As Scott mentions, you may need to add the day value. Here is another way with paste
(assumes the 1st day of the month for all entries):
date <- as.character(c("14-Jan", "14-Jan", "14-Jan", "14-Jan", "14-Jan", "14-Jan"))
date1 <- as.Date(paste0(date, "-1"),format="%y-%b-%d")
head(date1)
#[1] "2014-01-01" "2014-01-01" "2014-01-01" "2014-01-01" "2014-01-01" "2014-01-01"
you could then go back to displaying a year-month format in the following way:
format(date1, format="%y-%b")
#[1] "14-Jan" "14-Jan" "14-Jan" "14-Jan" "14-Jan" "14-Jan"