Navigating the perilous salary waters is always a challenging thing. The person being hired wants to get paid as much as possible. The hiring company wants to pay as little as possible. It’s a tug of war that’s certainly challenging. Unfortunately, we’d all probably be better if we could all just meet in the middle.
If you take too much money as an employee, it will lead to harm later when your colleagues and bosses start asking “why are we paying them so much money?” Living up to a huge salary can be a damaging thing for the company and for the employee. On the other hand, if an employer pays someone too little it can be just as damaging. If you pay someone too little, then they feel like the boss is taking advantage of them. While this might work out in the short term, it’s a really bad long term strategy for a company.
There’s a great article on LinkedIn titled “7 Things Employees Never Tell Their Bosses About Their Pay, But Should.” Here are the 7 things:
1. “Take advantage of us at your own peril.”
2. “We think about our pay all the time.”
3. “We don’t care about pay scales.”
4. “Make us negotiate and we all lose.”
5. “Forget your policies. We talk.”
6. “No matter how much you pay us, it’s not enough.”
7. “Even so, reasonable pay is okay.”
The whole article is well worth a read if you’re a boss that has to deal with pay. The last couple are really important. You can never pay someone enough and we always want to get paid more. However, there is a space where the pay is reasonable enough that it doesn’t cause job dissatisfaction. Combine that with a really great work environment, and inspiring job, etc and you’ve found the sweet spot.
