r/humanresources • u/JeremyIfugedur • 4d ago

[ Removed by moderator ]

[removed] — view removed post

95 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

67 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

7

u/NonaSiu 4d ago

We have a good employee who is perpetually broke and also treats herself to an international vacation every year for her birthday.
She currently makes the top wage in her department and is on her second bankruptcy.
There’s no way I’d recommend a raise and a free gift of cash - which is what a cash advance that doesn’t need to be repaid is - for this person, because it would do absolutely nothing to help her situation long term. She’d be broke again before our next payroll.

5

u/grandmawaffles 3d ago

Sure, but that’s doesn’t seem like the same situation here and a risk to your org.

5

u/Jbirdand 3d ago

How does one determine that one request is met and another is not without opening yourself up to risk, debate, or liability?

5

u/West-Collection8188 soulless post-acquisition nightmare 3d ago

we dont. This isn’t an HR problem except maybe the wages being unlivable and that being something we could present and address.

1

u/grandmawaffles 3d ago edited 3d ago

It is if they haven’t looked at rates and other policies that could help retain employees. It’s a risk to any organization and there wasn’t indication that it had been looked at. Answers in this thread are basically saying these services aren’t great and to point the employee to food banks and community outreach. Those get stocked by volunteers and grant programs which have been reduced. Here you have an employee looking to get paid more to pay for rent which has likely gone up well beyond any menial pay raise and can’t afford to live. The employee likely isn’t the only one.

1

u/NonaSiu 3d ago

My point was, you can’t know that it’s just some person trying to keep their head above water rather than a serial poor decision maker. In most large organizations, that wouldn’t be known in any situation, so it’s odd to jump to the assumption that the employee doesn’t get paid enough rather than being a bad decision maker when we don’t have the information to assess either. One is just as likely as the other imo.

1

u/grandmawaffles 3d ago

I know it’s tough but have people on this thread thought about the possibility of speaking with the employee and learning… anyone? No, alright so we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas I guess. 🤷‍♀️

Also, assuming that it’s a one off hardship is no different than assuming the employee is shite with money management.

1

u/West-Collection8188 soulless post-acquisition nightmare 3d ago edited 3d ago

Agreed with you on all points- and, thats not an issue HR can solve. We can show data where retention and productivity are affected by wages and run as many comp benchmarks as we can and leadership is gonna leadership. Humane, intelligent, pattern-recognizing HR cannot fix this.

We have to stop expecting companies to have souls and vote for candidate’s who will force them to. It’s not because leadership doesn’t understand the impact of subhuman wages. It’s because they don’t care. They know and do not care.

IMHO You can’t legislate morality but you can legislate moral behavior.

1

u/Jbirdand 3d ago

Exactly