Asking for a bigger raise as a team rather than individually

[MissChief]

While I don’t want to seem ungrateful as I know many people are out of work or have not received any raise at all I can’t help but feel aggrieved at the 1.5% we’ve been awarded across the team with no individual efforts taken into account or any consultation or opportunity to show why I think I and we deserve more.

Without going in to too much detail we lost two permanent, long term staff members to redundancy in October who’d been at the company for a combined 40 years so the company is making an immediate saving of at least £45k a year, although of course I don’t expect this saving to simply be given to us, but the workload increased when they were laid off and has only gotten worse. We were promised there would be an increase in automation to take up a lot of the repetitive actions we take but this hasn’t happened or is still in development and not been rolled out yet. Our workload has been increasing week on week for months now with us accepting more orders than we’ve been completing pretty much every week since the beginning of the year.

We experienced a lull in orders when the first Covid lockdown happened a year ago but as we were classed as essential workers we did continue to work from home where efficiency and productivity has either been on par with working in the office or even improved in some areas.

All our figures are above target including ARPU and Churn for our specific product and we have different grades of product and we’ve planned for 50% of orders to be the more lucrative higher tier but this is currently running at 85% of orders coming in. Our team was moved from London to my town around two years ago (I suspect for cost reasons with the London weighting meaning they pay extra down there) and there has been a huge improvement in feedback from our Partners who actually deal with the end users and several team members have been called out by name for great service on Partner feedback meetings.

We have also often worked after finish time to clear tickets to save them needing done the next day and when anyone is on holiday we really struggle to clear the work on a daily basis. This isn’t hours and hours, usually five or ten minutes here and there. This has only gotten worse since the two staff members were made redundant in October. This will likely stop if they’re unwilling to share in the companies success. We’re all paid different amounts and I believe I’m one of the highest paid staff members so I do kind of keep my head down when people start talking about wages, but I’ve also worked at the company the longest so have had yearly percentage raises which all added up.

After all that, has anyone managed to present a United front to management as a whole team? How did you go about it? Was everyone on board? We’re there any dissenters? Did someone go running to management to spill the beans before we were ready to discuss things with management? We’re your efforts successful or not?

[mr_spock]

Your offer is at slightly over twice the CPI rate, so if I were the company I'd argue that you're getting a real terms pay rise in the midst of a pandemic and to be happy with that. I'd further explain that the redundancies were to safeguard the remaining jobs.

Your counter-argument can only be on the metrics. Working a few extra minutes, or even a half hour, isn't compelling. You need to be explaining the additional productivity that makes you all worth even more (in financial terms, ideally) than the real-terms pay rise you've been offered. Quality improvements aren't an argument because all you're saying is that quality before wasn't good enough.

Also, trying to negotiate as a group means that someone will have to take the hot seat, and I guarantee that person's time will be limited and nobody will take it.

[Scrump]

Company has had a lull in orders and had to make redundancies.
I don’t think your request will be well received.

[TwistingMyMelon]

It won’t end well

[Beyond Rational]

Why on earth would you want to approach this as a group, especially as potentially the highest paid member?

Management: 'you can all have a raise if X agrees to a cut'

[Countdown]

MissChief said:

After all that, has anyone managed to present a United front to management as a whole team? How did you go about it? Was everyone on board? We’re there any dissenters? Did someone go running to management to spill the beans before we were ready to discuss things with management? We’re your efforts successful or not?

Are you not basically talking about Unions and collective bargaining agreements?

I'm not against Unions but in terms of pay/conditions I've always preferred to negotiate my own.

[MissChief]

After some careful thought I'm going to make my dissatisfaction known but leave it at that. And expect a decent rise next year.

[mr_spock]

You’d be better off suggesting a productivity related bonus for your week on week increase in orders than just being grumpy about it and hoping they notice. Being negative will get you nowhere.

[MissChief]

mr_spock said:

You’d be better off suggesting a productivity related bonus for your week on week increase in orders than just being grumpy about it and hoping they notice. Being negative will get you nowhere.

We already get a quarterly bonus. I can't improve on that as I'm already at or above maxim target for maximum payout.

[mr_spock]

Sounds like it’s the cap you should be negotiating. You’d have much more chance of success with that approach IMHO as it makes no sense to cap growth and effort. IBM made that mistake with Ross Perot I believe.