Why an annual review misses most of the change
Growth is not evenly distributed through a year. A business may add fifteen people in one quarter and none in the other three, which means an annual review catches the change at an arbitrary point somewhere between three and twelve months after it happened. In the meantime the amenities are servicing more people on the same frequency and the standard is drifting for reasons nobody has connected to headcount.
Triggers fix the timing problem. A stated threshold, such as a twenty per cent increase in staff or the occupation of a previously unused area, generates a review when the condition is met. The advantage is not administrative tidiness. It is that the conversation happens while the cause is obvious, rather than after months of gradual decline that gets attributed to performance.
