How to divvy up raises

[Anonymous]

I have been given a pot of money to provide raises for this year. The pot is 3% of the salaries of all the people in my unit.

I have the discretion to divvy it up any way I'd like so I'd like to give more to some ppl and less to others. Everyone knows I was given this pot of money so they are assuming they are getting 3% even thought it's been articulated that I have discretion.

I'm not sure it's worth the headache and potential bad ill will and am leaning on just giving everyone the 3%. WWYD?

[Anonymous]

If there is no clear criteria for how raises might be divided up (i.e., employee evaluation rating, productivity numbers, etc), or if there IS criteria and it was not communicated in advance -

DO NOT give more to some/less to others. That is the best way to engender ill will and destroy morale. Without clear indicators of how this decision is made, and communication of these indicators in advance, this could easily be interpreted as favoritism. Those receiving less would possibly be at a loss as to why they received less, and wonder why dissatisfaction with their performance wasn't communicated earlier.

[Anonymous]

Are there superstars who deserve more and slackers who (despite previous conversations initiated by you about their poor performance) need to realize they aren't cutting it? If so, then you need to do the hard work of being a true manager/leader and compensating people based on performance.

If everyone is pretty much the same, give 3% to all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If there is no clear criteria for how raises might be divided up (i.e., employee evaluation rating, productivity numbers, etc), or if there IS criteria and it was not communicated in advance -

DO NOT give more to some/less to others. That is the best way to engender ill will and destroy morale. Without clear indicators of how this decision is made, and communication of these indicators in advance, this could easily be interpreted as favoritism. Those receiving less would possibly be at a loss as to why they received less, and wonder why dissatisfaction with their performance wasn't communicated earlier.

Agree. Our company gives each manager enough for 3% raises for everyone but it is to be divvied out based on our end of year evals which are required to average out to a 3 on a 1-5 scale. If you get a 4 or a 5, you are likely to get more than 3% (but 4 and 5 are rare) and if you get 1 or 2, you are likely to get less than 3% but you will also likely already be on a PIP of some kind. Raises come after the end of year assessments and are directly driven by them. If they weren't, people would get nasty about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there is no clear criteria for how raises might be divided up (i.e., employee evaluation rating, productivity numbers, etc), or if there IS criteria and it was not communicated in advance -

DO NOT give more to some/less to others. That is the best way to engender ill will and destroy morale. Without clear indicators of how this decision is made, and communication of these indicators in advance, this could easily be interpreted as favoritism. Those receiving less would possibly be at a loss as to why they received less, and wonder why dissatisfaction with their performance wasn't communicated earlier.

Agree. Our company gives each manager enough for 3% raises for everyone but it is to be divvied out based on our end of year evals which are required to average out to a 3 on a 1-5 scale. If you get a 4 or a 5, you are likely to get more than 3% (but 4 and 5 are rare) and if you get 1 or 2, you are likely to get less than 3% but you will also likely already be on a PIP of some kind. Raises come after the end of year assessments and are directly driven by them. If they weren't, people would get nasty about it.

Same where I work. What is the motivation to work hard if everyone is getting the same increase?

[Anonymous]

I am a solid worker. Supervisor has never expressed any dissatisfaction with my work. But, she has a direct report that she adores and in order to give him a large increase, she had to take away from someone, and that someone was me. I am still peeved about this and have started looking.

In my review, she actually couldn't think of anything negative to say except I missed some deadlines (that were ok'd by her) because I lost 2 people on my team and I had to cover for them until she hired someone new, which took several months. And..that a project I did was off base and I had to point out to her, during my review that the project n question was not even mine! Despite this, she refused to update the review and I just noted everything in my comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there is no clear criteria for how raises might be divided up (i.e., employee evaluation rating, productivity numbers, etc), or if there IS criteria and it was not communicated in advance -

DO NOT give more to some/less to others. That is the best way to engender ill will and destroy morale. Without clear indicators of how this decision is made, and communication of these indicators in advance, this could easily be interpreted as favoritism. Those receiving less would possibly be at a loss as to why they received less, and wonder why dissatisfaction with their performance wasn't communicated earlier.

Agree. Our company gives each manager enough for 3% raises for everyone but it is to be divvied out based on our end of year evals which are required to average out to a 3 on a 1-5 scale. If you get a 4 or a 5, you are likely to get more than 3% (but 4 and 5 are rare) and if you get 1 or 2, you are likely to get less than 3% but you will also likely already be on a PIP of some kind. Raises come after the end of year assessments and are directly driven by them. If they weren't, people would get nasty about it.

Same where I work. What is the motivation to work hard if everyone is getting the same increase?

+1. Give the good workers 2.5% or 2% and the fabulous workers 4% or more. We get our raises based on our evaluations on a scale of 1-5 too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there is no clear criteria for how raises might be divided up (i.e., employee evaluation rating, productivity numbers, etc), or if there IS criteria and it was not communicated in advance -

DO NOT give more to some/less to others. That is the best way to engender ill will and destroy morale. Without clear indicators of how this decision is made, and communication of these indicators in advance, this could easily be interpreted as favoritism. Those receiving less would possibly be at a loss as to why they received less, and wonder why dissatisfaction with their performance wasn't communicated earlier.

Agree. Our company gives each manager enough for 3% raises for everyone but it is to be divvied out based on our end of year evals which are required to average out to a 3 on a 1-5 scale. If you get a 4 or a 5, you are likely to get more than 3% (but 4 and 5 are rare) and if you get 1 or 2, you are likely to get less than 3% but you will also likely already be on a PIP of some kind. Raises come after the end of year assessments and are directly driven by them. If they weren't, people would get nasty about it.

Really? My PA was a 3, with a lot of junk written into it by supervisor. So I got 1.5%
I know think this is a slap in the face, perhaps they are trying to hint that I should leave

I feel so stupid for staying and not leaving sooner

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have been given a pot of money to provide raises for this year. The pot is 3% of the salaries of all the people in my unit.

I have the discretion to divvy it up any way I'd like so I'd like to give more to some ppl and less to others. Everyone knows I was given this pot of money so they are assuming they are getting 3% even thought it's been articulated that I have discretion.

I'm not sure it's worth the headache and potential bad ill will and am leaning on just giving everyone the 3%. WWYD?

Uh oh. My manager has a 3% pot and is about to make raise decisions. I hope this isn't him posting

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If there is no clear criteria for how raises might be divided up (i.e., employee evaluation rating, productivity numbers, etc), or if there IS criteria and it was not communicated in advance -

DO NOT give more to some/less to others. That is the best way to engender ill will and destroy morale. Without clear indicators of how this decision is made, and communication of these indicators in advance, this could easily be interpreted as favoritism. Those receiving less would possibly be at a loss as to why they received less, and wonder why dissatisfaction with their performance wasn't communicated earlier.

Agree. Our company gives each manager enough for 3% raises for everyone but it is to be divvied out based on our end of year evals which are required to average out to a 3 on a 1-5 scale. If you get a 4 or a 5, you are likely to get more than 3% (but 4 and 5 are rare) and if you get 1 or 2, you are likely to get less than 3% but you will also likely already be on a PIP of some kind. Raises come after the end of year assessments and are directly driven by them. If they weren't, people would get nasty about it.

Same where I work. What is the motivation to work hard if everyone is getting the same increase?

Sounds like communism.

[Anonymous]

My old boss would always divy it up equal. She said bad feelings weren't worth a relatively small amount of money. She's right!

Now, I work for the government, and it's more structured. They look at the ratings of agency employees as a whole, calculate how much someone would get for an outstanding, successful, etc.

Both ways seem fair. The problem is when you have a small group of employees and the boss takes away from one to give to another. Recipe for disaster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My old boss would always divy it up equal. She said bad feelings weren't worth a relatively small amount of money. She's right!

Now, I work for the government, and it's more structured. They look at the ratings of agency employees as a whole, calculate how much someone would get for an outstanding, successful, etc.

Both ways seem fair. The problem is when you have a small group of employees and the boss takes away from one to give to another. Recipe for disaster.

+1 Unless there are clearly communicated metrics (metrics that can be somewhat objective), then it is a recipe for disaster.

If you don't divvy it up equally, you have to something concrete to justify giving some people more (i.e, Johnny took on two extra projects in addition to his normal duties).

[Anonymous]

^^^ I should add that those metrics should be communicated in advance.

It's unfair to suddenly institute a system after the fact (i.e., people are used to COL increases being given out equally and then suddenly they're not and management says, "it's because we're basing it on X,Y,Z now.)

The best thing to do is to divvy it up evenly now, and then communicate that going forward, this is the set of metrics upon which you will be evaluated next year and upon which your increase will be based.

If an employee doesn't know until the evaluation that they are evaluated on X,Y,Z, then they'll feel tricked. And they won't feel any kind of assurance that going forward, the standards won't be changed again suddenly at the last minute.

Good management clearly communicates what they expect and what they use to evaluate performance in advance of that evaluation. Good management also gives everyone the opportunity to work toward that.

That last part is important. If your performance is based on how many widgets you produce, but your manager frequently takes you off of widget production to do other tasks (and doesn't count those tasks in your evaluation), then in essence management is setting you up for lower scores and setting the others not taken off of widget production for higher scores and higher pay.

[Anonymous]

You realize 3% across the board isn't equal right

Senior 150k vs Mid 100k vs Junior 50k

You have 9k out of 300k to dole out here

Are you saying give 3k to each or 3% to each big difference

[Anonymous]

I had 2.5% to divvy up. Some got as low as .5%. Others got closer to 3. (different market rates). No way I was giving the person I felt slacked this year the same as the person that put in 100% consistently all year.