based on conversations with hundreds of companies, we’ve assembled best practices from People Leaders to ensure that your cycle goes off without a hitch.