On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 1:11 PM, Jonathan Grotegut <[email protected]> wrote: > > I agree that 18 months is short, usually are there for longer than that 2-5 > years, > but when an employee is promised a raise, and either never gets it or it is > a very > small raise, just to placate the employee, it is a huge slap in the face to > the employee. > > I have also found that while is very expensive to hire replacements most > employers > feel that it is cheaper to hire someone new at a lower wage than it is to > keep someone > at a much higher wage. At least that is my perception. Maybe it is just a > performance > issue on the employee side but I have a hard time believing that so many > people I know > are that bad of workers. > > We get tired of asking for something that was promised to us and never > getting it > or just getting a "token raise" that really doesn't do anything except cost > us more in taxes. > I guess that is partly our fault as an employee for not telling our employer > our needs.
If employers treat their employees poorly then they deserve the turnover. :) Sometimes a position has a street price of $x. Maybe a help desk person wants the pay of a developer but he's not going to get it because a help desk position only pays $x. A developer brings more economic value to a company than a developer does (no offense to help desk people). However, I think in many cases the employer is unaware of what is going on in regards to an employee's unhappiness. Open communication that is clear (not rude or blunt) helps them know what is going on. I had employee A that was thinking of leaving because he was unhappy with his assigned tasks. He talked to employee B about it and employee B asked if I (the manager) was even aware he was unhappy. Employee A decided to talk to me again about it. It turned out he had mentioned it to me once awhile before in passing and I missed that he was really bugged by it. After the discussion, I changed his job description and assigned tasks and I was able to keep a valuable employee. He was happier. I think many managers just aren't aware. Employees talk to each other about these things all the time but not many are willing to include the manager in the discussion and they assume the manager knows. Often word through the grape vine is the only way to find out if somebody is unhappy. Many employees are reluctant to raise issues to managers or to have that potentially awkward conversation about jobs and pay but that really is the way to get results. > > Though I also know many people who have told an employer of their needs and > still > never see a raise, or very little of one. > > Do you find that employees are good at quantifying their raises when they as > for them? > > For me it is very difficult to say "I wrote x script that saved x number of > dollars" I, from a > "grunt worker" perspective, don't have any idea how much money I do or don't > save by > some of the automation things I do. > > I guess I could just say "I did this to save x number of hours a week of my > time, I get paid > x, so I guess I saved x amount of dollars a week by automating this process" > or is there > more, or less, to it than that? I'd be curious of other manager's opinions on what would influence them. Employees aren't usually good at quantifying their raises because they don't think about it before hand. They just come in and ask for one based on the how long since their last one or they come up with a bad reason. I remember one employee asking another manager for a raise because gas prices went up. The reasons need to be better than that. I think it is important to try to distinguish the increase in value versus you just doing your job. You don't want to the manager to say "well, that's what we hired you to do." I think a bit of pro-activeness in your day to day work makes the difference. Some things are easier to measure or generalize than others. Maybe you can't put an actual $ on it, but a list of things you have done to reduce dollars spent by the company OR avoid costs creates value. I'm just brainstorming here, maybe things like: - Job description change. You were a customer service person before and now you also have some supervisory responsibilities. You came on as a junior developer and have taken over senior developer responsibilities. You are a help desk person but picked up some of the website management tasks in addition to your help desk. In smaller companies it is easy and common for roles to morph after the job description and pay are set. This is the most common request for a pay change I've seen. - Cost Reductions: You learned X language or tool and the work that used to be outsourced is now handled in house. We used to spend X on Y and you proactively renegotiated lower rates with the vendor. We were spending X on Redhat advanced server and you had the idea to use CentOs and save money. Jane in sales support was spending 20 hours a week doing X and you spent half a day automating that for the department between your regular work tasks. Customer service had a problem with customer satisfaction that was easily solved by doing X so you did it. - Cost Avoidance (more intangible): Department was going to use Redhat advanced server for a new project and you suggested CentOs (avoided a cost). You are buying a new software package and you get the vendor to provide training free of charge. You negotiate a vendor's cost $x lower than their original quote. A vendor is going to raise the price of annual maintenance and you negotiate them to keep it at the same as last year. (I'm trying to think of a good cost avoidance example for a programmer......) - (your suggestion) I spent x% of my time each week doing Y that was part of my job description. Automating Y was above and beyond what I was expected to do (you brought more value). I have now automated Y and am using x% of my time doing Z which is has more value to the company than Y. - Joe left the company and they asked you to pick up his areas after learning new, more specialized skills. (This one has to be a true expansion of what you're doing not just a reduction in job force. You're doing something that brings more value to the employer and is a more skilled position than your job description.) Other ideas? Sometimes a company may not do a raise but they may do a bonus. -- Chris Wood -=-=-=-=-=-=- _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
