pay review outcome unsatisfactory what next?

[Stuffofawesome]

Work for a charity. External pay review resulted in HR acknowledging pay for several staff members well below benchmark (6-10k). They say they will take salaries up to low end of correct scale over 2-3 yrs. Meanwhile new jobs still being advertised.

In my case I resigned and job immediately advertised at scale starting 6k more for same job description. Not in a union unfortunately.

Any ideas how to handle this? Thoughts appreciated.

I don't think it's unusual for newly advertised jobs to pay more than the long serving staff are paid.

All employers pay what they need to retain or recruit. Usually, you don't need to pay as much to retain as you do to recruit. If it's all about the money, you need to change jobs every 2-3 years.

If they weren't prepared to offer you the increase to stay, they're not bothered about losing you and its time to move on. Sorry.

Thanks for that. I will leave regardless. Problem is three senior managers also just resigned and several other members of staff planning to go as they are so pissed off. Many of whom are the only staff members running a whole strand of the service. It is reaching critical mass where the clinical services will be seriously compromised but they don't seem bothered.

Reapply for the job?

Someone did suggest that! Time for me to go as have no respect for them now. Feel bad for our clients who are very vulnerable

Not sure what you mean in terms of wanting ideas on how to handle it. If you mean how to handle the fact that staff leaving will compromise clinical services, it's not for you to handle, surely? It's a shame but you can only voice your concerns to your manager about the service and then concentrate on preparing for your new job (assuming you resigned with one to go to), or whatever it is you're doing next.

Meant more if it is reasonable for an employer to recognise pay is poor, pay external consultant to tell them that then refuse to do anything other than increase pay to what it should have been in 3 yrs time. Seems like they can do what they want. I do something specialised and there aren't many of us so it will be difficult to fill my post I'm going to go self employed

It's standard to spread pay rises over several years. But they also need to advertise market rate if they want to get anyone. Not sure what you wanted them to do?

It's not really a case of whether it's reasonable, more of whether it's sensible or not. You obviously feel not because of the impact on service but either they don't agree or haven't realised.

They took advice, and decided what action they were going to take based on that advice. Taking advice from an external consultant doesn't oblige them to follow that advice.

They took a view that either they didn't need to pay staff market rate in order to keep them, or that they were not overly-concerned about the prospect of staff leaving, and therefore didn't propose/couldn't afford to suddenly increase everyone's salaries dramatically.

Retention and recruitment are not the same thing, and if they've been advised the market rate for a job is £x, and (as you say) it will be difficult to fill the post, clearly it is sensible for them to offer market rate in order to get someone.

It's not a case of increasing the pay to what it "should have been". Any organisation takes a number of factors into account in setting pay, and where they want to/need to place themselves in terms of market rates is one of those. The only "should" with pay (other than with widespread collective agreements) are that pay must be at or above the appropriate minimum wage rate and must not be discriminatory. Other than that, it's down to the individual organisation to pay what it thinks it needs to/is appropriate and also to individual employees to decide what pay they are prepared to accept for a given role.

You can always offer to do some work for them as self employed