Taking what's yours

What a person deserves in terms of rewards or compensation is as sensitive a subject as religion in a presidential debate.




As employees, we place a large amount of trust that our supervisors will remember and take into account every single thing we did well (and conveniently forget all our cock-ups and mediocrities). Based on this recollection, we are accorded a raise, perquisite, or share of the business profits.

However, as managers ourselves we simply cannot remember everything our staff did well. More likely we recall every moment they let us down or annoyed us. We remember how our peers failed in one respect or another. But really, can our staff trust us to take into account every thing they did well?


Now, if one of my hypothetical staff members quits because I failed to recognize her accomplishments by giving her a raise (assuming she deserves it), I'm not sure I'll be impressed with her decision making.

The incident could have well been prevented if she actually asked for the raise and justified the request by accounting for her performance. If it's merited, then what stopped her from asking? If I was expected to keep a running tally of every staff member's contribution, and expected to dispense with the reward on her timetable, then it would compromise my own productivity to say the least. Not to say that I'll elect to be ignorant of these, rather the accountability for career rewards is shared by both manager and direct report.

So what I'm saying is that if it's yours, take it.