Pay- the elephant in the room

[bctf123]

Sorry this is a variation of what I posted before. I can see people are generally successful

I started my job pretty inexperienced and never had a permanent job ,before in my late 20s.
The pay was pretty low but the job title was a simple one literally customer service admin

In practice it was a bit more. Million pound business and I was solely responsible. I did a decent job for two years. During COVID my line manager in our team of me and her did WFH and according to the people around me became lazy and she did start sending me a lot of work and disappearing.
My second two years beginning around COVID time the sales manager left and was replaced by someone bumbling so I started essentially managing him for my requirements and doing a lot of his job before he was appointed and then for a while after.
Shortly after Brexit started so I was processing exports and doing admin for that- 6 hours a week on averages
I took on a lot of other tasks including packing and shipping while the sole warehouse went off sick for months.
And then in the last year I've been on and off with the additional responsibilities as new people came in but I have spent a lot of time training them directly(new export lady who knew nothing of customs) and indirectly(new warehouse colleague during absences of main guy)

I asked for a pay rise on top of the annual one and got a jokey answer from the director and my line manager said I needed to do more for a pay rise.
I am the lowest paid in the entire office. I don't have qualifications and the others are engineers but after 5 years of keeping everything running it is close to nmw.
I also realised for 4 years I had 40% of revenue under me and 60% between 8 colleagues. Growth has been steadily rising and it's a very profitable role. I've dealt with basic to high level things
I spent the last year working evenings and weekends to make ends meet and realised it was too much. I would've loved to have stayed but I was frustrated and tired from the overwork

I gave my notice reluctantly after 5 years and there was a sudden panic to distribute my extra workload between the team and about managing the new person. It was mostly because of stagnating and a bit about pay
Id been very independent for 5 years and dealt with escalations myself to avoid chaotic panic from my line manager
I left on good terms and realised how much of a panic there is and I may potentially have missed out on promotions in a different team after they went hiring externally because I tolerate my managers pettiness which is another main reason for panic.
Last thing before I left the director told me I was very sincerely welcome to return and he understood my reasons. I didn't mention pay at all or ever made a fuss.
What should I have said in hindsight to get me a pay rise. I'm very bad with communication

Wow. I could have written that post myself... I still don't know what I could have said differently to get a pay rise or onto a different track with promotion opportunities.

I've come to the conclusion, some of it was ingrained sexism (give it to the young women in the office, she'll do it), really crap management, and me not being assertive enough to say 'no, not my job'/ 'yes I can do it, but I'll need to be compensated accordingly'. I also wonder about the old saying of; if you want a job doing, give it to a busy person.

It was crap, and I'm still annoyed/angry about how undervalued I was. I hope someone comes along with better answers!

Truthfully you probably couldn't reset the narrative once you had been set as a junior operational team member. Ops people keep businesses running but because they (you 😊) tend to be 'get on with it' types their contribution is often overlooked.

The reality is you frequently have to leave a job to get a better pay rise.

If you handed your notice in and they still didn't come back and offer you more money to stay, then realistically there is nothing more you could have done.

To be honest I didn't even mention pay as a factor

You were leaving because of poor pay but didn’t say that was why? That was a mistake. You had the perfect opportunity to use your leaving as leverage. I’d move on as I guess you’ve got a new job with better pay. They didn’t value you at last job so unless you say you’ll return in hugely uplifted salary, I’d forget them.

I left a role I’d worked hard for 12 years , but pay wasn’t reflected against market etc They knew, apologised after my last pay review as there wasn’t much they could do. I was also one of the lowest paid.

I left, I may not have directly said it was pay but they knew. My role has been replaced with a more senior one & with some one same level. Would have been cheaper to just given me a £10k pay rise. But im glad I didn’t stay I love my new job & paid fairly for the role I do.

the main thing is you are now earning more,
you were given the opportunity to take on extra responsibilities which you added to your CV
if you wanted to go back, would you role have been diminished?

I hope you have moved on to a better paid role where your ability is recognised?

You could have written a short CV like job description of what tasks and responsibilities you undertook. In professional terms. A short account of the quantity and value of work you were undertaking between your start compared with your leaving: and how the depth and breadth of responsibility had grown by % whilst your pay had increased by % and you had never been promoted in job title.

The way you wrote it in your OP was very clear, leave out the bit about bumbling manager (replace with ‘support manager’) add a few facts and figures and you have a very clear case!

Why on earth not? It sounds like the only factor.

I've going to have a couple of months break. I think the evenings and weekends working killed my passion. For about a year I was doing three jobs and I spent my days very tired and just my mojo even though I was doing more than my role
I need to recuperate and recover and after I was offered 10 and 15k moreQ and a couple of incidents with my line manager being petty and forcing me to do certain things (like transport company stock in the back of my car to the old site for shipping during the move the writing was on the wall for me anyway - i just did as she asked to orevent conflict
My housing is also not stable not helped by my wage and I suddenly realised I would never save anything here. Something suddenly clicked
The recent bills hike and jump in renting costs wiped out all annual pay rises I had

I know I've built the rep to go back at a decent level. It was hard to go below my pay level tbh.

I've always been wary of confrontation although I'm confident otherwise. I can make a lot of risque jokes but pay is just awkward and you need an element of a different type of confidence to say you deserve it
I can make the case elsewhere but couldn't here. My line manager chose not to see my value monetarily

In my last week I did 48 hours over 4 days(im contracted 36 over 5) and left at 8.50pm well after everyone had gone(my normal leaving time is 6pm).
I was making sure it was perfect and a well runnable business for my replacement.
It may have been a bluff game but I really did give my notice .
There was a couple of other things like how some people got immediate pay increases after complaining, getting the same as someone part time with 6 months service who I am training and when my other manager sat me down to say I was being given 3% some years ago but don't tell everyone because not everybody got that . I found out the guy who started 2 months ago got it too😂🙃

It's usually easier to move to a different job on higher pay than to get a pay rise without moving. Sad (also often dysfunctional) but true.

If pay was a major issue why didn't ask for a pay rise- in a serious way?! Even when you resigned you didn't let them know pay was an issue?

I get quite angry at this and think it's a big reason why there is a gender pay gap as men frequently and loudly complain about their comp whereas women quietly work harder hoping that someone will notice and pay them more.

It's not a comfortable conversation to have but is very necessary. If you think / know you are being underpaid then you schedule a meeting with your manager and explain why you deserve a pay rise and how much you believe market rate is. Likely they will bluster and try to say that they can't give you a pay rise but stay calm and factually list the reasons why you're asking for more.

If they don't take you seriously or don't deliver a pay increase after two such meetings then you find another role and leave.

I've only ever had conversations about pay rises twice, neither were satisfying, so I'm not much interested in them and I think you were probably right to leave. Do you really want to be always fighting for more? One nice thing in the current job is pay rises and bonuses are coming like clockwork each year. I could be on more, but at least it's not falling behind, and not overworked so I can spend some time learning

Eventually, the time will come when there'll be a big boost somewhere else, or I'll just move interesting work elsewhere. Working that way, I think, means focusing on what I have direct control over

I think this is the danger of doing a great job behind the scenes supporting people who are a bit crap (or, to use the technical term, being a woman). Next time when you take on responsibilities get them acknowledged as a formal part of your role and your job title. Otherwise you'll do the work and they'll get the credit. Good luck

This

Well done to you OP.. sometimes you need to break off and work in other places to know what you are missing and for them to realise what they have missed out on. All the very best for future.

When you got the 'you need to do more' you should have gone back with a list of all of the things you had taken on over your original role profile

You should have pointed out that your salary level was based on the original job, that you had and continued to do plenty more and was just asking to be compensated fairly for what you actually do

It is always easier to get higher pay at a new company.

However, when you requested a pay rise did you concisely list the responsibilities that you had taken on and link it to similar posts in other companies? Or did you just ask for more money without justifying it, they probably didn't even realise the disparity of what you did with what you should have been doing for your role.

I find doing the leg work and doing other people's jobs for them when you want something is key and actually they tend to go along with it when it's laid out in front of them. If they still didn't go for it I would have said that I enjoyed working there but unfortunately due to the cost of living crisis I would have to look elsewhere. It costs alot for a small company to recruit and train a new person. If the issue is as small as pay then often they'll come back to you with an increase.

Just to clarify I am a man so it's not a gender issue. I don't think it's a race issue.
Generally I'm treated incredibly well and get away with a lot while doing my job well
and I have or rather learnt to use resources to do well including just diving into training people to keep things ticking and having the ability to book urgent shipments without any justification

I think I was overlooked but idk. I got a lot of praise as I was leaving and they expressed regret at things like not offering me certain perks like travel. Getting away with things is also a form of recognition that you are making a difference
Apart from the two convos above I got a comment once asking why I needed to do so many jobs- at 33 and by the 5 year mark I would have expected some formal recognition as pay. Then I saw people coming in from outside and asking for pay rises within a year. He told me he was simply trying and not necessarily deserving of anything
Another guy got a 25% immediate pay rise after behind the scenes complaints at the age of 25 and that simply egged him into complaint for more. He was told the new 1 week qualification they were being given would qualify them for more
I had a lot of praise and rarely lost credit
throughout 5 years but it never translated to pay.
And it should have done when I was training and tbh smoothing things over when my lm said something explosive to the other employee

What I found really cheeky was my line manager asked to update my job desc to advertise for the next role and I feel sorry for the next lady
It's not a salary that is really a starting one for anything except literal data entry.
At my weekend job I met a lovely guy from Africa who came two months ago who literally placed plastic bottles on a hook all day and made the same😂
That job is literally manual and mine makes millions in a year

You need to grit your teeth, push back any awkwardness and have a matter of fact conversation. I've worked for the same company for over 10 years, have had multiple promotions and have gone from £21k a year when I started to £95k now. I have always been up front with my managers about wanting promotion and development opportunities, and have taken what is made available. As new responsibilities have been added I have asked for additional responsibility allowances or for a new title and salary to match, I benchmark my roles against information available online in adverts and on recruitment sites regularly so that I come to the discussion knowledgeable about what I could be earning elsewhere.

What do you mean 'getting away with things'?

If they really wanted to keep you they would have counter offered.