To ask for a further pay increase

[bumbling]

I work as part of a two person team. The other person is only in this role for six months longer than me. We have a slightly different job title and due to this I am paid 2000 less per year. The two people who had this job prior to me had my colleagues title and pay. They didn't change any of the duties or workload I complete the same amount of work at the same level as my colleague.

We are underpaid as it is but both love our jobs. We have recently been awarded a pay rise but due to the disparity in our pay I still feel undervalued. My manager also agreed we should be paid the same but she has now left the company.

Would you try to reraise this issue with hr or is it ever acceptable to pay two employees differently for the same job?

What are the job titles?

Yes, raise issue
No, it's not ok

Could you maybe get hold of both job descriptions and do a side by side comparison (Assume they must be different slightly if the titles are different - but maybe you could use the side by side to show that you do the same things?)

As long as you can justify your request with rationale it’s always worth trying

Why & how do you know what your colleague earns?

Are your job titles and descriptions identical or are you taking on work that you are not paid to do?

We did a comparison of our job titles and mine is just a dumbed down version of my colleagues. It reads as though someone put it through a thesaurus. I would be happy with 2 outcomes 1 hr agreeing our jobs are the same and adjusting title/pay accordingly or 2 reducing my responsibilities to reflect title/pay.

I am very close with my colleague who also agrees we should be paid the same. I wasn't told of the difference in pay at the interview stage only two weeks after I got the job and received my confirmation email/contract. At that point my colleague told me what he earned.

It sounds like you do actually have less duties then if it's "dumbed down"? I'd definitely take it to HR and let them decide if you are in fact being expected to do EXACTLY the same duties in practice but for different pay

The job titles are less of an issue. It's the job description really. Are the tasks on your job descriptions identical? Or does he have extra tasks on his?

The tasks are the same just worded slightly differently such as

Compile weekly report - Create weekly report

Facilitate client meetings - Host client meetings

We work very closely together so there isn't a way for one of us to complete lesser tasks or complete work to a different standard. If one of us is off the other covers all work. I have had two managers while in this role and they haven't been able to come up with a different structure for us so we have just carried on completing the work required by our team.

I'd definitely ask for my pay to reflect the work or get them to separate the tasks properly so it's fair!