Dealing with salary complaints

Dear Bob …

“Al” is one of my best employees. He’s a top-notch engineer, very responsible, and handles anything I throw at him with a high degree of professionalism. If I could find three more just like him I’d hire every one of them in a heartbeat.

Except for one thing.

Al is a malcontent, especially about compensation. I’ve checked, and between his salary and annual bonus, we pay him at the top of what his job category is worth in the marketplace. So I’m pretty sure he’d have a hard time finding a job that pays him more. I also want to emphasize that I personally pay close attention to the intangibles, to make sure every employee, including Al, receives respect, challenging and rewarding work, and appreciation for what they achieve for the company. So does my boss.

I’ve talked this over with Al on several occasions, and showed him the numbers. Each time he grudgingly admits that he receives a pretty good salary for someone with his responsibilities (we don’t do the phony job title trick – we use consultants who have a formula based on actual work performed). But that only makes him grumpier.

I can’t afford to lose an employee this good. But Al’s constant complaining is public, which means it affects everyone else’s morale. It’s getting to me, and it’s starting to affect my interactions with him, which over time might give him something legitimate to gripe about – me.

Any ideas on how I can defuse this situation?

– Going nuts

Dear Nuts …

Before getting to the fix, it’s important to first recognize that for some people, complaining is just a way of making conversation. If they didn’t have something to complain about they’d fall silent. Worse, some employees figure that saying anything complimentary about their employer will make them sound like a Goody Two Shoes, turning them into social pariahs in the process.

So once something like this gets started it can be surprisingly hard to stop, even in as good a work situation as you portray. I don’t have any surefire remedies. Here are a few ideas you can try:

* Ask Al, point blank, what salary and bonus combination would be enough that he’d stop complaining. Chances are fifty/fifty that he’ll give you a pole-axed look and splutter a bit uncertain of how to respond. If he does, let him know, in no uncertain terms, that he’s complaining for the sake of complaining, and you’d appreciate it if he’d find something more appropriate to complain about, like the quality of food in the cafeteria, or the location of his parking place.

This would also be a good time to suggest that his underlying financial concerns aren’t a matter of his compensation – they’re a matter of how he’s managing his compensation. From what you describe, Al could easily retire a multimillionaire, simply by investing the maximum amount in the company’s 401(k) program every year, then putting his bonus into indexed mutual funds.

* If Al does give you a number, tell him what positions in the company are in that range, and let him know you’ll provide whatever support you can to help him get there. Yes, you’ll lose his services along the way, but if he’s serious about wanting to earn a significantly higher salary, you’ll lose him anyway. Make sure the company doesn’t lose a valuable employee when that happens.

* Assuming HR will go along with this, offer Al a deal. For every dollar he’s willing to relinquish in salary, you’ll add $1.33 to the maximum bonus he can earn for outstanding performance. The one catch is that you’re going to include his attitude in the computation – if he continues to complain, he won’t get all of his bonus.

This works for the company because a bonus is a one-time payout where salary goes on forever. So through the magic of discounted cash flows, $1.33 in bonus is roughly the same as $1 in salary.

* In one of your staff meetings, make the issue public without singling Al out by name. Let everyone know you’ve heard some concerns about compensation, so here are the facts about how the company decides how much to pay its employees. It won’t stop Al from complaining, but will help inoculate your organization from it, preventing it from spreading.

One other avenue you might choose to pursue is the possibility that Al suffers from a low level of depression. Talk it over with an expert in HR to determine what you are and aren’t allowed to say to Al in this regard. If it seems like a possibility, getting him some help would be the best thing you could do for both of you.

– Bob