Being Paid Less Than The Published Salary Scales

Beerworshipper

Hi,

I’ve been employed at a large organisation for the last 5 years. I was taken on in a lower management type role and haven’t been formally promoted since I started at the organisation.

The organisation that I work for has always published (on the internal intranet) salary scales for many of the junior grades but crucially they have never published facts or figures for any of the management salaries including the relevant scale for my salary. The scales have always consisted of a Salary band consisting of a range from a band minimum to a band maximum.

At Easter time my company published a slightly extended set of salary scales which included some of the management tiers (including my own) for the last 7 years. When referring to the scales to see where my own salary sat within my band I noticed that I was being paid below the band minimum. I raised this as a query with the (central) Human Resources Department. The person who initially dealt with this query confirmed that according to the scales that she had on her HR system I was being paid below the band minimum and had been ever since I started 5 years ago. I have a copy of an email from them to my Local Division Payroll detailing my current salary for each of the last 5 years and comparing it to the band minimum from the HR System and querying the reason for this disparity.

At that point I was told that my local payroll were looking into it and would be in touch in due course. Last week I was notified that I was indeed being underpaid against the scales and that my salary would be increased to the band minimum. Furthermore, this would be backdated for a period of 3 months. :j



Although I welcome this capitulation and am relieved that this is rectified going forward. I can’t help but feel that I have been underpaid for the last 5 years and that this should possibly be backdated to the start of my employment as the scales clearly detail that there was a salary disparity for all that time.


I have asked payroll to explain their reasoning for backdating the current salary an dwhy it is only for 3 months, I am currently awaiting a reply. However, in the meantime I’d like to be sure of any rights that I may (or may not have) pertaining to this situation. It’s probably relevant to say that I am not a member of any Trade Union.

Is anybody on here able to provide me with any advice regarding my rights in a situation like this?

Thank you for reading.

asajj

The way I see it is that salary scales are there for guidance and people can often get paid under and above those scales. So are you saying that you have been underpaid over the 5 years too? I'd think it would be your manager that put you on your starting salary and communicate to HR.
Have you talk to her/him?

Beerworshipper

Hi Asajj,

Thank you for your response. My Manager at the time of my stating employment is currently on Honeymoon but I do plan to speak to her when she returns the week after next. Just to clarify, I'm stating that according to the scales that were published and the initial response from Cnetral HR, that I was payed below the bottom of the range for my position.

Savvy_Sue

But crucially, were you paid what you were initially offered?

And personally, I'd join a union.

Beerworshipper

Hi Savvy Sue,

When I joined I was offered my position, told which salary band I would be starting on and offered a Salary. So I know that technically I've accepted a salary at the commencement of my employment and that you could say that I was happy to do that so whats teh problem. I'm questioning if its below the bottom of the defined band if I have any form of redress. Thanks for your help.

Valli

As Savvy Sue says, join a union.

As for redress, it's unlikely, given you accepted your role at the salary offered. If it were me I would be wanting to know what they've been playing, though. For a start I would want to know when the band you're in was set, given it had not been previously published.

somethingcorporate

If you're being paid and have been paid the salary offered then I don't think you have any case to go back 5 years.

Salary ranges are often for guidance only we often have people paid above and below.

I don't think you have any rights here.

InsideInsurance

Bands are guidelines and not legally enforcable in the overwhelming majority of cases and the fact you've already had it agreed to have money back dated is a better than expected result.

When I worked for a bank they were exceptionally formulatic about these things. You effectively had grades 1 to 10 (above 10 was Group Exec contracts). You also had job families (Customer Service, Marketing, Finance etc). For each job family and grade they published a "recommended" pay scale and "average" salary.

Each year you were graded on a scale of 1-5 with 3 being doing your job well and hitting all targets. 5 being your doing exceptionally and exceeding EVERY target and 1 being your doing very badly and missing EVERY target.

The then published a chart each March with bands of %ge of the "average salary" and annual performance review grade. So you could see that you were 85% of the average salary for your job family and grade and you were given a performance grade of 4 that you should get a 5% payrise

Even then, in practice, the %ge was an indication and ultimately was a negotiation between you and your manager. HR monitored overall averages and departments that were heavily deviating from the guidelines had to justify it.

As I moved from a grade 3 in Customer Service (generally lowly paid anyway) to a grade 5 in Change (generally highly paid anyway) and quickly to a 6 in Change my salary was way outside of the range. Plus point was that I always got large percentage increases, normally above what the table said I should get, but 110% of not a lot is still not a lot.

As a grade 6 I was managing a team of grade 4s and 5s and one of the 5s came to me to complain about how low his salary was (was in range and above average), was difficult to deal with given he was on about £7.5k more than me despite being the lower grade.

agrinnall

I have to say when I've worked at places with published salary ranges I've never heard of anyone being paid under the minimum for their grade, and only very occasionally of anyone being paid above the maximum. If it was me I would at least try to make more of a case with HR for full back pay.

Beerworshipper

Thank you everybody for your informative replies. I really appreicate you all giving me your thoughts and the benefit of your experiences.

I telephoned Payroll earlier today to get further clarification on the issue and they simply said that the scales were published by mistake and that they were only indicative anyway. Therefore, I should be glad that they have provided me with a payrise and backpay at all.

For the record I am very grateful and I don't wish to come accross as not being so as I'm very pleased to be getting more money for the same job and the back pay is also very well recieved. I just wanted to make sure I was being fair to myself in the process.

If anybody also has any other thoughts on this I'd be happy to hear them.