Business etiquette and integrity Part II

notrichenough
Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:45:40 +0000

What percentage of the employee’s income is this mistake?

If I am a new hire, how am I supposed to know if it is a mistake, or just a generous benefit? Especially if it is only a small part of my total income; I would probably think it was a strange kind of bonus or something. And since I don’t know what everyone else gets, how am I supposed to know it is out of line? (Obviously if it was 3x the income you could reasonably judge it was wrong).

And that extra $25K could easily be the deciding factor in accepting the job.

Unless it had been explained to me verbally how the payment was supposed to be calculated, so that I might have a reason to suspect it is wrong - would it be reasonable for me to know?

At my level in my company, there is a bonus plan. If I got a job offer for my position saying “$2500 bonus”, I would think, meh. If the offer said “$25000 bonus” I would be pretty stoked - that would be a non-trivial boost to my income, but not an outrageous amount, either.

If my company came back later and said “sorry, we made a typo”, I would be p***ed.

We don’t really have enough detail to judge whether the employee should have known. But if you can’t come to some mutually acceptable compromise, the employee will be angry that they have been screwed, will probably leave (how much will it cost to replace this person?), and meanwhile they will be poisoning the well so to speak.