There's a really important distinction here between 'paying more' and 'paying enough'.
If you hire knowledge workers and pay them the bare minimum living costs, they will struggle in their personal lives.
They'll have to do things themselves that they could otherwise pay professionals to do, they'll have longer commutes, or if they're a miserly type they'll be dissatisfied with the feeling of 'working to live' rather than to build for the future.
That holds whether they're rockstars or barely capable of doing the job. Up to a point, paying too little is like running your car with diluted fuel.
In the past I've had jobs with a low salary that were fine until the workload increased.
When that happens, the shortcuts that you could take on a high wage (flat instead of house share, living closer to work, paying for lunch rather than making it, owning and running a car, laundry/ironing in a customer facing environment, etc ...) are not possible. Sleep, diet, exercise start to suffer.
That's the real issue in my mind - some employers just seem blinded to the fact that they're pushing people away. It doesn't matter how loyal an employee is - humans have running costs (both in terms of time and money), and employment adds to those running costs.
If you hire knowledge workers and pay them the bare minimum living costs, they will struggle in their personal lives.
They'll have to do things themselves that they could otherwise pay professionals to do, they'll have longer commutes, or if they're a miserly type they'll be dissatisfied with the feeling of 'working to live' rather than to build for the future.
That holds whether they're rockstars or barely capable of doing the job. Up to a point, paying too little is like running your car with diluted fuel.
In the past I've had jobs with a low salary that were fine until the workload increased.
When that happens, the shortcuts that you could take on a high wage (flat instead of house share, living closer to work, paying for lunch rather than making it, owning and running a car, laundry/ironing in a customer facing environment, etc ...) are not possible. Sleep, diet, exercise start to suffer.
That's the real issue in my mind - some employers just seem blinded to the fact that they're pushing people away. It doesn't matter how loyal an employee is - humans have running costs (both in terms of time and money), and employment adds to those running costs.