A pay rise request can be tricky to handle, and both personal and organisational issues have to be considered in the deliberation process. It can be emotional as well. In this post, we’ll discuss the steps you can take to manage this and incorporate the practice into your payroll management system.
1. Listen
Effective listening in this regard isn’t just about the numbers – you need to listen to the reasons. For example, has an employee gained new qualifications? If they have, a pay rise is a reasonable request. As such, you might want to introduce a protocol in your payroll system to accommodate changes in employees’ professional or qualification status.
2. Do they tick the boxes?
While the reasons they’ve shared may be valid, it is still imperative to weigh up the requests against a set of criteria. Doing so will ensure consistency in your evaluation process as well as avoiding emotional reasons playing too big a role in the decision. An effective payroll management system should incorporate a set of criteria to evaluate pay rise requests. It has to be objective to enable ease of interpretation by all parties.
3. Check industry standards
Neither over or under-paying employees compared to the industry benchmarks is a good thing. While organisations tend to adhere to it when employees are first hired, it may be overlooked when a salary rise is being considered. Sharing with employees the industry benchmark will ensure a more objective discussion pertaining to their salary requests, and it can be used to support the organisation’s offer or vice-versa. Periodic monitoring of industry salary benchmarks helps to keep your salary scale updated.
4. One-on-one communication
It is important that communication is done one-on-one or better still face-to-face. This demonstrates to employees their requests are being given serious consideration. Do not keep it to a “Yes” or “No” encounter. Explaining their new salary structure as well as reasons for accepting or rejecting their request goes a long way towards building trust.
If well-handled, negotiating pay rise requests can lead to effective payroll management. To learn more, connect with us here.
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