In the course of reviewing and updating base salary structures, we often are faced with jobs that appear to be "overgraded"; that is, the jobs are assigned to salary ranges which are higher than what appears to be warranted by the jobs' market values or current scope/responsibilities. The knee-jerk assessment of many HR professionals (and, frankly, of many of us consultants) is that these individuals are overpaid for the job that they are performing. And sometimes, this is indeed the truth of the matter. But sometimes, the story is more complicated than that.
A story shared at a recent meeting made me think about these situations in a bit of a different light. It was the story of a systems professional at a mid-sized manufacturing company. This gentleman, let's call him Bob, had been hired to develop the company's first MRP (Materials Requirement Planning - for inventory control and manufacturing process management) system, since they were unable at the time to find an "off the shelf" product that met their needs. The system had been designed and implemented successfully, and now - years later - Bob was still around, basically handling system maintenance and miscellaneous tasks (and frankly, more than a little bored).
Time for the biennial review and update of the salary program. One outcome of the job analysis and market review process is that Bob's position - given his current role and responsibilities - looked as though it was "overgraded" and needed to be moved down a grade or two. The senior management team was stunned when it saw this recommendation. "How could we possibly reduce Bob's salary grade," they asked. "He is one of the most valuable and highly respected employees we have!"
Is Bob an overpaid employee - or an underutilized asset?
Long story short, from what I understand, the "overgrade" issue was the impetus to re-design Bob's role and responsibilities in order to capitalize on his most valuable talents, and move him away from the lower-valued tasks he was currently spending time on. The result - a more satisfied employee, and a better utilized human asset!
My takeaway from this story is to push my clients to look more closely at employees whose jobs pop out as "overgraded" when we review their base salary programs. Sometimes these are truly employees whose salary has been allowed to grow, usually through no fault of their own, beyond their capabilities and responsibilities. These certainly need to be addressed and solutions identified, whether that be "freezing" the employee's salary until their assigned salary range catches up or supporting them in growing their capabilities so that they can move into a role more aligned with their salary level (or helping them consider the move to another organization).
But I am guessing that there are a lot more Bobs out there.
Comments