Employees and their sense of entitlement

Anyone that works near me knows exactly what I speak of when I say employees have a sense of entitlement, specifically a right to have more than a 6% guaranteed yearly pay raise.

Now for a little background info on how we all got to this point. Prior to 2006, the ceiling for pay raises at my place of employment was 10% per year. It seemed as though achieving a pay raise of at least 6% was quite common for a majority of the employees. So perhaps many employees have gotten used to a 10% raise? When it was announced in 2006 that the raise cap would be 6% and everyone would be receiving this raise as long as they were employed, the announcement upset quite a few people.

Employees upset over the announcement were mostly divided into two parties:

• Those upset that everyone would be receiving the same raise regardless of performance
• Those upset that 6% would be the maximum yearly raise

I can partially sympathize with the folks in the first group. By guaranteeing a set raise, there is no incentive to improve performance. The good employees essentially carry the poor employees. Yet, I am also cognizant of the fact that some managers would automatically give a 10% raise to their friends and little or no raise to employees they did not like.

As for the second group of upset employees, I have no sympathy for them. Here are some statistics for you to mull over:

• The US Military across-the-board raise for 2007 is 2.2% (read)
• The US civilian average raise in 2006 calculated by the Employee Cost Index is 1.7%
• The US employee average raise in 2005 calculated by HR Mercer Consulting is 3.6%

Consider this, at 10%, an employee nearly doubles the initial starting salary after 7 years, discounting the high probability of promotions and pay raises based off the promotions. I know not all and probably not even a majority of the employees fall into the second group, who I will now call the 6% Percenters, but the gall of these employees because they have fallen off the gravy train is sickening.