看到一篇文章，还挺有趣的。是关于我们的薪水。

Anixekai

其实，这篇文章是个英文文章，但是它说出一些点子关于薪水。那个文章基本上是说，老板是不会发高薪水给我们得，我们只好只能拼命地去自我改进。它也指出蛮详细的原因为何是这样。

如果，你们有空，不犯花点时间来读一读它吧。

I have been hearing complains everywhere that everything has increased in prices yet the salaries did not go up as much as we wanted it to be. But then, if you actually read through the annual reports on our top performance companies, you may eventually find some answers in it. In most companies, the salaries take the biggest chunk of the total cost. In this case, I will be using CIMB Group Berhad as an example.

CIMB's 2014 Annual Report
The annual report of CIMB in year 2014.
In the annual report of 2014 of CIMB Group Berhad, the total salaries and bonuses of their staffs costed CIMB RM 3.6 billion without the inclusion of other things such as overtime, incentives etc.

Meanwhile the total cost was RM 8.2 billion, hence just the staffing already took up a good about 40% of the total cost of the company. Therefore, if you look at it further, the staffs’ salaries and bonuses already took up 1 quarters worth of the CIMB’s revenue. Basically, if you are running CIMB Group Berhad, the first 3 months of revenues are just for paying off the staffs.

So, if we are to increase this staffing costs by about just 10%, the 3.6 billion will become almost 4 billion overnight, hence if the bank decides to increase everyone’s salaries by just about 10% a year, and yet still need to keep the profit up, the bank will needs to earn additional of 0.36 billion per year to give you that increment. Therefore, if everyone want an increment of 10% every year, the bank will needs to earn a significant amount of profit year on year.

Now comes to the eternal question, are we under paid and does better pay lead to better productivity?

Unfortunately, the answers for both are No. Let me explain to you why.

The payment is a function of value or productivity, but the term is often abused and misused to reflect something simple as “I complied MY KRA already mah….! ” , while that is something to remember that the bank need to grow hence you need to over perform. Which in other words, if your department have 5 people and earn RM 10 k for today, it will need to earn RM 11 k next year to give you that 10 % increment. If say 4 out of the 5 do not perform, it’s consider as you are been overpaid instead.

Likewise, if you are an operations staff (i.e. one who counts money) and you’re doing great at your job, if the bank earns RM 9 k this year, it is a bad year for you even if you have over performed.

Now, let’s say you hired a plumber or a maid, and you paid him 20% over the market rate, will he perform better? You can do this with anyone you hire, such as a teacher to teach you math, and you pay him 20% more, will you get a better value from him?

Chances are you will not get a better value from him.

How does this teacher get a better value then? Let’s say he is an Oxford graduate and trains people on how to get into Oxford University, then he can ask you for 50% more. This is because it’s justified that there is an added value in his services.

This is what we called as higher production, and why there were some industries people went for more papers, while the employers however think otherwise. Let’s take this as an another example, if you earn RM 3 k this year and there’s an increment of Rm 300, are you gonna be 10% more productive?

There’s high chances that you gonna remain the same, just like how people kept on jump from 1 company to another and demanding 20-30 % pay hike but the performances remain the same.

The way to increase the salaries/wages is to increase the revenue of the company and reduce any costs that are non-employee based, but this does not apply to all salaries/wages.

Let’s say an Investment Banking gets a great year, thus their employees get a good salaries where else a Personal Banking gets a bad year, thus their salaries or bonuses will not be good. Likewise, you will not want to increase a clerk’s salary to an experienced banker’s salary either right?

The crux of the issue in Malaysia is not about the salary/wage, but the opportunity instead. Let’s say you work for a small 10 people SME, and you are the best performer and the business earns RM 5 million a year. Now, will the boss ever going to pay you RM 20 k? He most probably won’t and he will never will. Why? Because your vertical opportunities are limited. If you are in sales field, you can only do sales until the company grows larger and the boss require you to be a sales manager instead, then your pay will increase, otherwise no way your pay gonna increase.

But then, if you remembered few years ago that the PKR Strategy Director, Rafizi Ramli once said,

The Federal Government has a great influence on the salary adjustments for employees of the public sector and the salaries of civil servants will be used as a reference in the private sector.

The plan to increase the government salaries to ‘benchmark’ the private sector is not economically sound. Government work by nature (considering its mostly concerned with providing social and basic services) either loss-making or difficult to quantify (how much is the ‘value’ of health and safety regulations?). It can pay a worker as much or as little as they want and it’s really difficult to say whether it’s cost-efficient or not.

However, private business is much easier to quantify, if you produce (as a worker) less in value than what you make for the company, you’re out. It doesn’t matter what the government sector is charging for you or for someone else in your function, the company will pay as much as it’s profitable.

In essence, there’s no point of ‘setting a benchmark’ because the hard limit depends on the business, and the demand and supply of the market. Besides that, some of you may or may not have realize that even if the government increases the salaries of the government sector, and the private sector follow suit due to the market competition, everything will still remain the same. Because when salary increase, inflation will also increase due to more people able to afford paying at a higher price. Thus, the service industry’s wages also increases because they can charge more. It will just becomes a loop.

myboleh dot net/blog/2015/04/18/why-our-salary-did-not-increase-much/

也希望大家能对那篇文章来发表一些本人的意见。谢谢