Background:
On my 5th year work anniversary, I wrote a lengthy, professional email to boss and his boss reminiscing and detailing the ups and downs of my time at the company so far. At the end of the email I requested a market rate adjustment as (go figure) my salary has not kept pace with inflation and my skills had grown significantly.
After hearing nothing for over 6 weeks my manager informed me that HR had denied on my request. Their reasons were:
“Not appropriate at this time”
“They believe my compensation is “competitive” at this time.”
“HR does a year review to determain market rate adjustment.”
“HR uses enterprise resources to determine market rates that aren’t available to you pesents.”
“HR doesn’t entertain “out of band” raise requests as this would be a “slippery slope”.”
Seeking advice:
How do I proceed from here?
I will of course be looking for job offerers elsewhere, but my skills are specialized and finding a role elsewhere will take time.
I did some googling and most of the advice is basically, “Work super hard and force them to give you a raise the next time you ask.”, and we all know that’s written by the same type of person who’s job it is to deny raises and make sure the rest of us live paycheck to paycheck.
I was actually pretty happy in my job before this process but now I’m demotivated, disenfranchised and depressed. I’d quit first thing Monday if I could afford to.