It's not a tactic. It's, in fact how a LOT of companies do it. As the guy in charge of doling out my pool of raise money it has absolutely been a zero sum game everywhere I've done it.
If our across the board raise rate is 3% and I give you 5%, I had to give someone else 1%. In practice, I would like take 0.25-1% from more people to spread the pain out some.
If there was someone performing at a level that made me feel it was okay not to give them a raise, I might grab it all from them. But doing this pretty much means they will leave in 3-6mos or I will wind up letting them go sooner. They were likely already on a PIP or we've had serious performance discussions throughout the year.
It's not a tactic, it's simply the way it is. not giving a raise to someone is a signal that puts the wheels in motion for them to be gone. Your relationship with them will be tested, likely broken. If I want to keep everyone on my team, barring extraordinary circumstances, I need to generally even them out. Evened out seems to settle between 2.75 and 3.25%.
What most people don't say is that a good company will have set aside a pool of money for retention. It could be a salary correction because someone got in cheap and we recognize that we need to adjust them up more than a simple raise- most of the time it's the emergency money I can go to the CEO and beg for in order to match that offer you got if I really want to keep you and think you'll be happy to stay.
If our across the board raise rate is 3% and I give you 5%, I had to give someone else 1%. In practice, I would like take 0.25-1% from more people to spread the pain out some.
If there was someone performing at a level that made me feel it was okay not to give them a raise, I might grab it all from them. But doing this pretty much means they will leave in 3-6mos or I will wind up letting them go sooner. They were likely already on a PIP or we've had serious performance discussions throughout the year.
It's not a tactic, it's simply the way it is. not giving a raise to someone is a signal that puts the wheels in motion for them to be gone. Your relationship with them will be tested, likely broken. If I want to keep everyone on my team, barring extraordinary circumstances, I need to generally even them out. Evened out seems to settle between 2.75 and 3.25%.
What most people don't say is that a good company will have set aside a pool of money for retention. It could be a salary correction because someone got in cheap and we recognize that we need to adjust them up more than a simple raise- most of the time it's the emergency money I can go to the CEO and beg for in order to match that offer you got if I really want to keep you and think you'll be happy to stay.