Salary lower than new starter - help

RedBlue

This happened to me not long ago, I found out that a new colleague of mine was earning more than me. I have been with the company eight years, she had just joined and her role is a lesser role than mine.

I went straight to my manager and they told me that is "just how it is" apparently you will always get more money coming in as a new person than by staying loyal because they cannot afford big payrises each year but need to offer a competative salary to get in new recruits.

I took it higher and they eventually they agreed to give me a payrise but I am now only £1k higher than someone who only joined six months ago and does far less than me!

Mistral001

As someone who has been self-employed for several years and out of the employment market(possibly thinking of going back into it though), I would like to ask whether it is common for employees to know what their work colleagues were getting?

When I was working in a salaried job, it was a firm unwritten rule not to disclose to a colleague what salary you were getting. It was quite possible that some people doing less work and with lesser qualifications than me got paid more than me. I know the public sector have pay grades often where salaries are published for each scale, but this is not a public sector organisation.

shortcrust

Mistral001 wrote: »

As someone who has been self-employed for several years and out of the employment market(possibly thinking of going back into it though), I would like to ask whether it is common for employees to know what their work colleagues were getting?

When I was working in a salaried job, it was a firm unwritten rule not to disclose to a colleague what salary you were getting. It was quite possible that some people doing less work and with lesser qualifications than me got paid more than me. I know the public sector have pay grades often where salaries are published for each scale, but this is not a public sector organisation.

I'm a bit surprised by this too. In my last private sector job we paid people different salaries, including sometimes paying more to new starters, but it wasn't a problem as everyone kept it to themselves!

Employers pay what they have to pay to secure the best candidate. It's that simple. If it means paying more than existing employees then that's just what they have to do. I once got a starting salary 6k higher than the guys already working there. It wasn't that I was better than the other guys. I was later told that the other applicants were awful! They desperately needed a new employee and I wasn't desperate to work for them so negotiated hard. It's not hard to see that they didn't really have a choice but to pay the extra money.

If the people coming in are getting more money and you're confident in your ability to sell yourself to a prospective employer then it's likely that you could get more money elsewhere. The solution should be obvious.;)