My department was one that supposed to have a market adjustment and/or salary grade upgrades 2 years ago. It was then denied by Human Capital. My department GP is a fantastic person who truly enjoyed being around us all. He is now retiring. That GP invited Human Capital to a department meeting to tell us why that denial was made by the firm.
Embarrassment is too nice of a word to describe Human Capital's presentation. They sent two females who were probably in their upper 20s to mid 30s to recite PowerPoint sildes. The explanation was laughable. Their presentation even showed that we had lower salaries than 3 other "anonymous firms" that they used as a benchmark. They said that they then use a STL market adjustment to justify that our lower salary is competitive. The thing is the only STL competitor is Wells Fargo Advisors. It is well known they pay our positions about $25k more than our grade's midpoint. So Human Capital purposefully leaves out Wells Fargo from their peer firm benchmarking.
The presenters turned off Zoom questions/comments, and did not take questions from the live audience. It was extremely frustrating. The thing that really gets my blood boiling is this. Before ER was announced. I remember looking at the firm's open positions. I remember seeing a lot of HC and HR roles that have grade 11s. What a big Fn conflict of interest!!! They pay themselves above market value. I understand that our revenue is brought in by FAs. Almost every department has a focus to support the FAs and clients. Other departments help protect the money. So most of us have skin in the game. What exactly does HC have, to justify setting their own salary grades higher than people who have a direct affect on clients?
I also believe that was around the same time when DC broke character on a live Town Hall meeting (while in his NYC office) and stated that we should all be thankful to have a job and su-k up the fact that our bonus payouts are lower despite being at level 10. Look up your previous level 10 bonuses from like 2019,2020,2021, and compare that to now. I've gone up 2 salary grades and my bonuses are lower than 2021. Man, that take aged like milk.