10 Key Motivators: #2 Need for a Higher Income
Threaten Them with a Gun!
So you think you are underpaid? So does everybody else who works for somebody else. If you are a member of a union you are subject to a collective agreement. When your contract comes up for renewal your union will put a gun to your employer’s head and threaten him with deliberate and planned disruption of his business unless he agrees to the union’s demands. Your employer will be highly motivated to automate your job out of existence, or move it to another country where he can lower his labour costs. Believe it or not, workers in some other countries are very grateful to receive a paycheque from a western industrial corporation seeking relief from escalating labour costs. While your union may view your employer as a source of corporate social assistance, your employer has an entirely different perspective.
If you are a non-unionized employee, your payscale is more likely to be based on merit. However, what you think you merit and the value your employer places on your efforts may be poles apart.
What Did You Do for the Bottom Line?
It is very easy – when you are the employee of a big corporation – to develop earnings ambitions that exceed your value to your employer. Don’t misinterpret that last sentence. You may be a highly productive and popular employee, but exactly how much do you contribute towards the bottom line? Did you directly make sales that increased the gross revenue of the company? Did you directly influence cost savings that improved the profit margin? Yes? Can you quantify that? Are you able to take sole and direct ownership of a measurable revenue improvement or cost saving? If you can put a hard number against your achievement you may have a claim to earning a tiny fraction – lets say 5% – of that number in compensation. That will be your impact on the bottom line – your contribution to your employer’s net profit.
Here is a key thing to remember:
Employers do not hire workers to maintain the workers’ standard of living. Employers hire workers to perform a job and seek to compensate them at no more than the fair market rate for the work they perform.
You Are Worth Exactly What You Make Now!
In real terms, you are worth exactly what you are earning right now. If you disagree then do something else that will earn you more. Get a higher paying job – if you can. Or, go work for yourself. If you choose the latter option you will face the cold, hard reality that you will eat tomorrow what you produce today. If you really have what it takes you may substantially improve your income.
