Ask the Geezers

Salary Discussion at Workplace

Question: One of my employees came to me recently and said that she had learned the salary, focal rating and
salary increase of her peers. She said she was upset that one of her peers earns more than her,
but she has better job skills than her peer. How do I handle this situation?

Sin-Yaw: First, discussing confidential matters at Sun is not OK. When it becomes serious, people can get fired for this. Compensation, including your own, is considered confidential.
You should realize "pay for performance" is a managerial goal, but absolute equity is not possible. The "market" would [not] like tolerate the gap between performance and pay to be too wide. You should have faith that managers will have to remedy the inequity over time. In the mean time, keep your resume current and perform even better will always yield good results.

Amiram: The assumption is that everything is transparent. Always assume that everyone know everyone else's salary, bonus, rating and band (MTS1,MTS4, etc.). Therefore, if two people have the same degree, same years of experience, and are doing the same job with the same performance - indeed, they should earn the same. However, people are usually not exactly the same. There are differentiators. Some contribute more, have leadership skills that others don't have, etc. You should ask yourself the following questions:
1. Is it true that she has better job skills than the other one?
2. Does she indeed contribute more?
3. When you compare experience, education, performance, does she have a point?
Finally, if she is correct on all counts, then the manager should make an adjustment either in the next cycle or out of cycle. The manager should also explain the discrepancy to the employee. However, if this isn't the case, and it is only a matter of perception (usually is), then the manager has to explain to the employee that the circumstances are different and they justify the differentiation. However, the manager should use the opportunity to have a goal setting conversation in which he or she will explain to the employee what he needs to do in order to advance.

To recap the main point: people are different and so are their salary. Managerial mistakes do happen and have to be mended.

Mike: The conversation might start as "I am sorry I can't talk to you about other people. But I can talk to you about yourself.". But in reality, people do share information. Managers need to accept the fact and be able to deal with it.

People need to realize that two people doing the same job don't usually have the exact same salary. What IS true is "Someone doing more WILL get paid more over time." Ask the question "what more can you do in order to get more pay in the future?".

This is a good chance for performance coaching. You can go through with her what she has done, including her deliverables, her job skills, review the definitions for her level as defined in the job leveling tool.

Last, never start the conversation by saying "I can't talk to you about this.". The employee will hear nothing else and goes away with an impression that the manager refuses to communicate.

Posted at 11:18AM Dec 12, 2006 by Wen Michelle Lei in General  |  Comments[2]

Opening Annoucement

We are announcing the launch of a blog on management skills at blogs.sun.com contributed from ERI.
http://blogs.sun.com/askgeezers/

The blog 'Ask the Geezers' will host management Q&As on any topics that is related to our day-to-day life as manager. We want it to be a place for sharing, learning and the best of it having fun.

Who is behind the blog?
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Geezers: Mike, Amiram, Sin-Yaw.
Editors: Melanie & Michelle
Participants: ERI Managers

The editors are responsible for collecting questions, getting answers from the 'geezers', editing the answers and posting them to the web.

How to ask questions?
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We invite questions from you. You can send questions to the editor alias eri_editors@Sun.COM. We will edit the questions so that they won't betray team/individual identities and post the questions as from anonymous. Of course, you can also ask to keep your identity. You can do that by noting this out in your email or just posting questions to the blog as comments.

The bottom line is ...... no bottom line. There is nothing we can not ask and there is nothing the geezers can not answer, almost.

We already started with a couple of questions. And we look forward to hearing more from you.
Enjoy reading & Bring on the questions!

cheers,

'Ask the Geezers' editors

Posted at 12:00AM Dec 11, 2006 by Wen Michelle Lei in General  |  Comments[0]