Every once in a while, some of the people on my team need to travel to another location as part of our job. A few weeks ago, it was the turn of myself and one of my coworkers. She had been working as a contractor for this company since before the pandemic, and I started here about 4 months ago.
During our (several hour) car ride home from the job location, we started talking about how much we make and what our career plans were. I found out that she was disgustingly under paid (about 60% of what I am making and I think her role is more difficult than mine) and is considering finding another contract or position elsewhere. In my opinion she is brilliant and an invaluable asset to our team. if she were to leave, half of our project would collapse and everyone’s life would become incredibly difficult at work. I told her this and suggested that she discuss a raise with our boss.
She doesn’t have any issues with the company or our team (we are treated pretty well), simply wants to get a bigger paycheck and to advance her career. Also, she doesn’t want to screw anyone over by leaving or make things awkward by asking for a raise.
I told her that if her decision to leave caused half the project to fail, that would be management’s fault for putting all their eggs in one basket and then not paying her enough to stay. Additionally, if she was seriously considering leaving in the near future, then she has nothing to loose. Either she gets more money for being as valuable as she is and can still leave whenever she chooses, or she knows she isn’t valued as much as she should be, and has more motivation to find something else like she was going to anyway. I wouldn’t be mad at her for leaving, I’d blame management for putting that much responsibility on her and then underpaying her such that she leaves.
I’m happy to say she came in this morning to thank me for the talk, and informed me that she got a good enough raise that she’ll staying for a while longer.
TLDR: found out one of my hardest working coworkers was paid significantly less than me, and encouraged her to ask for a raise or move on with her career. She got the raise.