Salary and Tears

This conversation about the most sensitive topic in people management — salary review — became one of the catalysts for change. Moments like this reveal how compensation affects employee experience and highlight the need for meaningful transformation.

He sat in front of me — a tall, handsome young man. The kind that many women would probably turn their heads to look at. But now, in the office meeting room, he was crying. I was grateful for the clock on the wall — it helped me keep track of time during this difficult conversation. The moment I announced his new salary and bonus, tears appeared in his eyes. I wasn’t prepared for such a reaction.

From outside, through the many large windows, came the sounds and scents of spring — lilac blooming wildly, filling the air with intoxicating fragrance, birds competing to sing louder and clearer than one another. Mixed in were the voices of passersby and the hum of cars driving past the office building. And here I was, half an hour into a conversation with a colleague who had his own expectations and wasn’t ready to accept the company’s decision.

I was the HR manager who, together with the company, had decided to take the first step toward personalized communication about salary and bonus reviews. On the table between us lay a printed and neatly signed sheet of paper. Its numbers and percentages were what caused his tears and despair.

“Yaryna, you know… I have a child, a wife,” he continued. “I was sure it would be more. And now… how am I supposed to go home with this?”

The numbers in his salary review letter aligned with current market practices, and the decision was right for the business. No one intended to overlook him during the review. But the decision was wrong for him — he saw something very different from what he had hoped for.

Doubt gnawed at me: should I comfort him, and how? Back then, I didn’t yet know how to properly talk about salary reviews. It was clear that leaving things as they were wasn’t right, but answering the question “how do I go home with this” wasn’t my task either.

“Can this be changed?” he asked again.

“No. The process is complete, all decisions have been made, and the numbers approved,” I repeated calmly. “And I know they wanted to give you a competitive salary and bonus.”

It was easy to say because it was true. He turned away from the salary review letter and looked out the window. Perhaps he, too, wanted to catch a breath of the spring air that awakened everything to life.

“I thought it would be noticeably more… Why isn’t it?” he asked again.

In previous years, colleagues learned about their salary increases from the amount that appeared in their bank accounts or was handed out in cash (yes, that practice still existed then). Our annual salary review and bonus payments always triggered an explosion of conversations, questions, and anxiety.

Keeping that approach meant risking ongoing dissatisfaction and resource strain: individual questions about salaries and bonuses never stopped. A single presentation at an all-office meeting didn’t solve the problem. So this time, in addition to the general announcement, we decided to personalize the communication to reduce tension: we introduced individual meetings in which a manager or HR representative would announce the decision and answer questions.

Retaining valuable employees was becoming increasingly difficult. We had specialists who were hard to find on the market — it took at least five years to develop them from student level.

Compensation had long been a taboo topic for everyone except the CEO, the chief accountant, and me. The need for individual communication after the review had already become obvious thanks to best practices and our own experience.

This time, the CEO was on a business trip, and department heads were not yet involved in compensation decisions. The entire mission of communicating salary reviews for about eighty colleagues fell to me. And this conversation was one of the first.

I felt my fingers fidgeting, my heart pounding. “I’m nervous. I don’t know what to do in this situation,” thoughts raced through my mind. “I have to give an explanation, but what can I say and what can’t I? And what consequences could this have for me? We didn’t align this.”

My colleague was too absorbed in his own emotions to notice my doubts — or so I hoped. I desperately wanted to end the conversation, but I couldn’t. “What if he quits? The consequences would be much worse…”

As a participant in the salary review process, I was fully aware of all the criteria and numbers. But I didn’t yet have the authority to say more. And I wasn’t ready to discuss the details with him — not now.

I took a discreet deep breath. “If I can handle this, I can handle anything,” I told myself. “Alright, here we go…”

“Dmytro, look, we analyze market data every year. They consider both the job’s content and its complexity. That’s how we build our salary structure.”

He wiped his cheeks, squinted slightly as if trying to focus on my words. I thought, “This must sound too abstract to him right now.”

“One moment,” I stood up, grabbed a sheet of paper from the printer, and began drawing a coordinate axis. He leaned in to see better.

“Here’s the job complexity scale, here’s the salary. This is how it grows as job complexity increases. Does that make sense?”

He nodded and continued questioning:

“So there’s nothing I can do? The fact that I do my job really well doesn’t matter?”

He had calmed down. He looked me straight in the eyes — open, sincere. The faint wrinkles between his brows still showed sadness and doubt, but our conversation had become lighter and more constructive.

“I know you’re highly valued, and they want you to stay on the team,” I replied — again, because it was true.

He glanced again at the salary letter, pressing his lips together in thought.

“But why do I earn less than others? I know I do.”

“A new challenge,” I thought as anxiety flared inside me again like a red-hot spark, and my heartbeat quickened. We hadn’t yet told colleagues that we used a scale during annual evaluations. That, too, was taboo. I inhaled and continued:

“It matters a lot. Look, if you do your job really well, you’ll be paid above the market. Somewhere here.” I placed a dot slightly above the line representing market practice.

He leaned closer.

“I’m talking about colleagues from other departments. Are we underpaid?”

Instead of answering directly, I kept drawing: columns of different heights, starting at different points, as if “jumping” to see which one was taller.

“These columns represent different job families. This one is finance, this one HR, this one — for example — sales.”

He watched closely, and I continued:

“They start at different points on the X-axis. Families that start with higher pay at the start (salary on the Y-axis), and their height indicates their potential for salary increase as a result of professional and career growth. Does that make sense?”

He nodded again.

“And inside each column, there are graphs like the first one I drew.”

He looked at the drawings calmly now, though still sadly. Then he reviewed his compensation letter again, took out his phone, and began calculating.

“What’s our current tax rate?”

“Twenty-three.”

He continued calculating.

“So this is the final decision?”

“Yes, final.”

“What can I do to make next year better?”

“Talk to your leader about the contribution expected from you and what in your role could be considered ‘exceeding expectations.’ High contribution influences individual review decisions,” I said, then added something important. “The only thing neither he nor anyone else can tell you is the exact percentage of next year’s increase.”

He nodded.

“I understand. The market moves, and you can’t know what will happen.”

I nodded back.

“You can also shape your development — what skills or competencies to grow, or whether to move to another level or role.”

I wanted to show him other ways to influence his salary and bonus, so he would see more than just numbers and percentages.

The conversation was clearly nearing its end. I glanced at the clock — 52 minutes. My breathing and heartbeat had returned to normal.

“Thank you, Yaryna. And… sorry for how I reacted.”

“It’s alright. What happened here stays here. If you have more questions, come to me,” I smiled slightly. “Looks like I managed. And maybe we can end this difficult situation here,” I thought.

The door closed. I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath. An hour earlier, I couldn’t have imagined that a salary review conversation could provoke such a reaction. And if I could change the past and skip this meeting, I wouldn’t. I would still hold it — just like all the others before and after. These meetings proved that transparency isn’t only about numbers — it’s about the courage to talk about difficult things.

I stood up and walked to the window, where spring shone brightly. Inhale, exhale.

“What if he had seen this only in the letter, with no one to talk to?” I shuddered at the thought, imagining a turnover graph creeping upward. “We wouldn’t even know why — and wouldn’t have a chance to fix it.”

I felt calm and ready to speak with everyone else.

“Next year, this experience must be shared with department heads.” That was one of my firmest decisions.

The following months were filled with routine work, alongside studying best practices in compensation and pay communication (WorldatWork, Gartner, etc.), adapting them to our context, creating training materials for leaders, and conducting workshops. We built and implemented a comprehensive training program that not only explained the “Performance–Compensation” link but also revealed the inner workings of pay: what a relevant market is, how we choose salary surveys, how we conduct job matching, and more.

A crucial part of the training was communication itself: why it matters, how it affects employee engagement, how to communicate, and in what sequence. We discussed possible emotional reactions and how to handle them, practiced objections, and learned to answer difficult questions through role-play. All this so leaders would feel confident during individual conversations. More confident than I felt during that difficult meeting — and ideally, even better. My experience became “living” training material, making the role-play scenarios realistic and relevant.

During that year of preparation, we didn’t yet know that the next salary review cycle would bring a “black swan” that would influence salary and bonus decisions. But thanks to the thorough work we had done with leaders, we were more than ready — and the results exceeded my expectations.

But that’s a story for another time…

At the beginning of my HR journey, compensation seemed overwhelmingly complex — a field that requires strict logic, math, and expertise. All of that truly matters. But with experience, I realized compensation is also an art. There is no single magical number representing the market value of any role, even a perfectly described one. You should consider many factors: the business environment, industry specifics, the company’s strategy (crucial), its economic model, people strategy, and more.

But even when all that is done — even with a generous budget — our compensation decisions alone won’t create a long-term positive perception of pay. The hardest part isn’t showing the numbers; it’s explaining how we make decisions and how an individual can influence their pay now and in the future.

Transparency in compensation isn’t just access to information. It’s the ability of leaders at all levels to hold and sustain difficult conversations. Conversations that inevitably arise around pay. And only mature leaders are ready to have them — and do it effectively.