Competitive Pay - An Illusion!

A Big Sale or Discount ad at a branded shop… a happy tune start playing somewhere inside you and u feel a strong urge to visit the place as soon as possible… May be u don’t need to buy anything special…Have you ever gone through this scenario??? When you actually reach that place u find out of dismay that there is a small phrase that u have missed earlier - “Conditions Applied” or “Upto” after a few asterisks. Isn’t it a very common scenario that all of us have faced sometime or other???? But it’s also true that once we have gone through this we got cautious next time.

It’s same with the Better Package offers from some other companies.

Being in the IT industry for almost three years, I have gone through hundreds of Adieu mails. Each of those mails contains the same old reasons of Goodbye, may be packed in some different covers!!! The most common factor which lures a person to change his job is some better Pay Package. Work Satisfaction, Job Security, or Brand Value comes after the Pay Package.

The different companies are using this trick to attract the employees and thus drain the talent from some rival company. This helps them to get Ready Employees and which in turn saves their Training Costs. Also it is a way to crack the backbone of the rival companies. This is from the company‘s perspective. From the employees view it’s quite normal that they got attracted to a better package!!! Always they don’t have enough reasons to leave the current job other than the appeal of the Package Offer. The “Conditions Applied” phrase works here also. The concept of the “Variable Pay” which varies according to the Profit of the Company is the hoax in this case. No one can get sure of the “Special Allowances” they will be actually getting until and unless they got the first salary. Also in many cases the percent increase of salary of a lateral employee is much lower than that of a regular employee during a salary revision cycle. I think ultimately in the long run the story remains the same.

So I think the Competitive Pay in the market looks genuinely attractive and the easiest way to get an increase in income at first. People fall easily into this trap. But with experience in the long run they learn the loopholes of the mirage and then they prefer the good will or reputation that they can earn sticking to a particular place for a long time.