The Hindu Business Line : Salary shenanigans

This week, I had initially intended to part with some interesting insights into the world of business literature. Since there is so much content out there, I had planned to do a piece on business newspapers today and another on business books the next time. After all, as Francis Bacon once famously said, "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested," and business books to be read and laughed at very loudly.

For some undisclosed reason a newspaper refused to print my piece on business newspapers. I was incensed. I grabbed a copy of the Constitution I always carry (abridged and illustrated) and went to the newspaper office. I walked up to the editor and demanded my rights to free expression. He was a nice man and explained to me why this was essential for the newspaper. "PR is important for us," he said. "Besides we won't send you any of your pending cheques." Satisfied I went back home.

Which conveniently conveys us smoothly to today's topic of discussion: salaries and remuneration.

Now don't get all excited. I am not going to tell you how to make a lot of money and draw even higher salaries from your employers. If I knew that, I would not be writing satire columns for a business newspaper and constantly trying to dodge my cable fellow. Oh no. Instead, we will discuss a couple of prevalent misconceptions about remuneration and salaries. Mind you, these are misconceptions only for young inexperienced managers. Employers do not refer to these issues as misconceptions or ambiguities. Instead they are known as `best practices' and CEOs often meet secretly in five-star hotels to exchange notes, ideas and conversations as follows:

CEO 1: "So we had this fellow who just had to be promoted to Vice-President."

CEO 2: "God! That means a hefty pay hike, no?"

CEO 1: "Correct. But just before that we transferred him to Asansol."

CEO 2: "Oh. And did he become Vice-President?"

CEO 1: "No idea. We don't have a branch in Asansol."

CEO 2 and others: "Well done! We will all note this down."

CEO 1 then returns to his office and routinely releases memos to his employees, which are peppered with terms like `teamwork', `collective effort', `performance driven' and `merit-based'. No one has a clue. Especially the team in Asansol.

Anyway, on to more important things. Now we will look at some commonly prevalent salary traps that new managers routinely fall into and HR managers make a career out of.

Trap 1

Browse through any job posting in any newspaper. Go on. Pick up a sheet. Now read through it. See the common pattern? There is the bit about the company and its amazing culture right at the top. Then there is the vacancy concerned in large bold lettering followed by the ideal qualities of the applicant. But right at the bottom is the one line that matters. The first instance of fraud in your career is perpetrated right there . In the job posting it self! This is that line: `Compensation as per industry standard'.

Shudder.

At first glance it seems harmless. The new manager can be excused for thinking: `What can be more just than paying you the best that the industry offers? I see nothing wrong with that.'

Aha! You poor new manager, you... Let us go back to that statement again. Notice something fishy? Look again. Exactly! It makes no mention of which industry is being referred to whatsoever! The blackguards! The chicanery! So don't be surprised if at the end of your first month you get a salary slip so pathetic you immediately shelve all ideas of a Skoda Octavia and decide, instead, to opt for the 110-BEST bus that drops you outside the office every day. And if you get pained and storm into your HR manager's office? He will merely wave the advertisement in your face and stick his tongue out saying: "We were referring to the unorganised men's socks industry. Sorry. Run along. Off to work now... "

Trap 2

Now even if you were to gracefully sidestep the `industry-standard' clause and manage to corner a lucrative remuneration package the skulduggery does not end there. Oh no. Then comes the next great villain of the piece: `Cost to company'. Shiver.

Many are the young managers who have inadvertently fallen for the `cost to company' trap. Dozens have been driven into penury by this most vile of human resource sleights of hand. A friend of mine recently was a victim of this himself. He was recruited by a leading multinational company and promised a hefty pay package of Rs 32.34 lakh. (We writer types keep a close watch on our salaried friends and their disposable incomes.)

But when his first pay slip came, his eyes popped out and there were contact lenses all over the place. He immediately phoned the salaries department, which promptly sent him an Excel sheet with his remuneration break-up. The entire eye-popping thing happened all over again and his colleagues were beginning to get fed up of looking for his lenses.

My friend found to his dismay that roughly half of his package was medical coverage for his family and that too only for a select list of illnesses. And that too only against hospitalisation. For a moment, he contemplated giving everyone a harmless strain of tuberculosis to cash in. But thankfully sense prevailed, no thanks to a columnist friend, and he merely gave his mother-in-law an extremely virulent and resilient strain of Bolivian flu.

These two frauds are just the tip of the iceberg. Next time, we will round up `salaries and remuneration' by covering a few of the other more popular tools used by large employers to keep manpower costs in check. They include `procedures for reimbursement', `miscellaneous deductions' and, this gives me the creeps just to say it, `meal vouchers'.

Till then be safe, manage well and don't let that HR guy out of your sight.

(The writer, an alumnus of IIM-A, was a management consultant before quitting to work on a book and a full-time writing career)

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