It’s official.  As of last week Britain has hit the dreaded double-dip recession.  In these difficult times it’s easier than ever to say no to requests for a pay rise… or is it?

Whilst some people view it as futile right now to harbour longings for more pay, many do not.  A depressed economy does not mean you won’t get asked for higher pay.  And the fact that people aren’t asking doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about it.  The truth is, even if your staff aren’t talking about pay right now, the way you handle the question of pay in the down-turn is one factor your staff will take into account when the economy begins to turn.

As a leader in your organisation, I wonder how you feel about the question of pay at this time.  Perhaps you are telling yourself the answer is easy right now – the dent in profits your company has taken in the downturn makes it easy to say “no, we can’t afford it right now”.  Perhaps you feel anxious when you think that you can’t reward John, whose contribution is so central to your team’s success, with more pay or a promotion.  You know he was happy to wait two years ago but now you can see he’s starting to feel restless, frustrated, impatient…  Perhaps you want to have more open conversations with those you lead about their pay and rations but you don’t know how.

I wonder if you’d find these conversations easier if you had one clear thought in your mind:  pay is never about the money.  Yes, you read me correctly, pay is never about the money.  Sometimes, pay is indeed about what money can buy – for in this recession we are learning the hard lesson that we have survival needs that sometimes come under threat.  Money is what buys (or rents) a home, food and other essentials.  This isn’t to say that earning a wage is the only way to meet our needs for food and shelter.  And it isn’t to say that covering the essentials will always keep your staff happy.

More often, pay has symbolic value – or can buy something that does.  For some, for example, the ability to buy a larger house or more expensive car is as much about status or self-esteem as it is about comfort or ease.  How else would we have been persuaded to stretch so far beyond our means in the economic upturn?  Advertising links items we can buy with a vast array of human needs, holding out the (often false) promise that buying a car will lead us to intimacy or make us more attractive, or that buying the latest cool gadget will make us part of a community of cool gadgeteers.

So, what should you do?  I could offer the obligatory “seven ways” – perhaps one day I will.  For now though, I wonder how well you understand the diversity of needs your staff are bringing with them to work.  And if you don’t, how could you find out?  To test this I invite you to take five minutes for each member of your team and ask yourself, what do I know about what’s most important for this member of my team?  Better still, take time with your staff to ask for their thoughts.

You may be surprised.  Recently, I smiled when a colleague spontaneously told me how she and her husband measured their wealth.  For him, a key criterion was the amount of spare time he had.  For her, it was the quality of her compost.