Submitted by vong_assassin t3_zm19yn in LifeProTips
As per the title, I'm being given a fairly large responsibility added to my job description, but there's been no real talk about pay increase. I'm in a management/non-union role. How should I go about asking my Director/HR for the pay raise?
Not really. I was voluntold for the responsibility. Haven't necessarily "accepted" it. Not sure what my rights are in this case.
Thanks for the research tip!
Your rights here are hazy. On the one hand, are you OK taking on the new responsibility without a pay increase? If not I would:
Get your resume together and look for new work
Do not go to HR on this. HR is NEVER your friend and only exists to protect the company. Work with your supervisor, and if your supervisor won't go to bat for your pay increase, see #1.
I'm ok with the increase workload, but want to make sure I'm treated fairly.
I would ask the director what your increase in pay will be for taking on this new responsibility. If they don’t give you a raise ask if they can increase your vacation days or allow you to work from home or something else they can give you that isn’t a raise but will benefit you.
If it’s going to be a lot of extra work for you without extra pay or benefits, feel free to say no. Just say something like, “Thanks for thinking of me, but the extra responsibility will add a lot onto my plate and without an increase in remuneration, I don’t feel it’s the best fit for me.”
Hmmm, they wouldn't be able to use that against me then?
They could, for sure. But it’s up to you whether you want to just take on extra work with no increase in money or benefits. They could give this duty to someone else, or hire someone else to do it. Or just tell you that it’s mandatory that you do it.
They might not want to pay you any more money, but even a day or two of extra vacation is a win for you and likely easier for your supervisor or whoever to get approved.
If you don’t say anything you could end up in a scenario where you’re getting more and more work added to your plate because you’re a “great team player”. But what’s the cost of all that extra work on you? Longer hours? Working on weekends? Unpaid overtime? More stress? Burnout?
You can make the argument not to rock the boat, but you also don’t want to be the doormat everyone walks all over because they never stand up for themselves.
Very good points. Thank you very much for them!
I'm going to mull over a strategy based on what everyone has said 😁
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Your in management which, imo, means your signing up to do the job that needs to get done. If the company is changing/growing and there are new responsibilities, it falls on management. Now as a manager maybe you need to make the determination to hire someone else because of how much extra work it is. But yea changing responsibilities or adding responsibilities doesn't seam like something you can fight back against.
I'm a junior manager, so I'd have to speak with my Director to get us new staff. But our organization is fairly small and our department is even smaller. So that would be a huge ask.
That's the issue with small companies. You have 40 hours of work for one employee but now one day you grow and you have 50 hours of work that needs to be completed. Do you hire a new guy and give them each 25 hours or have that one guy do 50 hours? Neither option is great. At a large company, you have 10 employees doing 400 hours of work. You now get 420, ok everyone now works 42 hour weeks and no big deal. Once you hit 440 hours of work, you get a new employee and everyone is back to 40 hour weeks.
All we as employees can expect from a small company is they recognize your additional work and treat you accordinly and importantly, hire when it becomes completely unreasonable workload for one person. Sucks, but it's the nature of small companies and hopefully the benefits of a small workplace outweigh this downside
The interesting thing about my job is that I will have lulls or avalanches in work. Most of my tasks involve liaising with external stakeholders, and on the side managing staff.
The thing about the new task is that there is no telling how much in a given year it will take of my time; it's responding to external complaints to a larger organizational process, so we could either get loads of complaints, or not at all. It's all dependent on various factors.
Which makes it ever-more hard to justify asking for compensation now given it may not involve a lot of work in the end.
*you’re
woojo1984 t1_j08f0yo wrote
Do your research and find comps via payscale or other means. Don't just go in saying you want a raise without any evidence.
Wait, did you accept this new responsibility already?? If so that sucks because you've lost a lot of leverage.