How do you guys handle it when a relatively good employee asks for an outrageous raise? I just had a guy who is being paid $18/hour ask me to be paid $28/hour. He’s a decent worker, but really not particularly skilled at anything. I have much more skilled employees that make less than what he’s asking for. This person does mostly odd jobs throughout the business. He said he came up with that number because represents a 10% raise for each year he has been here, though the math clearly doesn’t work on that; he would be at less than $24/hour even if I had given him a 10% raise each year.
I agree he deserves a raise, but that amount is crazy. I can hire much more skilled and competent people at that rate. I’m somewhat indifferent to whether he stays or goes, but I don’t see him really quitting as he and my office manager are a couple, and they like to commute to work together. I can handle things if both of them quit. Life would be less fun for a bit, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t see any real scenario where they will be otherwise able to work together like they do now.
I had the same situation recently. The requested jump was even greater than $10.00 per hour. I had to make sure some of my team leads were part of the decision making process, and ultimately I decided to increase that employee’s pay by a number I thought was in line with the value they brought to the overall team they were on (it was less than 50% of the ask).
The result was that the employee stayed and is much more positive now, even though there was a solid chance the offer could have been rejected. I think you are in a position to do the same thing since the resignation of that employee would not be fatal to operations. Coming from the recent job market dominated by employee demands, I think many employees are starting salary negotiations high with their actual target significantly below that mark.