10 glaring signs that you are being underpaid

By Lemuel Irabor
Contact: lifeandasixteenyearold@gmail.com

 

W

e all love to get rewarded adequately for the various services that we render. Whether we are salary earners or high school students earning stipends to save towards having a college education, the feeling is the same. However, even the slight suspicion of being taken advantage of can foster ill feelings and has been found to be a leading cause mental health issues such as stress and depression.

Here are (free) 10 glaring indications that you are being underpaid by your employer.

1. Your workload has increased but your pay hasn’t

   Perhaps the most glaring evidence of your being underpaid is that you literally ‘work like an elephant but eat like an ant’. Despite the increased paperwork, your pay check doesn’t improve.

2. You never get raises

 

 Business etiquette recommends that on an average of once a year, employees should get raises. Sort of like a ‘thank you’ gift in appreciation of how long a member of staff has been in the establishment. Or in recognition of particular stellar qualities or heroic deeds.

 Or just for the hell of it.

3. Other employers are increasing, your boss is refusing

   
     











When you have a chat with your friends in other firms, you discover, sadly, that although you are in the same line of work and possibly with the same educational qualifications & years of experience; they earn far better than you do from your basic salary—a clear indication that you’re being underpaid and apparently being taken advantage of by your boss.

4. Your boss is raking in more than he is giving out...by a great margin!

  

   

 Although it is a more arduous task of determining the generated revenue/income of a private firm compared to a public one, subsequent office discussions and random sightings of the company’s account records and budget should give you a pretty good idea. One condition for giving salary raises is a substantial growth in the company’s revenue.

So, armed with this knowledge, don’t hesitate to demand for a raise.

5. Your services are in great demand, but…

    

You’ve noticed, yourself, that your boss asks for you more. Your work hours are increasing and you find yourself doing over-time more often. But all you have to show for all the hard work is a ‘thank you’, or at most a mug bearing the inscription ‘#1 employee’.

It’s not enough, chum.

6. Increased responsibilities without appropriate compensation

    
When you got on the job newly, you were employed as a typist. But now, you perform secretarial, managerial and accountant roles amidst other minor roles.

If you were getting the right monetary compensation, you wouldn’t complain but…you know the rest.

7. You are still being paid a beginner’s salary

    
You joined that company five years ago, but you haven’t even been considered for one salary upgrade?

Believe me, you’re being underpaid. During a five-year period, an employee is expected to have received at least two pay raises on average.

8. Promotion without any addition

    
So now you’re a Level 2 staff member in that firm or perhaps you have earned various official prefixes and suffixes that your name gives a 6^th grader a hard time pronouncing it.

If your pay check doesn’t reflect it, it is hardly worth it.

9. You never get leave allowances

  
 Studies have shown that most employees who do not get any leave allowances were also likely to be underpaid. Your leave allowance could also determine whether you are being appreciated at work or not.

10. Lastly, gut feeling and woman intuition

  I know they’re greatly overrated, but there have also been reports of success in pay raise bids, attributed to them.

The bottom line here is to investigate whenever ‘something doesn’t feel right’.

Don’t rely on intuition alone.