Straw poll - Payrises

[Femalearchaeopteryx]

I'll start by saying I am posting out of curiosity over anything else, we have already done the numbers and researched what the national average is and what other business around us and similar to us are doing so this is not in anyway to help our decision.

I run an SME just done discussions with our a managers regarding pay rises, they believe what we are offering is poor, we think it is realistic and the best we can offer during difficult times.

So we have offered a 4% pay rise, plus a trial of moving to 4 day week.

I will add that all the managers are aware the business has struggled massively over covid yet kept everyone employed and have had to borrow which we now have to pay back. In over words we can't afford a massive inflation beating pay rise this year.

So straw poll what has everyone else's pay rise been?

I will repeat before someone says anything we are perfectly capable of running the business without MNs help I'm curious to know what everyone else is doing.

3.5% so 4% sounds quite good. As to making 4 day week 4x10 shifts, why can't you just divide up the current hours into 4 days, for example, we work 37.5 week, so would do 3x9.5 and 1x9 to make the same hours requirement. 4x10 is a lot of long days.

I wonder what the answers would look like if you split it between those who can pass the increase on to customers and those who can’t.

So professional services presumably have discretion over fee rates and if everyone in a specialised sector pushes up pay and therefore fees you don’t lose your clients. Just your clients suffer if it’s something they need (eg annual audit).

SMEs working in a more competitive sector, small charities struggle as can’t increase fees by 10% and keep business. But then lose staff. Productivity is key but staff know they have the upper hand so maybe less productive. OP your profit share is therefore a good idea along with the 4 day week.

I work for a medium sized charity and we had between about 8% for lowest paid staff to 3% for highest paid staff. The most moans were from people in the 4% bracket, maybe they’re the squeezed middle.

Do you know how that went down? I’ve thought of doing this, it sounds fair and easy to explain…. But then if we did this for a couple of years we’d risk getting really out of step on the higher pay banding and losing people, or paying new people a lot more than existing staff. If we only did it for one year it sounds gimmicky.

3.1%, medium size utility company, biggest rise we've had in years and years.