Admit it! You didn’t see that one coming did you? Since you have at last finalized the salary equity program, and your salary scale has been minutely studied, “benchmarked” and revised with your financial advisors, you think that things will be peaceful for some time. But lo and behold, this morning one of your colleagues came to ask you for a salary review, basically: He wants a raise!
For the best way to react here is some essential advice:
1 – Don’t discuss anything on the spot! Set up a meeting to talk about it. “It is a subject which you hold too dear to discuss it matter of factly”. The act of giving value to this exchange will show your employee that you are attentive to and concerned by their request. It is the first essential step for what will follow. Give yourself at least a week before the meeting, four weeks at the most, after which you will give an impression of merely wanting to buy some time…even though…
2 – Get out the individual’s salary data, their last evaluation report and previous ones. Then get out their colleagues or team member’s salary information. Don’t forget that they will already have all this information since salaries are the first bit of information which colleagues exchange (especially between those under 35). It is imperative that you have an overall vision of the team to better situate the individual in terms of others. When was their last raise? What is their performance like? What were their objectives in the last year and what are those for the year to come?
3 – Get some information on the external market. Do some research on the internet, review the notes on the salary expectations of candidates recently interviewed and compare them to those of your employee. Contact recruitment firms with whom you do business and find out if the salary conditions you offer are sufficiently competitive and whether the profile of your employee is seen as an endangered species or not. If that is the case, your employee will most definitely have been “hunted” in the last few days and will therefore know their market value better than you. They are perhaps even half-way out already…
4 – Prepare your negotiation, because that is essentially what this is about. According to the information that you will have following your research, you can address the current status of the situation. If you are “within the market value” and even above the market average, you must pinpoint the motivation for the employee’s demands more precisely. If you are below, prepare yourself for readjusting BUT BEWARE! In this case, you must see to it the employee doesn’t have the impression that they have been left behind in the course of recent years. Nor do you want to give the impression that all they have to do is ask and they’ll get what you want…
5 – Plan this negotiation. You won’t resolve everything in one meeting and you will need to keep track once the file is closed. Make sure that the employee is satisfied or that they understand the reasons for which they did not attain all their demands. Stay on your guard because their colleagues could be waiting at the door…
Finally, ask yourself the question: “Deep down and in all objectivity, do they deserve this raise?”…Perhaps you already know the answer but you are ignoring it: “Nothing ventured nothing gained!” You’re partly right, but talent is so rare these days that it’s best not to tempt fate!