Food For Thought: Think Before You Ink…Your Company’s Logo

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Research shows that, in the midst of the recent economic meltdown, employees find it increasingly difficult to approach their employers for a pay raise.

In fact, most people nowadays fear that doing the above will result in their being replaced by a more qualified, quiet and, well, low- paid person.

Alas, owing to the current state of the job market, such a concern may sometimes be justified.

If you were to look at some statistics, in fact, you’d probably establish that asking your boss for a raise had lately become trickier than asking your partner to marry you- it’d seem that, for some inexplicable to me reason, the former required a far greater level of ingenuity and courage than the latter.

In the end of the day, though, there’s no point in stating the obvious and whinging about it; after all, there must be a solution of some sort!

Well, it’d seek that a New York- based real estate company might have come up with a workable solution to the above dilemma.

Rapid Realty’s (‘RR’) owner, Anthony Lolli, has recently approached his 1100 employees and offered them a 15% pay raise if they were to ink themselves with the company’s logo.

(See << http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2013/05/02/09/34/staff-offered-pay-rise-for-company-logo-tattoo >>)

Talk about innovation, eh?

Granted, the above idea does initially sound somewhat loony; nevertheless, forty employees have already taken up the offer and have gained a salary increase of 15%.

Mr Lolli’s strategy has its ups and downs, namely:

Pros

• Quite innovative and bald; the former showing customers that RR can be fun and professional at the same time and latter showing the competition that RR means serious business
• Employer approaches YOU for a pay raise and not the other way around; further, 15% isn’t half bad
• Beneficial to RR’s reputation; apparently (as per the article above), other real estate agents have grown to respect RR employees as a direct result of their newly acquired tattoos.
• Tattoo can be anywhere; it does not have to be in a visible place.
• Helps bring employees together; makes them feel proud of what they do and who they work for

Cons

• Denotes (party, at least) that the tattooed individual BELONGS to the company
• Hurts (or so I’ve heard)
• Permanent which can turn into a bit of an issue if you decide to, well, ‘change allegiance’
• Not all logos look or as fashionable as you’d want them to be
• Might give others the wrong impression that that’s the only way in which you can get a pay raise

 To put in a nutshell, although the idea is quite innovative in itself, it can be easily misconstrued by the more conservative people and turned on its head by the competition.

In the end of day, it would seem that employers should think twice before asking their employees to think before they ink.

Or something like that.