"Using budgets or factors besides the employee's impact as an explanation for an employee's rewards will erode trust and confidence within your team," the guide cautions. "Reinforce that every year offers unique opportunity for impact, and we increase our high expectations, regardless of our budget." This just puts managers in a worse spot and actually erodes trust more by making them lie. I guarantee there are people in Microsoft who have had massive positive impact who won't be getting raises and their managers aren't going to be able to explain why without lying.