There’s a simple way to determine employees’ pay: take what they used to make at your company and the employees’ company and add 5%, or some x%. A little more complicated method: use benchmark studies and salary surveys. These methods are used by 99% of all companies. (Okay, I have no literal statistical data to support this, but it’s extremely rare to hear of anyone doing something different.
In the latter half of my career, I have at least enforced internal consistency. Looking at job parameters and rating different jobs and paying equally assessed jobs with very similar ranges. Often though, this creates a mismatch in some job classifications with the job market. However, it is consistent with the value those jobs are creating for the organization. This is not so easy to do. And it’s definitely hard to explain to employees, especially long-tenured ones, who find themselves maxed out when their salary range, based on value, does not move.
Clearly there can be some movement regarding retention and so on. Though, as I’ve written elsewhere, I prefer to compete for personnel on other work aspects and not solely on “price.”
As Christian business leaders, when we resort to the predominant methods of determine wages, we are letting people/organizations outside of our own to determine how we value our employees’ contribution to the company’s success. This is almost exactly the situation Paul addresses when he admonishes us to not be “unequally yoked” or bind light with darkness (2 Cor. 6.14). And goes on to quote “Come out from the unbelievers and do not walk among them. Don’t touch their filthy things…” (his paraphrase of Isaiah 52.11). Often, God commands and warns His people to be among the people but not be corrupted by their worship of other gods. And so likewise, have we been corrupted because unbelieving organizations have dominated business culture and we’ve adopted their practices? We have let other “nations” hold us captive to a business culture, determine our values and the methods as to how we value our employees. We are in essence adopting their values, their priorities and “worshiping their gods.”
Besides this business culture, this water in which we goldfish obliviously swim, we might have personal reasons to adopt the common practices. A change could mean higher costs. This might lead to a fear of raising prices and losing business. Or lower profits means a smaller bonus, or salary, for ourselves. There’s a good example of how CEO pay has gone from 30x lowest salary to 300x in the past three or four decades. Often I hear people say, “Hey, I’ll run GE, General Motors, United Healthcare, Apple for $1 million and save the shareholders all kinds of money and probably do just as good a job leading the company in exactly the same way as _______soso-and-so does (because it’s a matter of scale, not effort).”
And then there’s the personal fear of explaining something that done differently from the way everyone else does it. Or the fear of giving an explanation and having the explanation rejected.
Or if we’re honest with ourselves (“search me, O God…”) we might be worshipping other “gods”: fame, fortune (stock, company valuation), prestige, leisure opportunities that wealth gives us, and so on.
Anyone else have a justification for following the business traditional methods of determining employees’ pay?
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