By Ken Vincent, Featured Contributor
Now before you jump up and say, “No, of course not” let me ask you what you base that on.
We all tend to have an elevated idea of our worth. Some call it ego. But step back if you can and study the situation from a detached view point. What are the strengths you bring to the table, what value are you adding the the business. Are those strengths and values commonly available in the market place and if so at what price. If you were the employer would you pay more for you?
Let me put it to you another way. You are hired to turn around a troubled business. You spend a year doing so. Revenue and profits are up. Your 80 hour work week is now 50-60 hours and you even have time for a leisurely lunch a couple of times each week. Customer complaints are rare.
Now, do you go to your boss and say that your job is now much easier and you feel you are now overpaid for what you are required to do? Not likely. Does your employer come to you and say that he knows you were underpaid the first year so he is leaving your pay alone to make up for it rather than cutting the pay? Equally unlikely.
Look at it from another point. You have 6 employhttp://www.nagpurpulse.com/files/imagecache/node-gallery-display/images/sal_0.jpgees that do the same job. Two are exceptionally good, a couple or okay, and the other two are still struggling. Do you pay them all the same hourly rate? Why? Are you overpaying some and underpaying others? If I ask the six if they are underpaid it is a good bet they will all say yes.
Pay scales are largely set by market conditions. So it is highly likely that your rate of pay is pretty common for what you do and what you bring to the table. Of course union contracts establish rates of pay for given jobs. Though I’ve never seen a union contract that prohibited giving an employee a raise for exceptional service. Even so, it isn’t often done. Why?
Have you ever told anyone on your staff that you know they are underpaid? Well, I did that once. I called my corporate staff together and told them that I knew they were all underpaid. I told them they could each make more money working somewhere else. I further assured them that any of them that were working for me just for the money should go elsewhere and that I would give them a glowing recommendation. No one left. They knew they were underpaid, they knew that I knew it, yet they stayed.
My point here is that your being underpaid is a relative term. It is relative to how you see your worth, how your employer sees it, and how the marketplace values it.
Personally, I was one of those odd ducks. I often felt I was overpaid for doing something that was so much fun. I should have paid my employer for letting me work there. Fortunately, I couldn’t afford to do that so I never offered.
So, are you underpaid, or are you having so much fun that you owe your employer a rebate?
