In every organisation, there comes a moment when requests pile up. A reassessment here, a promotion there, an off-cycle increase, an adjustment demanded with insistence. The most natural reflex is to treat this queue as a workload: taking requests one by one, arbitrating them, granting or refusing them.
This is precisely the reflex I would like to question.
This pressure on base salary is often a symptom more than a request in the strict sense. It says that something, elsewhere in the system, is not working, or is not understood. And behind this pressure, there are very often motivations other than the one stated in the first place.
Neither granting by reflex, nor refusing on principle
Let us say it straight away, to avoid the misreading. Reading the pressure as a symptom does not mean never giving in to it. Some requests for a base salary increase are perfectly well-founded, and the system must then take them into account. The work is therefore neither to grant by reflex, nor to refuse on principle. It is to investigate: tracing the request back to its cause, and depending on the cause, knowing what to do, and for whom.
Faced with a request, there are two categories of causes. All the skill lies in knowing which one you are in.
The first category: when the base salary is really at stake
In the first category, the base salary really must move, because an objective fact has changed. Three typical cases.
The function has really evolved. Its content is no longer what it was three years ago: responsibilities have been added, the scope has broadened, the nature of the work has transformed. This is then not a question of salary, it is a question of reassessing the function. A common reference point is that a function whose content has changed by more than 20% justifies being reassessed. This is a subject I have developed in another article in this series, [[the-life-of-levels]].
The external benchmark has moved. The salary structure was built at a given moment, in reference to a market. That market has shifted, and the salary band has fallen behind. The request, here, is well-founded: it reflects a real gap between the structure and the market.
The business has changed scale. The activity's figures are no longer the same. If the business has changed in scale, certain key elements of the function have changed with it.
In these three cases, the request is not a symptom. It is accurate information that the system should have picked up on its own. Handling it simply means bringing the remuneration back in step with reality.
The second category: when the request is a symptom
In the second category, acting on the base salary would amount to treating the wrong ailment. The request is real, the person is sincere, but the base salary is not the right lever. Four cases.
Retention handled poorly. We want to keep someone, so we raise their base salary. But if the person is thinking of leaving, the base salary is rarely the real cause, or rarely the only one. The real subject is often elsewhere: a career perspective that is missing, a recognition that did not come, a work environment that weighs. Raising the base salary buys a reprieve, not a solution, and, if it is not objectively justified, distorts the structure along the way.
The opacity of the other components. A remuneration is made of several elements, each with its own purpose. If the person only understands, or only sees, the base salary, that is mechanically where all their demands will be directed. They are not asking for the base salary because it is at stake: they are asking for it because it is the only readable element. I devoted another article in this series to this idea, [[compensation-component-purpose]]. This readability is no longer just a good practice. With pay transparency being rolled out, making each component understandable becomes an expectation that organisations will have to meet.
The impression of a lack of progression. This case deserves particular attention, because it mirrors a case in the first category. There, the function has really evolved. Here, the person feels stagnation, but the function itself has not moved. The same sentence, “I would like an increase”, can therefore come from a function that has really grown, or from a person who feels they are no longer moving forward. Two opposite causes, two opposite responses. In the second case, the base salary request is in reality a request for recognition of a journey, or a request for career prospects. It is going through the wrong channel. Responding to it with base salary does not address the feeling, and distorts the structure.
And then there is comparison. It is the most frequent, and the one that calls for the most caution. It deserves real attention.
Comparison, a ground where the HR professional does not step in
“So-and-so earns more than me”, or “so-and-so has a higher level than mine”. These are probably the most frequent sentences.
Employees compare. And let us say from the outset what an HR professional will never do: step into the comparison. Justifying to one the level or the salary of another is out of the question. Out of respect for each of the parties and out of respect for confidentiality, one person's remuneration or level situation is not commented on in front of another. This is not evasion, it is a principle.
The task is to reassure, and to recall the rules in place and their coherence.
It is also to redirect to the right interlocutor: the business partner, who will in turn relay to the manager concerned. Both are well informed of the salaries and levels across the team, as well as of the business situation and the review needs, whether objective or not.
A comparison is a clue, and a clue deserves to be investigated, never turned as such into a decision.
The essentials
A request for a base salary increase is neither to grant by reflex, nor to refuse on principle. It is a signal to investigate: sometimes the salary really is at stake, sometimes the request is the symptom of something else. All the craft lies in knowing which category you are in.
An organisation that treats each base salary request in isolation often ends up in the same place: a distorted structure and a stack of exceptions. Each request granted without diagnosis calls for another.
An organisation that reads the pressure as a symptom does the opposite. Faced with a request, it asks the questions that allow it to trace back to the cause. Has the function really evolved? Has the external benchmark fallen behind? Have the business figures changed? Are the elements of remuneration sufficiently understood? Is the total remuneration, the sum of the three components, really brought to the person's knowledge, or lodged on a secure page they have never consulted? Have their evolution and their journey been properly discussed with their manager, at the moment of objective setting for example? Depending on the answer, the organisation corrects what needs correcting, or makes readable what was not.
An organisation able to link each request to its real cause, and to explain it, is also an organisation ready for pay transparency: because knowing how to justify a position, by clear criteria and the same for everyone, is precisely what transparency requires.
This is the diagnostic work, structured and traceable, that HDH (HR Decision Hub) is designed to equip.