When you are a manager, review time can be a challenging task. Part of the challenge is not only giving a fair and honest performance review, but a well deserved pay raise. Here are some tips that can help in considering performance merit increase for your staff.
Budget: Find out how much money you have allocated to work with. This is especially challenging if you have more than one staff and you can only work with a certain budget. Keep an open mind when budgeting. Allocating a budget is also based on the overall company's earning the previous year. The increased productivity is met when the employees work harder, so reward accordingly.
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Performance Rating: You would need to allocate merit increases that are commensurate to performance. Allocate a higher pay raise to your strong performers. Normally a 3-5% pay raise is acceptable. For your weaker performers who show improvement from the previous year but still needs to improve to be strong performers, you can allocate between 1-2%. For your worst performers you do not have to give them a pay raise to give the message straight to their bottom line so they can make dramatic improvement next year.
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Keep your strong performers happy, make sure that they get the raise that they deserve so that they will not leave you for greener pastures.
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If you have any left over on your budget after giving the merit increases, try to see if you can use the remaining dollars towards performance bonus for your top performers.
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In a big corporation, your allocation would go through a chain of approvals, make sure that you get their approval by documenting why you are giving that amount and provide a copy of the performance review if needed.
Tips & Warnings
Do not talk about your employees pay raise allocation with other people.
Do not divulge to your employees about the planned raise you are giving if you haven't received the final approval yet, even if you already got a verbal approval, you need a final written approval to keep your bases covered for there can be last minute changes. Your credibility will be at stake if you are not careful.
