When did you last ask for a pay rise?

It appears that 50% of UK workers have never asked for a pay rise.

54% of working adults feel that they are not paid enough and half of these know other companies in their industry pay  more – but that doesn’t mean they will necessarily be asking for a pay rise.

It seems that we Brits are uncomfortable talking about money. Some people they don’t ask because they don’t want to appear ungrateful and others say they don’t want to spoil the relationship they have with their boss.

About 1 in 5 say they would be worried about losing their job if they asked for more and another 1 in 5 said they were too nervous to ask.

Even though 1 in 3 knew their colleagues were paid more for doing the same job only 1 in 3 of this group felt confident enough to ask for more money.

The data comes from a survey by Slater & Gordon, an employment law company, which asked 2,000 working Brits about how fairly they thought their employers treated them.

Not very fairly overall it would seem!

The newly appointed  “wellbeing Czar“, Lord O’Donnell, said that saying “thank you” and giving staff more autonomy could make them happier than giving them a pay rise.

Which is probably true but it doesn’t pay the rent for employees who have suffered from static pay since the start of the recession in 2008.

And it’s not only employees in the UK. One in six Germans is at risk of poverty because they earn so little. And this in the powerhouse of the EU. Although unemployment is among the lowest in the EU the economy is run by part-time workers in “Mini jobs” created by the previous chancellor.

About 13 million Germans earn less than €12,000, 60% of the national average. The chairman of Germany’s Welfare Equality Association blames the “Americanisation” of jobs i.e. low-paid and often temporary.

In the UK the voluntary “living wage” has just been increased to £7.85 an hour (£9.15 in London). This is the amount considered necessary to meet basic living costs and is supported by about 1,000 employers.

Even so about a quarter of the working population still earn less than the living wage and organisations like the IoD and the FSB aren’t particularly positive about the idea of helping people earn a decent income.

NB The current statutory minimum wage is £6.50 an hour for adults.

 

Saying Thank You Makes Good Business Sense

Robert A Eckert was Chairman and CEO of Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, from 2000 to 2011 and stayed on as Chairman through 2012.

When he retired he was asked to write a piece for the HBR reflecting on his career and chose to use it as an opportunity to publicly thank everyone who made his work fun.

He’d spent 23 years at Kraft Foods before he joined Mattel, which at the time was losing almost a million dollars a day.

He’d started at the bottom in Kraft and worked his way round and up the organisation supported by 15 different bosses who taught and mentored him. Like most people he did work for a bad boss as well but he just learned from everything.

He believes that people went to work aiming to do a good job and that what they wanted most (after sex and money) was recognition and praise.

At Mattel they had a Rave Reviews programme which allows employees to thank each other with a gift certificate for coffee or a soft drink and for senior managers who excelled they gave out a Chairman’s award at public meetings.

Mattel was named one of the best companies to work for in Fortune magazine 6 years running.

Eckert is a great believer in recognising people’s efforts and saying thank you.He also says his colleagues can vouch for his toughness and doesn’t want to be thought of as soft touch. Given what he achieved at Mattel you can believe that.

In the HBR article he gives these tips:

• Set aside time every week to acknowledge people’s good work
• Handwrite thank-you notes whenever you can. The personal touch matters in the digital age.
• Punish in private; praise in public. Make the public praise timely and specific.
• Remember to cc people’s supervisors. “Don’t tell me; tell my boss”
• Foster a culture of gratitude. It’s a game changer for sustainably better performance

Source: “The two most important words” HBR April 2013