The need to negotiate salaries isnât a new challenge. In fact, I remember in my first tech role in the early 2000s, plucking up the courage to be forthright with my line manager, to say that if I couldnât get my salary up to ÂŁ20,000 after several yearsâ increasing seniority within the company, then I was going to have to look elsewhere.
While itâs true that, as you climb the career ladder, youâre less likely to find yourself in the position of âI need a wage increase to pay the billsâ, everybodyâs feeling the pinch at the moment. Skyrocketing inflation, an energy price crisis, and post-Brexit/COVID shortages mean that unless youâre a high-level executive, your day-to-day way of life is being significantly impacted by changes which are outside of your control.
Yet we work on regardless, and with a recession and The Great Resignation being at the front of everyoneâs minds, if anything weâre working harder to pick up the slack when companies canât afford to hire or backfill. Increasing your workload with no commensurate change to your pay packet is just as bad as failing to secure a salary increase; possibly worse, as by sapping your energy further, it also robs you of one other commodity - free time. Itâs no wonder that âquiet quittingâ has become such a talking point.
If you want it, go for it
This was one of our hot topics on an episode of Tech Team Weekly earlier this year, embedded below (and slightly more expletive-laden than normal):
At the time, the Governor of the Bank of England had spoken out against workers asking for pay rises in-line with rising costs, warning that it could spark a spiralling increase in inflation. (Iâll leave it up to you to decide whether you believe bankers to be the best moral compass when it comes to saying what people should earn.) Yet repeated increases to the UKâs energy price cap, so significant that theyâve resulted in a shift in government policy, canât go ignored.
Historically, there are some places in the world where itâs not culturally the âdone thingâ to ask for more. The Brits certainly fall into that category, but itâs compounded among other demographics too: for instance, women are generally less likely to ask for a pay rise, ostensibly due to a history of being snubbed when asking for them.
To an extent, the advice is âdonât ask, donât getâ. If your company has a process for requesting or reviewing your salary, then pursue it, especially if your accomplishments show you to be a valued, indispensable member of the team. Donât forget that this can be judged not just on the scale of your achievements, but also the volume of them: thereâve been at least 3 or 4 occasions when Iâve left a company and theyâve hired multiple people to fill the role(s) that I was doing. What does that say about where my salary should have been at before? (Itâs a breath of fresh air at my current company, Makers, where Iâve seen hiring taking place specifically to help with relieving the workload of existing staff members.)
The worst that you can happen is that you learn where you stand - and you can judge whether you might rather pursue alternative options elsewhere. Itâs a sad fact of life that the easiest way to get a salary increase is by changing companies; just like mobile phone providers, the best deals are often only for ânew customersâ. This often comes to the fore when organisations are hiring, and their current employees observe the salaries that are being offered to new starters who are doing the same job as them. If, as an organisation, youâre not also prepared to realign your existing teamâs salaries to match these rates, donât be surprised if they accept better offers in the near future.
Isnât there a better way?
Iâm not the Governor of the Bank of England (yet), nor am I the person holding the purse-strings for a companyâs salary budget. But it doesnât take a financial genius to notice that wage crises have a larger impact on our organisations than simply the bottom-line:
- When somebody leaves, even if youâre fortunate enough to afford to backfill their role, you canât quickly replace the knowledge and experiences of that leaver.
- Disruption to productivity - not just from a person quitting, but in going through the process of screening, interviewing, recruiting and on-boarding - can leave its mark on a team for many months.
- With candidates being in high demand, often juggling multiple job offers, you may have to pay more to secure somebodyâs replacement - often ending up paying more than the original person was asking for in the first place! (And thatâs even before you take recruiter fees into account.)
- When one person leaves, often others will follow, meaning that these financial challenges are often compounded.
It feels like, realistically, itâs in companiesâ best interests to do better than theyâre doing now. Particularly in difficult economic times, there should be an expectation - ideally in employee contracts - that salaries should automatically include cost-of-living increases in-line with inflation. Otherwise, if you only give a small number of increases to a subset of your workforce, youâre asking everybody else to swallow a net decrease in their earnings. If this seems like it wonât scale, at least consider whether one-off discretionary payments (for instance, aligned with increases in the energy price cap) could help to offset peoplesâ concerns over whether they can even afford to not look for another job.
Key takeaways đ
- Failing to give inflationary pay rises shows you are devaluing your team.
- All we can do as individuals is ask the question, with supporting evidence.
- Meeting reasonable pay demands is cheaper than replacing an unhappy ex-employee.