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Best way to approach pay rise / promotion during Covid...

Lorraine

Good morning everyone,

Hope everyone is safe and well! Looking for a bit of advice please;

Back in January I passed my 3 month probation with my current employer and asked for a meeting with my manager at the time. I presented a business case for a salary increase and requested some KPIs for the coming year.

I had delivered as far possible what was within my control the 3 “low hanging fruits” that they wanted from me (employee files and HR document system, handbook and training matrix) and I also completed my CIPD level 5 which was self-funded by the end of my probation hence asking for a pay rise. The job is actually more than what was advertised – essentially creating a HR department from scratch but it was advertise as more of an admin role with support form Norway but it became apparent quite quickly that wasn’t quite how it would go. Having said that, I am driven and ambitious and pushed to take on a lot more so have made the role bigger my doing gap analysis and seeing what else was needed in the Company from a HR perspective.

The January meeting went fine, I was advised that it's not an "if" but a “when" and that there was a management business review in February and my request would be discussed then. 

That time came and went then Covid hit. I was thanked for my work during a period of redundancy and restructuring in May and again told that my request from January was still a "when" not an "if" and it would be discussed at the end of summer once the management team in Norway were back (they take almost all of July off). 

We are now almost at the end of August and I haven’t heard anything further. I want to raise this again but I am also aware of the current situation in the world, obviously! And we are in the Oil and Gas supply chain so things aren't great and we are saving costs where we can BUT we are lucky that we have work on just now and are doing well in the grand scheme.

Looking for some suggestions on how I can raise this again (pay rise) but in a sensitive to the situation manner please.

Many thanks in advance!

  • in reply to Nina Waters
    Very helpful suggestion Nina, thanks.
  • in reply to Polly
    Thanks Polly.
    There isn't a policy as such because before I started with the company, no one had even had a discussion about passing their probation or letter confirming passing their probation and no objectives set. The joys of a SME :-)
    I wouldn't normally have asked, it's not in my nature, but in this situation I felt it appropriate to.
  • Hi Annabel,

    I agree with Nina and the others above. We've had a few people ask for a pay increase despite the current pandemic and us doing weekly updates keeping people informed about our financial position (not great). It feels really quite frustrating that they haven't seen the bigger picture and one manager particularly has been very unsympathetic.

    We have someone who really does deserve a pay increase and she's working her socks off. She raised her situation with me but said very clearly that she didn't expect an increase in the current climate but would like it to be looked at when things were a bit better. I really appreciated her being so pragmatic because we very much want to reward her commitment and hard work.

    If you can bide your time until December, then I'm sure your request will go down much better. It really isn't that much longer. Their response will tell you whether it's a longer term 'no' and then you can have a rethink on your position.
  • I have too been in a similar situation. I started 11 months ago as a maternity cover , offered a perm role 5 months in. My HR Manager was made redundant end July after been on GL for 7 weeks, so i have ran the dept and will continue being on my own until November when said lady returns of Maternity leave. We have had salary reductions and still 30% off workforce on Furlough within the business but I have decided to wait until we are back to some sort of normality before I approach any extra pay rewards.
  • Thank you to everyone for your feedback. I am going to hold off until the new year. Hopefully we will be in a better place with Covid and have some idea of how Brexit will impact us all.