Pay rise Advise

[Michy78]

Hello,

I have been working for my company for the past 10 years, in total 14 years as I have been through 2 TUPE .

Throughout this long 10 years I have never received a pay rise beside the yearly bonus of 1- 1.5% and £500 increase 5 years ago due to an award I got nominated for by my colleagues who sent it to HR .

I have attempted to ask a pay rise few times in the past but i never been successful because my manager never liked me and tried her best to push me out strategically on so many occasions which affected by self confidence .

During Covid lockdown, i was the only one who worked in my department for 6 months straight as my colleagues did not get a laptop so i covered the whole department. Also for the past year ,

I have been working alone with no help when my colleague is on holiday and covered the job of 3 people for 6 weeks throughout the year We are short staffed but recruitment is frozen so there is no escape from this.

As i do not trust my manager and i wanted to write an email with various bullet points to justify the pay rise and cc her boss to make sure she will reply to me as very often she ignores my email .

The point is also If anyone will start working in my department now, they will be earning more than me with 14 years service which is even more disheartening.

I do like my jobs and i have a very good relationship with clients as well as giving me the freedom to have a life work balance.

I think it might be a good point to ask for the salary of my current role to be benchmarked. my role involves admin, customer service and business support so it a mixture or multiples role in one Any advise will be appreciate it

Thank you in advance

 

[Michy78]

I am not part of any union and i have a medical condition which set me back hence why i haven't changed job.

Will also appreciate not saying anything rather than be judgemental or sarcastic with your comments

Thank you

 

[Michy78]

I work as a customer Service / Admin in facilities Management for a Bank but I am contractor so it is all another story . We used to also cover the duties of a call centre but due to lack of staff , we are working only via email and dealing with in house system requests and luckily I am working remotely which I am very grateful for . The job title is not a specific one that i can easily search online but i believe I am underpaid about 10% less so i was wondering if I can try to go for the route of asking my salary to be benchmarked. and if copying my manager Boss will be professional as often she does not reply to my emails

I don't think the union will be able to help in my case and cannot use them straightaway

 

[Michy78]

A bonus isn't a pay rise a bonus is an individual payment do you mean that or do you mean you've been receiving a 1 - 1.5% pay rise each year and are referring to that as your "bonus"? You seem to have conflated things: "I have never received a pay rise beside [something that isn't ordinarily a pay rise so not sure why it's mentioned there]"

If you've not received *any* pay rise at all then that alone is pretty reasonable grounds for review, unless you were massively overpaid when recruited then inflation would have taken it's toll and like you said a new person might well be earning more than you, HR is supposed to keep an eye on this stuff for internal equity purposes and just doing your job should be sufficient to justify an increase.

If you have actually been receiving some token pay rises of 1-1.5% then there is still perhaps an issue with your pay being inflated away but also you may want to highlight the additional value you've added when asking for one, your years of experience in the role and how that is valuable to them, your work during Covid, any areas where you've gone above and beyond or have contributed value to them etc.

It might be worth doing the above in a meeting, send an e-mail to arrange one and perhaps in your follow-up, you could CC in your boss' boss too.

Ultimately though you perhaps should have addressed this way earlier either by pushing for a pay rise or promotion(s) years ago or simply leaving.

Thank you for your response . I am aware that a bonus is not a pay rise and it never even covered for the inflation . I have asked for pay rise in the past other times but i was denied although i had plenty of evidence of good performance and excellent customer feedbacks. Few years ago, I actually went to speak directly with my ex manager Boss because my manager was not helping but it did not bring any result . I am at the point now that with this inflation, i am just about surviving because 1.5% bonus will not help even to pay my basic needs although it is not a justification to ask a pay rise but have plenty of reasons to ask for it although my company wages are appalling

 

[Michy78]

No I am an permanent employee on a permanent basis and not recruited by an agency . The bank, which is our client ,employed my company to cover the facilities management aspect and other sectors within the bank like catering , AV etc.. i am not self employed at all

 

[Michy78]

Was gonna say, how does your salary compare to similar roles elsewhere OP?

My salary should be around 10% more but I am working remotely so there is no a straight forward comparison in the facilities Management sector as they are all on site . Also when contacted by other recruitment agencies , they were all really surprised about my low wage . I just hope I can fight my case although having a Manager against me ,makes things even more challenging hence why i want to involve the Senior Managers as I will never be able to trust her after so many attempts of bully me out and treating me differently than my other colleagues. Not trying to play the victim but i am just stating how tricky things are

 

[Michy78]

Long ago I had a face to face conversation with my manager during my last appraisal almost 5 years ago and I told her i knew she was trying to push me out strategically and also that her behaviour towards me has been noticed by other colleagues and another manager which is true .She obviously denied everything and she wanted the names of the people that noticed her bad behaviour but i never told her to protect them .I asked her not to force me to take action against her bullying and mistreating behaviour and I advised her although she does not like me , she has to respect me as an employee. I don't have a problem about her disliking me but I hate the fact she is abusing her power in the wrong way. I accept that We don't like everyone we work with but my point is we have to respect them and that goes for both of us . To be honest , I really don't want to go with this route because she has a family and at the end of the day ,I still have to work with her which will make things even more awkward

 

[Michy78]

So what? Just compare with the on-site figures then. It's pointless to quibble over stuff like that, get some figures and use them in your argument for a wage or use them to figure out how much you should be asking for if moving elsewhere.



Try to keep your wage to yourself then and give them a target range if asked.



edit - actually if there is a constructive dismissal thing then that might be the way to go though really an employment lawyer would be better in that case. HR exists mostly to protect the management/execs from employees, going to HR about this could just as easily backfire and speed up their trying to get rid of OP.

Thank you i will give ask to get a raise on 10% although i doubt i will get it but as they say.. if you don't try , you won't get. I always been asked by recruiters how much is my wage , it is one of the standard question they ask.

 

[Michy78]

I mentioned disability if you care to read my post... which was only one sentence long and which you've literally just quoted.

That he's disabled does not automatically mean that he's been discriminated against on the basis of his disability, nor is a protected characteristic an automatic reason to get a pay rise or to fall within a particular part of any pay range.

By the way I am a SHE and i am not disable . My chronic health condition is not obvious however this has nothing to do with my performance .

The main issue I have is that my direct manager does not support me at all and even in front of the evidence like in past , She has denied to rewards my performance to the point she was annoyed when i got nominated by the CEO of the company for an Award.

To be fair, if I didn't have this heath issue i would have left long ago but it has played a massive factor on my confidence though i never received back feedback on interviews for jobs I applied for .

 

[Michy78]

Hi All , I hope you all well.

I finally got a very short reply from my manager after waiting 10 days for her response and chasing her once. She said my salary has been reviewed yearly since i started ( she is referring to the 1%-1.5 bonus which is not a pay rise ) and confirmed i will be taking about 3% increase this year. Also she completely ignored my offer to have a meeting with her and the fact that I have asked a 10% salary increase to bring me closer to midpoint salary based on my position and experience. She disregarded completely all the positive feedback from the clients i have attached in the email and all the achievement and tasks i have stated in the email to justify my salary increase .

I now feel the need to copy her boss to try to negotiate the ridiculous 3% increase i should be getting in 2023. I want to mention that on average, I barely receive a 1 to 1.5 % bonus per year for the last 10 years and that it was not a pay rise but just a yearly bonus .

She is clearly using her emotions against me because she never liked me so she is pushing me out strategically so she will again win her bully and discrimination victory . I don't want to give up on my pay rise negotiation even if i started looking around.

Do you have any advice if i shall copy her boss in and how i shall try to negotiate a better pay rise review ?

 

[Michy78]

In general I'm not a fan of going over someone's head like that but it sounds like at this stage you don't have much to lose.

Why don't you just book a meeting with your manager if she's ignored your request?

More generally the problem with being significantly underpaid is even if they give you a decent pay rise you will still be underpaid. In the past I've been dissatisfied with a 7% rise and satisfied with a 1% rise, it is all relative to how much you are paid compared to the market rate for that role. There's just too much inelasticity around existing roles, you get paid £x and then you are kind of forever locked on £x +y% meaning you never reach target salary of £z unless you change jobs.Hello

Hello, In the pay review email i did ask to have a meeting review and she has made no reference . She basically said this what you will get, though luck .

She is using my early bonus to justify my salary has been reviewed 1% yearly but it has nothing to do with the pay rise and all the achievement i have made in my current role and positive feedbacks i have provided. She is simply abusing her power of decision
I am 100% certain that she did not ask her boss if they could squeeze more money in .Hence why i feel i got nothing to loose

 

[Michy78]

Also can I mention that compared to the current inflation the salary review at 3% is very disproportionate and that my salary bonus was on average just 1-1.5% per year?

I am aware that the pay rise should be only based by performance and achievement but would i be wrong to mention this if i try to negotiate and copy her boss?

 

[Michy78]

I don't think you understood my message, she doesn't need to reference the meeting for you to book one. Depending on how you worded it she might not even realise that you expect a 'reference' to it, she might be waiting for you to book one if you really want one. Usually that's how it works, person that wants the meeting books the meeting (although good managers would sense this and be proactive of course).

When you say "abusing her power of decision" do you even know for sure that she is the sole arbiter of this? Most places I've worked, managers just get given a baseline and then they would then potentially seek exceptions to that on a case-by-case basis. It could be her HR department / system has said "Michy gets 3% raise" and she's just relaying that on because she doesn't feel you warrant more than that (for whatever reason). I've had cases where I've wanted to give people in my team bigger rises and it has not always been possible because of the restrictions enforced at a higher level

Unfortunately it does not work quite like that , I am working remotely and a meeting or a Teams meetings need to be scheduled by her because she is overwhelmed with work and she has no life although she has a family and kids.
I know for sure that she didn't consult HR and this is her solely decision because She tried to fail me over so many years and tried to get me to resign by bullying me and picking on me for so long. She managed to get other employees under her to resign and used her sexuality to climb her career within a company by luring the big male bosses above her .She works very hard and she is a good slave to my company as she is not well retributed for what she does but she has no people skills and she manages many departments

HR and other departments like payroll are practically inexistent in my company as there is one person looking after 10000 people. I know employees they had grievances and HR never followed up for months

I just would like a professional advice on how to negotiate this 3%. It seems it is so passive that I have to swallow this pill just because .... she saying so ...I got nothing to lose , nothing.

Why do I have to change job because of her when in fact i like my job , the people i interact with and all i am asking is fairness in my salary ?

 

[Michy78]

And if you do and you've done it by going over her head I imagine the environment is going to get a lot more toxic.

In a perfect world I'd be all for saying go for it get what you deserve, but in the real world it's not always that easy or worth the stress. If she's a ingrained as you say to the business they probably don't want her going anywhere.

There is no perfect world anywhere and i wish her a successful career but still i want to fight my cause . I didn't copied her boss and i just approached her nicely but i feel I will have maybe a better chance asking for a negotiation by copying her reporting boss.

 

[Michy78]

Does anything give you any indication that her boss is likely to respond differently? Their view of you and your performance is almost certainly through the lens of what she presents them anyway, as this place sounds so big you'd not really be on their radar on a personal level.

I suspect they (your manager, their boss etc.) view your job as something easy to backfill and so see little value in entertaining any negotiations etc. with you - you'll either put up with what you've got as you've done for 14 years or you'll leave and they'll replace you.

Nothing i've read in this thread, without trying to be rude, makes you seem like an employee your business or the management staff value for retention, so go and demonstrate your worth somewhere else.

She has a new boss and it is a very recent change. the previous boss let her do whatever she wanted . With this one , she needs still to prove herself so i thought maybe .

Yes you are right ... for my company i am just a number and they do not value people at all . They won't replace me for sure, they will just overload more people with more work

I know it is time to go but as i said i wanted to try to get a little more while I am searching a job.

 

[Michy78]

Do it then, if you've hit a brick wall with her then go above her head and give it a shot* but I'd also recommend you start throwing out job applications elsewhere too as you might well find it's rejected.

Find some relevant datapoints which show objectively you're underpaid (you can do a bit of cherrypicking here) as that your pay is reviewed/marked to market as you haven't had a pay rise in years and throw in a mention of the current rate of inflation too, point out that currently, the small rise you've got is still a pay cut.

But do get your CV out there to other employers too, do this now and try to get some interviews lined up, don't wait until it is resolved as you want other options to be there quite quickly after doing this.

Thank you for the useful advise , I do appreciate it .This is exactly what i am doing , i just wanted an advise about mentioning the inflation as it is not performance related .In her reply she stated my starting salary compared to now to justify that my salary has been reviewed yearly .It almost sounds like she is insulting me strategically because on average i got 1.5% increase which it never compared with the inflation but this year is different because it went through the roof

I have already started to get the ball rolling in the job search for a while .. . Had already few phone calls and I am currently getting my CV professionally revised just to boost it a little bit more

Thank you again

 

[Michy78]

Yep.

Fighting your cause will also end up ******* her off, so you have to be prepared for that backlash.

I don't see your desire to stay, personally. You aren't paid market rate and your boss is a dick, yet you want to stay? Regardless of how comfortable the other parts of the job/people are, changing those things won't happen if you don't move.

If you go above your bosses head, and get the pay rise, your boss will be ******. If you go above her head and dont get it, you'll be seen as the one who goes above your bosses head and she'll still be ******.

Yet you're fighting leaving?

The really brutal truth is that you want something but aren't prepared to do what it takes to get it. Maybe you aren't worth that extra pay...

At this stage on my life , i do not care if i **** her off because what she did to me in so many years ... made feel suicidal many times ...

It is too easy to point finger on random people when you do not know the insights..... I am here to ask an advise how can I negotitate a payrise not be judged or insulted

Thank you

 

[Michy78]

This is a bit muddled, you said previously that was a bonus but now you're talking about it being a salary increase????

I sent an email to my manager to request a pay rise/salary review which i did not get since 2018 when i was nominated by my colleagues and won an award . My manager replied that I had a salary review every year but she is referring to the 1-1.5% bonus I received yearly which is based on the company performance rather than my performance , achievements and goals. So she using the bonus as a Salary review but they are 2 completely different things

 

[Michy78]

I think he's saying he got increases for inflation, but also got a bonus, which is what his boss is referring to in their exchange.

I think... it's not totally clear.

I only got a bonus once a year which is around 1%-1.5% per year ... basically peanuts

In 2018 I had a pay rise around 2% plus an early bonus 1%

 

[Michy78]

OK but you just said "increase" in the previous post. So when you say "bonus" do you mean a one-off payment or you mean your salary has increased by that amount?

one off payment -yearly bonus 1%-1.5%