Meta is overhauling how it grades workers and rewarding top performers with up to 300% of their base bonuses, according to internal screenshots of a memo sent to employees on Monday that Business Insider obtained.
The social media giant is rolling out a new performance program called Checkpoint, which reshapes ratings into four buckets, according to the memo. It will start in “mid-year 2026,” aiming to make performance reviews less bureaucratic and more focused on outcomes.
“The new scale reflects what we know to be true: most people at Meta are high performers who consistently deliver meaningful impact,” the memo said.
In particular, Meta said its new system will incentivize the strongest performers with higher bonuses.
Here’s how the memo outlines the new distribution and pay multipliers for base bonuses.
Outstanding (~20%): 200% individual multiplier, for “outsized impact” above expectationsExcellent (~70%): 115% individual multiplier, described as the “high-performance culture baseline”Needs improvement (~7%): 50% individual multiplier, for employees with performance gaps who are expected to improveNot Meeting Expectations (~3%): 0% individual multiplier, for those who “do not meet” Meta’s standards
Additionally, Meta says it’s introducing a new Meta Award, a 300% individual multiplier for a small number of top performers who deliver “truly exceptional impact.”
“We’re evolving our performance program to simplify it and placing greater emphasis on rewarding outstanding performance,” a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider. “While our employees have always been held to a high-performance, impact-based culture, this new direction allows for more frequent feedback and recognition in a more efficient way.”
The memo says most employees will fall into “Excellent” because “most people at Meta are high-performers who consistently deliver meaningful impact.”
The company plans to host a companywide meeting on January 22 to walk employees through the changes and answer questions. The new updates apply to the 2026 performance year and do not affect the current cycle.
Meta’s new review system aims to save time
Meta pitched the redesign as a time-saver. Managers, the memo says, spend about 80 hours a year on performance-related tasks, while employees collectively spend 330,000 hours per cycle on peer feedback. Yet fewer than 25% of managers say that feedback is helpful, the memo adds.
Under Checkpoint, Meta will transition to two cycles a year — mid-year and year-end — using the same rating scale in both cycles, with bonuses paid out twice annually. Meta will still deliver equity refresher grants once a year, though they will be based on the average of two performance ratings rather than a single annual rating. Merit increases will happen once a year following the second cycle.
Checkpoint rolled out after Zuckerberg framed 2025 as an “intense” year and said Meta would tighten performance management, including cutting about 5% of low performers. In interviews, Meta employees and managers described the result as a tougher, more competitive environment where ratings mattered more than before.
Meta simplifies its review system
The new system also streamlines Meta’s previous rating system.
Earlier, employees navigated different sets of labels depending on the time of year, including three mid-year buckets (such as “Exceeds Expectations” and “Below Expectations”), and a more granular year-end ladder that ranged from “Redefines Expectations” to “Does Not Meet Expectations.”
Meta’s latest revamp comes as the company has been tightening performance management in recent years. Meta plans to assess performance by AI-driven impact starting this year, Business Insider previously reported.
Last year, it expanded the number of employees managers are expected to place in the lowest bucket. Meta instructed managers of large teams to rank 15% to 20% of employees as “below expectations,” up from 12% to 15% the previous year, after the company had earlier that year cut nearly 4,000 employees it had labeled as low performers, Business Insider reported last May.
Other tech giants, such as Google and Amazon, also revised their performance review systems and pay structures to incentivize top performers. As part of this year’s performance review process, Amazon will ask corporate employees to submit three to five “accomplishments” that best reflect their work, Business Insider reported.
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