The Bravest Thing You’ve Ever Done At Work
Although I’ve done many brave things at work, this was the most unforgettable because it not only hits an uncomfortable topic – but shows how a truly, integrity-based company responds when something is pointed out to them.
I was a manager of 12 developers and testers at the company; and had just received a glowing performance review rating. Since I was a manager, I understood how the raises were calculated based upon my review rating and current income.
My manager looked very pleased as he asked: “Well, how do you like your raise?”
“I like the raise very much. It’s the base salary that I’m not too happy with.”
His face fell. “What do you mean?”
“I think my base salary is lower than most people doing my level of work and at my performance level.”
My manager took a looked at my base salary and nodded to acknowledge that he heard what I was saying. “Okay. Let me look into this”.
“Thank you. I really appreciate it.”
The next time I met with my manager he said that I was right about my salary and described a plan to adjust it. He said that because of my query, the company did a department review of all the salaries and discovered that I wasn’t the only one not being compensated appropriately. Because the correction wasn’t just one person, the company did not have the available funds to correct those affected, all at once. But they were going to continually increase the salary of the affected employees with periodic raises every 4 months until they were compatible with the average pay scale for our industry and location.
I very much appreciated their response because it illustrated two things:
1) The fact that they didn’t want to loose a valuable employee because of a salary dispute.
2) Their integrity to not only correct my salary, but anyone else’s salary that was below the national range.
I was very impressed with the way my manager (who was 1 of the 4 founders and co-owner of the company) handled the conversation. But I suspect that if he wasn’t one of the co-owners, the story might have had a different ending.
Tell me your story.