Yes, the promotion would bump the salary, probably more than I could give her otherwise. And whether or not it would promote her out of the area where she is working so well is another “it depends”.
I had a fabulous employee who was doing twice what his predecessor or his replacement could do. (Maybe 3 times what his predecessor did.) My boss wouldn’t let me promote him, so I counselled him to consider jobs outside my department. Sadly for me, he took me up on that, and he’s since rocketed up in the company. It was rough on me and my team, but it was a win for him and for the company as a whole to move him to a place where his contributions have more scope.
My answer would have been something along the lines of: If there are standards in place that determine how much employees get paid, and when, why, and how much they get pay raises, I would follow those standards. And if there aren’t, maybe there should be?
I noticed that the poll didn’t tell us how much the employee was already making (relative to the other employees). For all I know, she’s already paid three times as much as anyone else.
I don’t know about anybody else, but I never answer poll questions about hypotheticals, such as “What would you do in such a circumstance. . .” I have no idea how I would act in a hypothetical situation unlike any I’ve been through.
OTOH, I’m happy to answer poll questions about stuff that’s actually happened to me, or my opinions about things I’ve actually experienced.
One place I worked I was friends with the department receptionist – we even went to dinner a few times. She’d been going to the local CC and got a two-year degree in document-QA. When she proudly showed me her pocket diploma I said, “I’m sad I’ll miss you.”
“Huh?”
“You were hired as a receptionist. To this company you will always be a receptionist. They might dump some QA work on your plate but they won’t give you any more money for it. To get what you’re now worth you’ll have to get hired someplace else.”
Three months later she said I was right and three months after that, she’d left.
Actually (and maybe just coincidentally), that proportion (about 20% in the poll) is consistent with this cite for the U.S., which states that about 20% of Americans rely on septic systems.
Is there a move away from septic systems? We used to have one, but around 5 years ago we were required to connect to the town sewer system instead. It’s up in the Catskills near one of the reservoirs that supplies NYC with water and there were concerns that older septic systems (ours was from 1969) could contaminate the reservoir.
It really depends on the infrastructure. I currently live in a town that is very large in area but most of it is pretty rural. The parts of town that are more dense have water mains and sewers. The rest don’t. I’m in a town house development built in the 1980s and I do have city water and sewer.
I thought of the question because this week I had a job working traffic for the water company. They were putting in water service to a house. I was very surprised that street had well water. It’s was just a couple of streets over from where I grew up. There is a water main on the street but no one is obligated to hook up.
Interesting, we’re in a rural area at the edge of a small town and at the foot of a mountain. We share a well with another house, so there’s a sewer system but no water mains.
I had failed to mention that, but the assumption was that everyone was starting off with the same pay. So, for instance, maybe this employee earns $20 an hour, but so do all the other employees - but everyone else’s production is only the average, while hers is 2x the average.
What I was aiming for with the poll was basically, “How much of an increase in productivity should translate into an increase in wages?”
The one I grew up in was probably late 1700’s – I remember being told as a small child, in the 1950’s, that the house was “almost 200 years old”, with the result that I pestered my father every once in a while asking whether the house had turned 200 yet. He eventually managed to explain to me that “almost 200” didn’t mean the “almost” would arrive as soon as if one were saying “almost 5”.
I think the septic issue has a lot to do with the average distance between the houses. Running sewer into rural areas costs a lot more per house than running it down a city, or even a suburban, street. Plus which, of course, the further apart the houses are the easier it is to get functioning septic systems for each of them; septic systems, standard ones at least, require not only space for each system but also space between them. How much depends on the local soil types.
Agreed. But the neighborhood that I was working in was certainly very suburban. My old neighborhood is about four streets over and has city water. The houses were built in 1959-1960. There were no wells on my street. This other street was of similar age but had wells. I knew houses in the much older part of town still have wells but I was unaware that any did in other parts. That’s what got me thinking about the poll. The entire town is on a water grid. Every road has a water main. Any place I have lived that has a well and septic is because there is no main to hook up to.
That’s what I thought; and I stand by my earlier answer: if you want wages to be tied to productivity, which is measurable, there should be standards in place for how wages are determined. I’d be uncomfortable with raises being given only to people who ask for them and at the complete discretion of the boss. If I were said boss, I don’t think I’d trust myself to handle such a (lack of) system fairly.
The house i grew up in had a septic tank. My parents were required to connect it to the town sewer to sell the house. (The house had municipal water when it was built.) The housing isn’t any denser than it was, but the rules have changed.
(The only new houses on the street replaced teardowns, as the town is mcmansionized.)
If the wells have good water, the residents may well prefer it to the chlorinated city water. I’m nowhere near a city main; but my well water has excellent flavor, and I’ve never tasted city water I like anywhere near as well.