A
Failure to Pay a Reasonable Wage
First things first, I’m not
proposing a change to minimum wage, that's a different argument for a another day. I have a different concern in mind: Paying
people what they’re worth.
You see, I’ve noticed a sadly common
and depressing trend of employers who honestly seem to believe they are doing
themselves a favor—or at the very least opperating under "normal" and "healthy" practices—by underpaying genuinely good employees. From what I’ve
been able to gather is that these companies believe, on a whole, that it works in their favor
to pay someone say, $12 an hour when they are doing the work and have the responsibility
of someone deserving of twice that wage.
Let's get one thing straight, I don’t believe everyone earns that
higher wage. Many people call it in, so to speak. But there is a breed of
worker who will try and strive and do their best regardless… until they can no
longer bend. Suddenly they break, and they move on. These workers ought to be
paid twice what they make and truly replacing them often seems to cost triple
or quadruple a company's original labor cost, be it through base wage or lost production
during an inevitable training and learning curve phase. And yet companies seem
oblivious to the value of these individuals. Why?
Seriously, why? WHY?
Come on, people! You’re killing me! ...And your businesses!
To me, the value is obvious. An
employee who’s been with the company for five year has more value than an
equally hard-working and intelligent worker who’s brand new to the company. The vested
employee has learned dozens or hundreds of little side jobs and tricks to
streamline work, has become more productive across a variety of necessary areas
and has knacks, knowledge, and all the functional skills to utilize their
individual strengths. What is that knowledge worth? Obviously, that depends on
the company and industry… but from the jobs I’m talking about, the people I’m envisioning,
they average out to a 5-10% pay increase over the brand new employee which they
have to train.
Even assuming a menial labor job, a
so called “no skill” position, the amount of output by such an employee is at
least 25-50% more than the average new employee over the first year in the job.
Even the best intentioned, hardest worker can only learn so much so fast. They
can only produce so much as they adjust to the various learning curves. And yet, from what I’ve seen in our “burgeoning”
modern economy the truly hard-working, intelligent, diligent, and dedicated worker gets
their 5-10% raise over a worker they are doing, let’s be honest, probably
50-75% more work than (that’s not counting how well they are doing said work or
the value of their positive, competent face they’ve attached to the company).
Many of these great workers,
dedicated to their own education and improving their value through measureable
means, choose to move on to bigger and better companies. Ok, fine. Logical. Who
wouldn’t, given the opportunity? What gets me is that any company would EVER
let these people move on for a reason such as reasonable compensation beyond
what their company is capable of offering/sustaining.
Let’s get this straight. People that
feel the need to move on and upward are usually doing so because the company
they work for simply isn’t valuing them properly (or simply no longer possesses
the upward mobility of challenge and progression as well as financial
compensation).
And yet the trend of companies
undervaluing truly good employees—at least from my personal observation—has
become the norm. Common place. Expected.
Depressing.
We live in a rough economy. "These
people ought to feel glad they even have a job!" says the manager/ceo/owner, as
they drive off in a car that could pay the competent worker for a year or two,
while they themselves are often completely reliant on these underpaid workers to get the results they are paid for.
Look, I’m not saying pay a lazy kid
doing a mindless job fifteen dollars an hour. I’m saying pay that 25/30/40 year old that’s
in school or recently graduated, who's tried even when it’s hard! These are good people who want to work to earn their living. ------They deserve more!------
Why are so many companies blind to
this?
Seriously... You people are hurting yourselves. You’re
hurting your bottle line. You are limiting yourselves. Oh, and you're screwing over your employees, hampering them in their personal lives.
These employees you are driving away
are the ones who will go on to new jobs with new companies and take them into
the upper echelon (something which you’re incredibly unlikely to even sniff, if
you’ve got this asinine practice).
Let’s put this in perspective, you
up and coming, poorly compensating companies… McDonald’s pays an average wage
roughly two to three dollars above minimum wage to its entry-level workers.
They offer tuition reimbursement programs… and they are thriving. Believe it or
not, they are capable of turning away poorly performing workers and getting rid
of sub-par performers because they pay even high school kids just starting off
decently.
Walmart, despite the massive
negative publicity against it, pays its entry-level employees—aka anyone inside
the story which isn’t management—an average of over $12 an hour. Walmart does pretty well for itself, and,
surprise, surprise, their good workers stay around, get raises, get promoted
and, ta freaking da, receive equitable compensation! (Yes, I get it there are a LOT more factors involved, but I'm not talking about those...at the moment...)
But why would you follow the lead of
companies which have been wildly successful? Because you’ve heard the cries of
the lazy and entitled about how they
deserve to be paid better as well? Because you have a hard time imagining the
drastic effect of paying your $12 an hour worker the $25 an hour they deserve?
I promise, after the cost of
turnover and training, the loss of little bits of and knowledge, among other
qualities, you’re getting a steal for these employees you’re underpaying until
they run off to a company which treats them well.
I could go on. Sit me down in person
and I gladly will. But I don’t want to bore you.
Just do yourself—and your employees—a
favor and pay people what they’re worth. And yes, sometimes that means a raise
of $5 instead of your standard 25 cents every six months or year.
Do it. Seriously. Give them a raise. Call it a selfish act, because you'll be reaping as much a reward as your previously under-paid employee.
