Establish Clear Principles For Raises & Promotions
This is a small excerpt from the Compensation & the Model Workbook. It may help Hospices that continually face pressures for pay increases.
This is another “expectation management” practice that will help an organization greatly. Why should someone get a raise or promotion? This is a teaching concept, and all compensation systems teach (even bad ones teach). Here are principles that you can adopt:
- To get a raise or pay increase at this organization, you must be doing MORE than you are already being paid to do. If you haven’t been doing “extra,” why would you expect additional pay for doing the same quality or quantity of work? Longevity is not a good enough reason.
- Just because a person is “working hard” or “spending a lot of time” on something doesn’t mean that they are providing VALUE to the organization. The person may simply not have the intelligence or capability of doing the job efficiently. If someone is struggling with “routine” tasks, then, as a manager that is responsible for the allocation of assets to maximize ROI, you need to remove the person from the position, re-purpose them or train them to do their job better. Giving time or “working hard” is not enough to merit a raise or extra pay.
- Most of your professional advancement will come from your leisure time, non-paid time. Most of your professional advances will come from time that you are NOT BEING PAID directly. When you are trying to get to the next positon or place in your life or career, you naturally learn all you can about it. You read, you pay attention to anything you hear about it, you think about it and you practice to develop the skills you perceive you will need in the future position. I have found that virtually all of my professional advancements came on my own time and on my own dime.
- Each person in the organization ultimately sets his or her own pay based on the value they provide. Yes, each of us sets their own pay. We do this by creating value. If you are worth it, you will get an increase. Don’t look at yourself as being “held back” by those you report to or “the man” (or the “woman!”). Realize that YOU are responsible for your life. You are Accountable for your life. You are in the driver’s seat of how you experience life. So if you want more, contribute more value!!! It really is as easy as that!
- The more you can directly link your contribution(s) to increased profitability, the easier it is to create a system to compensate you for your efforts. The easier it is to show or illustrate the relationship between your performance and results, the easier it is to get people with the power to change the compensation system to reward you. This is achieved by lowering costs, increasing revenue or both.
- Not all people are paid the same. People that contribute more value get paid more. It is all about VALUE when viewing an organization or business. We are creating value for our customers. That is why we are in business. The most talented at providing value, deserve more. They usually tend to work harder, give more time and apply themselves more. Even though it is not about “working harder” or “the amount of time” that a company should base its rewards, these factors usually accompany those that create the most value.
- The client or customer will write every paycheck you will ever receive. It is about serving the customer. Patients, families. Medicare and referral sources are the folks that write the pay checks. Yes, we serve each other as well and this is linked to how well we serve the customer ultimately, but it is our ability to IMPACT THE EXTERNAL WORLD that meets payroll and provides the means for the continuation of a business organization. The customer writes the paycheck.
