UK Dopers - are we legally entitled to a COL Payrise?

Factual Questions
1

Currently i suffer under a PRP system where i gain advanced ratings but don’t get the appropriately enhanced pay rise because “Company x don’t have enough money this year so we’ll just downgrade your rating”. Frankly it’s beginning to hack me off. :frowning:

I’ve checked and been advised that i can opt-out of the PRP system but my employers claim that this means i am no longer eligible for a Cost of Living Payrise. Does anyone know if this is correct or are they just bullshitting me?

In other jobs the COL award was automatically given each year or i didn’t feel so disillusioned by the PRP system that i wanted to opt-put so i’ve no real experience of this. I always worked* under the assumption that the COL was a statutory requirement. Isn’t it?

heh - in both senses of the word

2

blink blink

Not to hijack, but you work for a … <i>private</i> company?

UK is a funny country.

3

I think your questions are going to generate questions of our own from us Americans and others. What are all these systems you are talking about? We don’t seem to have anything like that around these parts.

4

No.

5

Rats. Thanks for that - i guess i’ll just have to be subversive from within rather than opting out :smiley:

To clarify (not that it matters now i gues) I work for what is mostly a public company. To incentivise staff to work hard and well there is a system of performance management whereby staff who exceed set levels of performance get slightly more than the Cost of Living payrise. Well it *would * incentivise staff if they ever actually paid out the dough.

goes off to fume silently at our Uberfuhrer’s £365,000 bonus for good performance

6

While there is no government-mandated COL increase, you might want to check the wording of your company’s plans and your employment contract. I suspect, though, that they will give the company discretion.

7

I have done - and trawled through Department of Trade & Industry documents. I think they would be able to get away with it.

To be honest it’s not really about the money (the rise would be negligible) but the fact that those of use who worked hard have been downgraded and are given no recognition for it. We might as well have sat on our asses like the smart, lazy folks. We even asked to have the higher grade put on our employment records with a note saying we were happy not to get the enhanced payment but no dice. Bastids. :frowning:

Thanks anyway.

8

I’m British and I was initially confused by the OP. PRP appears to stand for Performance-Related Pay, but it’s not a statutory thing, it would be some system specific to the company in question. I’ve never had automatic cost-of-living pay rises, either.

9

Time to job hunt?

10

To clarify further - i know PRP is not statutory. It’s very much a company burden. It was just that i had always thought that a cost of living rise was. In other companies i’ve worked at we were given the COL rise in April and then our PRP enhancement was kept totally separate. It seems that the company i am currently with chooses to lump them together.

Job hunting sounds good but in the short term i’ll go for subversion :smiley:

11

This depends upon your contract. :smiley:

I’ve worked in both the state and private sectors - had my own company at one point - and I’ve never had a COL payrise. It’s always been one pay award, sometimes with a bonus scheme. Employer-employee negotiations often start from noting the increased cost of living, however.

BTW I know how you feel about getting a small payrise when the big boss gets millions.

12

It depends upon exactly how the PRP system is broken down.

In large parts of the state sector there is a fixed sum, say 2.5% of the total proposed pay budget (that’s the figure for this year) which has two purposes.

The first purpose is to be used to move those from low levels in their pay band, upwards.

The second is a non-pensionable non-consolidated lump sum for those who are already at the top of the pay band.

The 2.5% is not distributed equally, the better you perform, the more you get, or vice versa, but perform badly enough and you would be subject to review.
The pay scale itself takes the form of a pay spine, with each grade having a band between two specific levels, each point represents a certain pay level within the overall scale, the total pay spine goes up to around 320 points, my grade runs up to 150 points, I do not recall the lower end of my scale.

COL this year in the state sector means that the points have been revalued by 1.5%.

Unfortunately getting that enhanced performance pay for exceeding your ratings is rather more difficult at lower levels than at higher levels, there is plenty of proof for this as the hugely overwhelming percentage of bonuses have been distributed at the upper tiers, over 80%, which is even worse when you consider those upper levels represent a small percentage of the entire workforce.

You would have to look very carefully at how your pay award was dealt with, what the amount of performance pay was, how it is distributed etc.

One philosophy behind performance pay is that it is transparent, so that you can see what you could expect to gain if you exceed your requirements and that this should be completely seperately identifiable from any other pay issue such as COL.
There is no point in vague preomises of extra pay if you do not know what to do to get it, or how much you can expect - rewards must be visible or they are no incentive at all - the point being that you should be able to work out exactly how your pay rise has been made up.

A pay system that gives in performance pay, and takes away in COL is no performance pay system at all, and will not achieve the objectives of the system, it simply costs a great deal more to administer.

13

The OP is in the private sector, though, I think. It’s not exactly clear what he/she means by “mostly a public company”, but it doesn’t sound like public sector.

14

It’s a PPP (Public Private Partnership).

**casdave ** what you say is exactly as i always understood things to work. My employers think otherwise however and have even amended our PRP system this year so that we lose points for making mistakes rather than gaining points for better work. :rolleyes: Not only that but they have added the proviso that if there is no money left in the budget they won’t give us the payrise even if we DO manage to get the higher grades. :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

So i suppose it’s a Performance Related Punishment system really…

15

PRP is not just about pay, its also about satisfaction, keeping your best staff, it is also linked into personal development, that is, learning or enhancing skills and knowledge.

When this works, both employer and employer benefit, as it addresses personal values.

When it does not work, the best staff leave, the very best will already be making plans even now, the remainder become dissatisfied, they have no peer leadership.(sound like a contradiction in terms, but actually peer behaviour is very influential)

This company is on the slide, I would be interested in knowing how well it is meeting the Service Delivery Agreement, being a PPP company there will certainly be one.

My first inclination is to think they are having trouble meeting their obligations within budget, at I would think this is leading to your situation.

The figures should be readily available, try find anything on recruitment and retention, it will help your case if you collect evidence.

Stuff you are interested in are things such as rates of changes of over-application for available posts, the amount of sick and the trends, the duration of sickness, classicly, increases in short term sickness increases and indicate a falling commitment by the workforce.

Staff turnover might be useful, but you have to be careful to allow for rationalisations.

Numbers of disciplinary hearings etc also give a useful indication, especially when they are based around race relations, or unequal treatment of disabled, gender, or other equal opportunities matters.

This sort of thing is irksome, because PPP companies should be net wealth creators, they should be more flexible than the public sector, able to offer greater rewards to good staff, more efficient and as a result provide better service at lower cost, but such things can only be done with willing staff.

16

I just looked what what PRP stood for and it’s “Performance Related Pay”.
…
As opposed to what? Title Related Pay? Star-alignment related pay? What else can determine your pay other than your performance?

17

I don’t know the details, but in most companies, you’re paid by title, aren’t you?

I mean, if you make widgets or an artist or get a big commission, you might be paid per performance, sort of, but for a lot of jobs from entry-level restaurant worker to high level manager you’re hired to do something, and paid an amount written in your contract, and if you don’t work enough you’re fired, but you don’t get paid more or less based on if you work just acceptably or very well, except by being promoted. Don’t you?

18

I don’t know, in my field it’s customary to pay 5-20% more than your previous job and then gradual raises according to your performance.

19

**casdave ** that’s a brilliant idea to look at the numbers - and under the Freedom of Information Act i dont’ think they will be able to say no as i wouldn’t be asking for personal details on staff.

i know what you are saying with this but the odd thing is that we are expanding. As a business we are actually going from strength to strength - it’s just that staff are more unhappy now. Despite that we are exceeding targets. I suspect there are some serious issues with how our budget is handled though because i just can’t understand how we can start the year promising to pay x to staff who exceed their PRP agreement and end the year with insufficient funds. I’d also be interested to see if the staff in the levels above mine got their enhanced payments (which would have been partially generated by showing that we are all working extra).