What To Do When Your Admin Employee Asks For A Raise

So, first of all, there's an inherent challenge that exists when we have an administrative person looking for a raise. When we're a certain stage of business. Remember, it's not our age. It's the stage of business that we're in that matters most. And so the stage of business you're in requires people to wear multiple hats. And so that's what opens the door for this confusion so very powerfully. We never want. Not that you have it all, but we never want to take the position of feeling attacked when this happens, which is how I used to feel. I used to feel like, where are you coming from asking for that kind of a raise? So it's just understanding that until we can organize each position really clearly defining what the value exchange is, what that win win contract looks like, we open the door for these types of discussions to happen. And so what do we do when these discussions happen? The first thing we do is we position ourselves from a place of investigation. We just research.

So I would just want to compliment you in saying that that was a very good instinct to have, is that the first crucial conversation is all investigation yet. Well, you're very valuable to us. Of course, I want to be flexible and workable wherever we can, using language like this, wherever the company can benefit, of course, we're willing to bend, making sure there's an understanding that there is this other side of the win win agreement. Because remember, guys, our role isn't to be the company in those meetings. Our role is to be the steward of both parties winning the company and the employee. And we're just this, like, steward of making sure everybody wins. So we can take some of that pressure off of us emotionally and say, okay, so, yeah, so let's learn about what you're wanting to do. Let me give you your job, duties, responsibilities. You said you want to be compensated at a 30 raise. Yeah. Tell me how you got there? What does that look like for you? And then it's a matter of, like, okay, well, I appreciate the information. I don't really know what we can do financially with our stage of our business. Now, the beautiful thing here is that she did bring up the money part first. So, like, when somebody brings up in negotiations, we always want the other party to bring up the money first. It doesn't matter how close or far it is from what we can or can't actually do psychologically, it puts us in a position, according to Chris Voss from that book, never split the difference. It puts us in a position where we then can just respond and we don't counter to that. We objectively state, yeah, either it's workable or it's not. But ultimately it's like, okay, well tell me how you got there. All right, so where did you go? What does that look like? And then if we haven't defined it already, the next step is for us to actually go create the job scorecard. The job scorecard isn't the job description. If you guys remember this, the job scorecard, guys, is key, key to the entire recruiting process. It's a very simple document and I promise you, when you create takes stress like you feel it come off your shoulders because you can see objectively the win win agreement. Okay? As the steward of the company with this win win agreement, I can measure success for both parties. Because what I did without that.

I used to just give raises. I had a technician making almost $20 an hour because I just gave her a raise every year because I didn't want her to leave and I didn't know what else to do.

This was like 15 years ago. But like we have a job scorecard. And then later we created pay scale ranges. That's down the road as a preview, not only do we want a job scorecard for every position, but we also want to define the red, yellow, green money that we are going to pay for that position. So that requires us to do our own research, right? Like, okay, so in my area for these duties, if it's not as easy as like physical therapist, which is the admin role for administrative responsibilities like insurance verification, that's a $14 an hour job, right? So separating the hats in these administrative roles by money and duties helps us kind of create our unique win win that will be objective and non emotional. So at the end of the day, going back to your discussion, we want to have the first discussion be super much, just like super validating, like, well, you're super important to us. Whatever the company can do, we are going to look at doing. But it's like if we can do it, is the major clear line there that we say that and then we get all the data and you ask for some time to research and go, listen, this is what I want to do. It's transparency. I'm going to go research myself, I'm going to break down your duties, create a job scorecard. I'm going to do my own research and get back to you. And any raise that we give, by the way, just so you know, is also contingent upon whether or not we can afford it as a company.

There's a set of videos I did in my YouTube channel that's actually geared towards employees on how to ask for a raise. But I would ask employers to watch it because what I ask the employees to consider is raises are dependent upon increasing the exchange of value that I give at a certain level. I have to be at market standard. First of all, if I'm below market standard, I think it's appropriate for them to ask for a raise. If they're at market standard or market average and they're increasing their exchange value, they can ask. And they have to understand the company has to be able to afford it. And for you guys, what I would say as owners, affording it means that you're running at least a 10% margin on a 12 month trend. If you're not at a 10% margin of profitability, you can't afford it. And that's not my opinion, that's a fact.

And look, that stinks. But I will tell you, when I've turned down people's raises, even in my billing company, because we just like guys, our margin is only at 8%. We're barely breaking even. When we get more profits because you exchange more value and because you're above the average marker, we are going to consider it down the road. And occasionally I have people leave.

So that's my two cents. Sam.