Pay Raises and Salary Increases

People who ask for a pay raise are usually too focused on getting a bigger paycheck.  There are a lot of ways that you can earn a raise.  It doesn’t necessarily have to come in the form of cash.  Open your mind a little and come up with some creative ways that you could drastically improve your career without having to necessarily increase your base salary.

I was talking with an acquaintance a couple months back.  The guy works as a purchasing agent for a fortune 500 company.  He has been a loyal employee of this company for about eight years.  His line of work isn’t something that companies would have a hard time finding applicants for.  These types of jobs are common and don’t necessarily require an advanced education.

This man was telling me how he had just made some changes in his work environment.  The whole time he was telling this story, he had a giant grin on his face.  He normally spends just over an hour commuting to work every day.  He lives a long ways from the office and traffic is pretty heavy.

Recently, he was speaking with his superiors about the environment he works in and how it could be improved.  His management team agreed to set him up with an office at home.  They sent their IT guys out to his house and installed a company computer and company telephone with remote access into the company’s main computer system.

Now for two days every week, instead of spending more than two hours on the road driving back and forth to the office, he is working from home in his home office.  He can perform 99% of his job right from home.  There is no need for him to make that trip every day.

You can bet that if this scenario works out, he will probably be able to increase the number of days he works from home to three or four.  That is what I call a major benefits upgrade.  Wouldn’t you?

Not all pay raises have to come in the form of more cash.  Remember this guy’s story when you think about how to ask for a salary raise at work.  Maybe there is an alternative idea or two that would be the equivalent of getting an increase in pay without making the company write you a larger check every week.  This guy is now saving money on gas as well as wear and tear on his vehicles.  That is the same as if the company paid him that much extra every week.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

I was talking with a man the other day when I was on a job.  This guy had been working with the company for about 18 years.  You could tell that the guy was genuine.  He wasn’t a beat around the bush kind of guy.  He just told it like it was.  You could tell this guy was pretty successful.  I got to see his home.  He lives in pretty large home in the suburbs tucked away a little bit from the hustle and bustle.

He lives in a pretty big split level home much bigger than the average split level.  He has an attached four car garage with an apartment sized space above the garage.  There was a huge fifth wheel camper parked out in his asphalt driveway.  You could tell this guy had sunk some coin into that home and was proud of it. 

He was telling me about how successful all of his sons were.  He was proud that one of them owned a restaurant.  Another was a male nurse.  We got to talking about his family history and even his work history.

He told me that he liked working for his company and that he was the kind of guy that his boss could depend on.  He said that he never really took a lot of time off of work.  His boss calls him from time to time and needs someone who can go represent the company on out of town business functions.  He gets asked to go out of state for a couple days to attend a trade show or something of that sort.

He told me that he has never once turned down his boss when he was asked to go to one of these trade shows.  Not once.  Apparently there have been a couple of times when he was notified of the show only one day ahead of time.  Wow.  Most people would throw a giant shit fit, but not this guy.

This guy looked at me and said “Listen, I make big money for the boss and he knows it.  I am really dependable.  He knows that whenever he needs me, I’ll come through for him.”  I thought to myself, “No wonder this guy is making great money.  Look at his attitude.”  People like this are extremely rare.  I knew immediately that this guy was super tight with his boss.  There is no way his boss would ever let him leave the company.

Low and behold, the man told me that he would be retiring in a couple years.  His boss has already talked with him about the subject.  The boss has agreed to let him reduce the number of days he works each week to three.  That’s right.  The guy is only working three days a week now.  To top that off, he is still getting his regular paycheck. What the?  This guy doesn’t have to ask for a raise.  He gets rewarded in paid time off because he is so valuable.

This guy has been so dependable over the years that his boss will bend over backwards and give him anything he wants to keep him working there.  That is how valuable he is in his boss’ eyes.  This is one happy man.  It’s no wonder his sons are successful also.  Look at the example this guy set for them.

If you work for a decent sized company you will get enough variety among the employees to get to meet and see all different types of people and their habits.  You probably experience what happens in a lot of companies across America.  A typical company policy prohibits too many people from one department taking the same days off for vacation or personal time.  This causes a bit of a scramble among workers to position for time off around holidays and certain weekends.

The funny thing about this big scramble to get time off before certain weekends or holidays makes me giggle a little bit.  For starters, if people in your company are trying to get those days off, what do you think people in other companies are doing?  Some of those other companies are probably your customers, unless you work in consumer retail.  If everyone is trying to get off that should tell you that work is going to be slow on those days.

Everybody and her brother is going to be thinking about what their plans are for the upcoming holiday.  They aren’t going to be focused on work.  They’re only going to get done the things that absolutely need to get done.  The end result is you get a workday with a light work load.  You coast through the day easily when compared to a normal Friday. 

For certain holidays, many companies contribute to the lazy light work load atmosphere.  Lots of times they will have lunch brought into the office.  Sometimes employees will bring a dish to pass and take an extra long lunch break.  These are the days when you want to be at work.

What if you could be known around the office as the person who is always willing to work the days surrounding a holiday?  Don’t you think the boss will hold a high regard for that type of behavior?  How many times does the owner of the company or your boss take off right before a holiday?  If the company is well run, he probably does it very rarely.  That should tell you something.

If you are one of those people who must always have the day off before Memorial Day weekend or the Fourth of July or Labor Day, you’re behavior will get noticed.  That behavior could get you labeled as a person who isn’t concerned about their job and is only there to collect a paycheck.  You might very well have that attitude.  I bet you do.  Just remember, that attitude isn’t going to help you ask for a pay raise or more benefits and perks.  It certainly isn’t going to help the company earn any more money than they would if any other drone was plugged into your position.  Remember that when times get tough and you are worried about losing your job.

Back when I was an employee working for somebody else, one of the guys I worked with was a big thinker.  He was always thinking about things that we should be doing to make the company better and improve our customer service.

 He told me about this idea that he had for the company that could really be a financial winner.  He was convinced that this idea would add a new source of revenue that would dwarf what we were currently doing in business.  He was convinced that his idea would be so successful that the company would have to hire another couple production guys to be able to handle the extra work.

 The guy explained his idea to me on the ride home from work one day.  I agreed with him.  This was a great idea.  This was one of those things that makes you stand out in your industry.  It makes you stand out in your company as well.

 What is the catch?

 He couldn’t muster up the courage to have a meeting with the boss to discuss his views.  He didn’t want to talk to his immediate boss about it because he was afraid that his boss would try to take credit for his idea when it was explained to the company president.  If you knew the boss in this instance, you would agree.  I told him that he would be better off going straight to the president with his information.  He thought about it but never actually said anything.

 I left that company for another position a short while after that.  About five years went by before I ran into this friend of mine again.  When I asked him about it, he informed me that the company was not doing so well.  There were some layoffs and business was really suffering.  I inquired about the president’s response to his proposal.  He informed me that he never actually made the proposal.  He was too afraid.

 I can’t help but wonder where that company may have ended up had it not been for his shyness.   I wonder if business would have been different.  I wonder if anyone would have lost their jobs.  I wonder if this employee may have gotten a promotion out of it.  The idea was that good.  We’ll never know though.  Don’t put yourself in this position.  Never be afraid to make a suggestion that can improve your company.  If your immediate boss steals your idea, your coworkers will know about it.  His true nature and yours will be revealed eventually.

I thought I should share this story to enlighten some of you who may be doing this where you work.  This is a story about a girl named Virginia.  You probably know someone like her.

Virginia is not a bad person.  She just doesn’t handle stress very well.  She is quick to blame other people for any problem that arises.  She has a big heart but she just doesn’t realize how her actions change everyone’s perception about her.

One day in 2008 I was visiting a client of mine.  Ironically, Virginia worked in human resources for this client.  She had only been working there for a matter of three or four months.  I got along well with her.  She liked to chit chat whenever I was there to do some work at the office.

I guess maybe she confided in me a little too much for my own good.  She began this habit of telling me things in confidence whenever I was around the office doing some work.  The things she would tell me were always work related.  basically she was complaining about how things were being run there.  She was unhappy with her workload.  She felt that management was abusing her skills and experience and didn’t really care about her personally.

I told her that the management (who I happened to know pretty well) did in fact care about her work as well as her as a person.  She was insistent that they of course had no idea how to run a company.   I guess the four million dollars they did in business each year and the many people that happily worked there weren’t proof enough for her that they did know what they were doing.

Being the diplomat that I am, I just listened to her when she would complain and I kind of played along nodding my head saying “Yeah, I guess I kind of see your point”.  I was basically just trying to keep everyone happy so that I wouldn’t jeopardize my contract with her organization.  Her complaining began to grow and grow.  Every time I would have work to do at that company, she would be there whining about this or that.

It basically got to a point where if an outsider had seen us, it would look like we were both complaining about something to do with her company.  I knew this was a bad road to go down.  It was no longer wise of me to allow this to continue.  I was forced to ask her to please keep her thoughts about her employers to herself.  I reminded her that her boss is the one who made sure my company got paid for the services we provided.  

That pretty much ended her complaining to me.  However, I started noticing that whenever she wasn’t around, her coworkers would make jokes about her complaining.  Now, I don’t think she was a bad person.  She cared for her coworkers.  Yet, because of her incessant whining, she painted herself as this bitchy office girl who was just always going to be miserable no matter what.

It didn’t take long before everyone in that organization knew exactly where she stood.  Everybody from the part time help right up to the CEO learned through the grapevine about how this girl was creating all this negativity in the organization.  Successful people know that negativity is like a cancer in the worklplace.

As you may have guessed, her days there were numbered.  Don’t be like Virginia.  Save your complaining for when you are home.  When you are at work, just do your damn job and otherwise keep your mouth shut.  She lost a really nice paying position with a lot of prestige and power that went along with it just because she couldn’t stop whining at the office. 

Don’t be like Virginia.  Instead of putting yourself in a position where you could be asking your boss for a pay raise, you’ll be asking some other company if they will please hire you.