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Should Extra Duties Equal More Pay?

May 11, 2009 RSS Feed Print

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Alison Green

A reader writes:

I am currently a secretary, with a degree in computer engineering. My employer now wants me to be the back-up I.T. person in the office, which is not a part of a support staff position. Is it unprofessional to expect or to ask to be compensated for this addition of extra duties? Can you please tell me the best way to ask for compensation and the appropriate time to ask?

Are they asking you to work more hours? Take on work that you strongly prefer not to do? Or is your only objection that it's outside of your regular job description?

If the latter, asking for more money isn't likely to go over well. You'll risk being seen as difficult and not particularly committed to the company or your own performance.

Keep in mind that an employer hires the whole package when they hire a person, not just a limited set of skills that directly correlate to the job description. Maybe your I.T. skills helped you get the job over other candidates, in the first place.

Instead, a better way of looking at this is as part of your performance overall. Incorporate this into your next performance evaluation and discussion of an annual raise, even if that's a ways off. Use the discussion to point out your value as an employee.

Additionally, this may be a way to make yourself more marketable in the future and possibly grow within your current company. Any time you take on new responsibilities, it's an investment in your value to your current employer and future ones. Take the long-term view that this might help you down the road.

Alison Green is the author of Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Leader's Guide to Getting Results. She is chief of staff for the Marijuana Policy Project, a nonprofit lobbying organization, where she oversees day-to-day management of the staff as well as hiring, firing, and staff development. Her writings have been published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Maxim, and dozens of other newspapers. She blogs at Ask a Manager.

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I welcomed an opportunity to perform additional tasks. I was hired as mechanical drafter of the company I work for. Once the office overseas needed some drafting work, I took on their production needs in terms of drafting as well as those here at the home office. A few years later, it was discovered that I have some computer skills, and I was asked to support the network administrator in terms of help desk support etc. In that capacity, Ive dont things like rebuild the domain server when its motherboard failed, install new harddrives and restore OS and all programs for users. Later on, a stack of intellectual property was dropped on my desk from the owner of this company, and the IP information for the several companies the co-owner owns here and abroad. I now handle the maintenance and registration of all patents and trademarks for 5 different companies.
I am still paid at the lower 20% for a mechanical drafter.
THAT is what "going above and beyond" has done for me after 17 years here.
Meanwhile, farmers that can work and restore classic cars are being promoted to operations manager as my supervisor, and way outside of their pay scale going on 20 years of shop hand experience...
It has left me demoralized, removed any personal value to the work I do, left me at the mercy of two bushleagued farm-fks that have never in their professional careers remotely touched anything close to what I do,,, sitting behind closed doors conjuring statements to make to dismiss the increased value of the functions I am fully responsible for now, as "mechanical drafter".
I currently have to fight myself to keep from just ending the fking day in day out game of struggle. UNfairly thrown to the dogs by a couple of guys that call themselves republican conservatives, but act like criminals. and Cheap moronic ones at that.
If you are a business owner, and you know nothing about the function of your employees, you are neither shrewd nor appropriate, by purposely negating the value of ones performance or functions.

Mark of TX 1:46PM April 23, 2013

ontyime1.txt;4;5

TlPKRsqLdHDu of 11:30AM August 10, 2009

If you are being asked to take on additional tasks that are at the same level as your current tasks, then welcome to the workload we're all shouldering today. However, if the new tasks require a significantly higher level of judgment and experience to able to perform them, then indeed it would be appropriate to get more money. Also, Dustin's comments about the frequency of the additional work are very pertinent.

Darcy of CO 12:32PM May 12, 2009