Whenever the subject of raising the minimum wage receives widespread attention, the discussion often focuses on the actual jobs that pay minimum wage. Think of the duties and responsibilities of your company’s employees who earn the minimum wage. If those workers have significant interactions with your customers and clients, consider the advantages of improving their compensation.

Some Minimum Wage Employees Play Crucial Roles

Although you might regard a particular position as a minimum-wage job, your company’s competitors might be offering better pay for the same type of work. Take advantage of the opportunity to learn what your competitors pay to remain competitive for the best talent in terms of hiring and retention. To get a clear perspective on labour market conditions, review salary surveys. Pay attention to whether your minimum wage employees are involved with customer service, such as receptionists. Those employees might be the only human beings from your company who interact with a significant portion of your customers. From your clients’ perspective, those minimum-wage employees are the face of your company. If those workers are anxious about finding another employer willing to pay them an extra dollar per hour, they might not focus their attention on your customers. When you pay a higher wage to those employees, they have an incentive to do a better job for you.

Paying More Than the Minimum Wage is Cost-Effective

One of the most important reasons why paying your employees more than the minimum wage is good for your company’s bottom line is that money motivates people. This is why many organizations pay bonuses. Bonuses improve the morale, motivation, and productivity of employees. Offering modest salary increases to your top-performing minimum-wage workers can pay huge dividends, particularly when those employees have a significant amount of interaction with your customers.

Improve Workplace Safety

A stubborn reluctance to let bottom-tier employees rise above the minimum wage can create some negative safety consequences. When a business views employee compensation as an expense to be minimized whenever possible, employee morale can decline, turnover may rise, and workers can become disengaged from their jobs. Demoralized workers can become more prone to making errors on the job. The higher turnover rate among unsatisfied employees increases the number of replacement workers who are within the learning curve of their responsibilities. Lower wages make it difficult for employees to maintain adequate levels of nutrition, making them more susceptible to illness. When these struggling employees attempt to work while suffering from a contagious disease, they can spread germs throughout the workplace, possibly infecting their co-workers and other personnel beyond their own work units.

Spot Your Top Performers With Payroll Software

Payroll software such as Time Tracker can integrate with QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online accounting software to produce productivity and profitability reports, helping you better understand where your employees are allocating their time. Without hunting down time sheets, you can ascertain which employees are earning your company the most money.