Dealing with unfairness in the workplace

Question

The compensation in my job is highly dependent on new income streams that I produce for my team. However in my team there are several existing income streams that need to be maintained.

My issue now is that I happened to join the team at a time when someone needed to take over the maintenance of these income streams and I did and became very good at it. But it's taking up the bulk of my time and concentration and I can barely find the time and energy to create new income streams.

Now my manager has hired new members that are now spending 100% of their time on generating new income and they are yielding results. My manager is praising them and it seems they will get a hefty bonus instead of me. I tried raising this issue to my manager but he seemed to brush it off.

Because of this I'm always in frustration and anger at my team everyday but I try to hide it. How do I handle this situation? I feel that it is extremely unfair but I don't have a recourse.

Answer 1

In this situation all you can do is approach the manager and demand a resolution. At the end of the day he already knows that existing revenue streams need to be maintained or they dry up.

So you give him the choice of removing you from maintenance of revenue streams you didn't create or paying you more to maintain them instead of making money.

I've been in this situation many times where I get paid for what I produce yet get given tasks which prevent me actually producing much of the time. Which in my eyes is time I'm not getting paid anything for. In each instance I just ask to be relieved of the free duties or get paid for them somehow.

In your situation I would make a list of the revenue streams I created and tell him I don't have time to do the rest and then move forwards from the reply. But brushing it off would not be an option I'd give him.

There are multiple suitable arrangements that could be made, the maintenance load could be spread, your role could be changed to pure maintenance freeing up others to produce new revenue streams (at a higher pay) etc,.