I'm Special

I got pissed off this morning.

My boss tried to get his boss to agree to allowing non-managers to salary-sacrifice in order to purchase notebook computers. The tax laws here make it very profitable to purchase a notebook that way - i.e. about A$2000 better than buying a notebook privately.

The crux of the issue is that the boss's boss wants to keep these deals as a privilege for managers. He wants to prevent the non-managers from having the possible tax benefits of salary sacrificing in order to be able to have us managers feel special. Well, I sure do feel soooo special. I now have one very annoyed engineer who can see no logical reason why he shouldn't be allowed to salary sacrifice. It is a trifling cost to the company - less than half an hour of administrative work to fill in the forms. How can I defend what I see as an illogical decision?

If management wants to offer privileges, they should be privileges that actually cost something to the company. To deny any employee access to perks that are cost neutral to the company is counter-intuitive. I always thought that to keep our good employees we wanted them to be happy. Any reward that we can provide for free and doesn't impact our productivity should be given.

Now we stand to lose one of our most talented engineers. He was already pissed off at the salary levels, but he can understand the logic behind keeping salaries lower when the company profitability targets are struggling.

This is the sort of issue that pushes me towards dropping out of management. I shall think about it. I may have already mentioned how much I dislike administrative work and people management. I think I'd continue to cope with this annoyance if I could see that the organisational head was leading the company with vision rather than just managing a power structure.