Getting a raise from your place of work is certainly one of the most motivating and pleasing parts of being an employee. If you are running a business and in the position of giving out pay increases, you need to ensure that you are getting the timing right. There are plenty of factors that can have an impact here, but you certainly need to make sure that you are doing it the right way. Here are a few points to bear in mind when deciding when to offer pay rises. Continue reading to learn more.
Consider Moving Away from Annual Raises
While annual raises can often be useful in terms of ensuring that you are keeping on track with pay rises, it can also mean that you are standardizing everything to the point that it all gets to be too easy. This means that staff members may work hard knowing that they have a pay review session coming up, only to drop their levels back down low again in the weeks and months straight after. While it’s still important to keep pay rises going, employees must see them as rewards at key times.
Look at What You Can Afford
While you may well be tempted to give plenty of pay rises, it’s also important to peg it based on what your company can afford. Otherwise, you could well find that you are bound for financial difficulty in the near future. At the same time, it is important to have a clear sense of transparency here, as you don’t want to find yourself in a situation where your profits are revealed and staff members are left wondering why you didn’t channel some of the cash towards them. Ensuring that you have fully functioning payroll software can have a useful impact here.
Make Sure Everyone Is Included
Beyond everything else, it is certainly worth making sure that everyone feels included in pay rise discussions. Your more introverted members of staff are the ones that are less likely to be upfront and ask for raises. Therefore, you need to make a special effort to ensure that they are also included in discussions. Ultimately, this is why you must keep solid records, as a way of making sure that no one is left out when they should not be. This will help to keep employee morale high.
Think About a Bonus Scheme
If you are thinking about making pay rises less frequent, a company bonus scheme can end up being highly worthwhile, as it means that everyone can benefit, but you also don’t have to worry about the high costs that are involved in paying out regularly.
Deciding on when to give a raise is an important part of running a business, and it can also have a big impact on everything from staff happiness levels to how well you can retain talent now and in the future. For this reason, it is important to take it seriously.
