Ask the Geezers : Weblog

Thursday Feb 15, 2007

A Quest for "Equal" Treatment

Question My group is statistically under-paid and under-resourced. The average pay is much below that of other groups. We never received budget or head-counts like other groups. How do I remedy that?

Amiram : It is most difficult to compare teams. In most organizations, it is very unlikely to even get the comparative data, unless you are a senior manager who manages multiple teams. Obviously, the data is unavailable to me. Is it possible that your team is younger or more junior? That they do a type of work which is generally paid less than the other teams? I suggest to talk to HR about it. To remedy the situation you need for someone to agree that there is a statistically significant difference in pay between your team and a corresponding teams of the same type. Once this is established, budget should be allocated.

Sin-Yaw : Comparison is poison.

Higher management does not allocate resources based on equity. They do it mostly based on the expected return -- the amount of future productivity compared to the amount of current resources. There are exceptions to this rule, but it is the most common style.

Comparison pits one group against the other. It is unhealthy. Making such a statement is a serious career limiting move (CLM). I recommend you focus on getting the most out of your existing resources, instead of being jealous of others. You just look childish.

Mike : The question is where you get the data that says your average pay is below that of other groups?

If HR's data does support your statement that with comparable experience and skills, your group is indeed
under-paid, the question is how you can create a data-driven argument that says here is what
our group's pay is and what the other group's pay is. Then you can escalate to management and HR and convince them that something needs to be done.

How quickly the problem can be fixed really depends. A problem won't be fixed over night. Everyone at Sun
just has to learn to be flexible and do more with less. That's the way we are.

Posted at 05:20PM Feb 15, 2007 by Wen Michelle Lei in General | Comments[3]

Comments:

What an extremely disappointing blog. Equality is a important value by its own right in most of Europe, and sweeping substantive inequality under the rug here would be calamitous and end up in public disgrace.

Posted by Mikael Gueck on February 15, 2007 at 07:15 PM HKT #

Indeed, not to mention the fact it's basically illegal (in Europe) for a company to pay different amounts to different people for doing the same job.

Posted by 194.125.119.166 on February 15, 2007 at 08:37 PM HKT #

Ask managers what they need to do better job, and most of them will reply "more resources". Why do managers always have a "resource" problem? Instead of asking for more resources, think about how much you are adding to the topline. If you contribute $10m, you can take home $5m and leave 50% profit contribution to the company. If you think you can add another $10m to the topline by spending $2m, you have a strong case of getting $2m. Company willingly spends on "growth". Now, if you are working on a support role, meaning your job is to help somebody to contribute to topline... or worse, your job is two or more degrees from contributing to the topline, then you are a "cost" to the company, and no company wants to spend on "cost". Are you stuck in a support job? Move to a contributing job. There is no equality between supporter and contributor.

Posted by money squander on February 21, 2007 at 10:25 AM HKT #