RealityIT: Employee Compensation vs. The Budget

Point, Counterpoint

I head down the hall to talk to Richard, who's perched behind his supersized desk in his supersized office. I understand that ACME's executive board has put a 3 percent cap on total salary increases for each department, I tell him. And granted, that's an improvement over last year's 2 percent raises. Still, I explain, this approach lands me squarely between a rock and a hard place. We have two exceptional IT staffers who, though dedicated, are bound to look elsewhere if we can't get them more than the status quo. Yet giving them each, say, a 6 percent raise wouldn't leave me with enough to dole out to my other worthy employees.

That's when Richard starts spouting figures from ACME's recent salary surveys, which--surprise--peg just about every IT staffer at the "appropriate or higher" salary. "Besides," he adds, toeing the ACME line, "some companies aren't giving out any raises this year."

He's right about that last part, of course, and in years past I might have acquiesced. This time, though, I've gathered supporting materials from my department managers and I'm prepared to plead my case. "All that's well and good," I say, "but we need to look at the bigger picture." Network engineer Eugene Wright upgraded our server backbone almost single-handedly, I inform him, and software developer Dave Fried worked night and day to create an online toolkit that's proved invaluable for our sales staff. We can't afford to lose that kind of talent to the competition.

What's more, I add, we've spent several thousand dollars on training for each of these guys, and if they walk, we'll have to spend thousands more to advertise, interview and train their replacements. Outsourcing their jobs isn't an option, either--that would really put us in the hole.Then I ask Richard to pull up a local IT job site, and I point him to an ad for a network engineer at a company that sounds suspiciously like our archrival, Amalgamated Media.

Transformation

That ad, it seems, did the trick--Richard suddenly morphed from enemy into ally. He picked up the phone and set up a meeting with our HR manager, Kathleen Van Peoples, to discuss "creative" ways to compensate Eugene and Dave.

Ultimately, we managed to get them each a 5 percent raise, and a bonus on completion of some special projects--the money, Richard consented, could come from salary dollars saved in open positions. He also agreed, at Kathleen's suggestion, to let us give Eugene a few extra days' vacation and cover the cost of Dave's attendance at a developer's conference. We discussed the possibility of promoting both Eugene and Dave when the company starts growing again, too.

Of course, I had to have Eugene and Dave's managers fill out a mountain of paperwork before the CEO would give his blessing. Meanwhile, I sent notes to both Kathleen and Richard thanking them for their support. And I prayed Richard's transformation would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.REALITY IT

Hunter Metatek is an enterprise IT director with 15 years' experience in network engineering and management. The events chronicled in this column are based in fact--only the names are fiction. Write to the author at [email protected].

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