Yep currently got that.
HR: You may only put up one person for promotion per year
Me: But I have 5 people in the team. Its unfair.
HR: Sorry. Only one.
At least it's being up for promotions, not having to finger one for remediation/termination. The binning scheme where every team needs a super star and a low performer (a la Jack Welch) is atrocious and the smaller the unit it's applied to, the more likely that the curve fits.
I've seen (in Banks) this applied like a religion and it leads to situation where the "low performing" member of Team A would be solidly in the middle of the pack of Team B, if not the "high-performing" member of that team.
If you're exceedingly lucky in that kind of environment, there's enlightened management running interference and manually balancing team to avoid having to can a good person because their team is overall good.
I worked in healthcare briefly and saw a lot of the same. We'd have a handful of people assigned to new teams and magically 3-6 months later half of them would be part of a round of layoffs. It got to the point where anyone who got reassigned during non-obvious times (excluding a business unit failing or a small acquisition or something) almost immediately started looking for another job and they usually quit within a month anyway.
I've seen (in Banks) this applied like a religion and it leads to situation where the "low performing" member of Team A would be solidly in the middle of the pack of Team B, if not the "high-performing" member of that team.
If you're exceedingly lucky in that kind of environment, there's enlightened management running interference and manually balancing team to avoid having to can a good person because their team is overall good.