VP Making Less Than Subordinate?

June 16, 2008 · Filed Under For the love of HR 

It happens. Or so says the mailbag:

I have a situation discovered inadvertently through my boss. I am a VP within the company. An individual was offered to move from another city out to our location to help replace and lend expertise due to several exiting reps. This individual was assigned to my area and reported to me as part of the team. Unbeknownst to me, the individual was offered over 15% more in annual salary as well as incentive increases to offset the income lapse from what was earned at the original office. When I found out, I brought up the disparity to the exec only to be told I would need to pick up the team success to see a possible adjustment to my income. There is much more responsibility and accountability in my role compared to the other individual. HR has been approached and the response was to speak with the persons who put this in place. Been there and done that. What to do?

I have already talked about making less than your subordinate so I won’t try to hit too many of those points again.

As an HR guy, I’d love for people to bury their head in the sand about pay. After all, if we could live in a vacuum and figure out what we’d like to make for the work we’re doing and we are happy about this, what does it matter? The problem with that is it is unrealistic to expect people to act this way. If you’re the boss, you want to be paid more (even if your salary if perfectly sufficient). If you were unhappy with your pay, it would have been better to address it without making the comparisons. After all, there are a few legitimate reasons why a subordinate may make more that I addressed in my last post about subordinate compensation. One of those reasons is one you brought up: market conditions. If you have an employee you want to attract from another market, oftentimes you are going to apply that pay to attract them. That may include making them more highly paid than the boss.

If you are getting brick walled by HR and your boss, you’re not getting anywhere. You have a couple options: start looking for better paid positions or earn your money through making improvements in your department.

To me at least, the most fascinating aspect about this whole question is that it doesn’t mention the performance of the person hired or if the company makes a great ROI on the employee. If you are the VP of Sales and this person makes a ton of money for the company and happens to get paid more than you: great! You have a great person on your team making your numbers look good. Your prosperity rises and falls with your employees and not the other way around.

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