This year has wreaked havoc on the budgets of many businesses and times have been hard. If you’ve come to a place where you have to inform employees of a salary delay, you’re not alone.
This is not the ideal situation. No one wants to delay payment to their hard-working employees, but sometimes it happens. If it’s not a regular occurrence, telling your employees will be challenging but not likely impossible.
It can be hard to deliver news like this. Every company is different so you need to make sure you do what’s best for you. And while I’ve never had to experience this myself, here’s what I would most likely do.
Tips to Help You Inform Employees of Salary Delay
Be Open and Honest
When you inform employees of a salary delay it’s bad enough but if you’re not open and honest about it, things are considerably worse. When payment doesn’t come when it’s expected, employees are concerned. So, it’s important that you’re upfront and honest about the delay.
Inform everyone of the delay at your earliest opportunity and be honest about why it’s happening. If times are hard and that’s affecting your ability to pay your employees, they deserve to know that as soon as possible. Don’t delay notification on top of pay.
Be Clear With the Details
When you’re informing employees of a payment delay, you need to be very clear about the details. That means sharing with them not only why the delay is happening but when they can expect to be paid. They did the work for you, you already have the agreement to pay them in place, which means they need to know when they can expect payment.
If you’re uncertain about when pay will arrive, you need to let them know that. You also need to have a plan in place (that you should share with them) about when you can expect to update them about the delayed payment.
Be Formal But Kind
While you want your notice to employees to be formal, you need to remember to be kind. Your employees most likely rely on their pay and when it doesn’t come in it’s possible that will affect them in other areas of their life, like being able to make payments on time or buy what they need to live.
While we’d like to think that people have a financial cushion, we know that many Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s important to empathize with their situation and let them know you understand the position they’re in.
Keep the Focus on Them
When it’s time to inform employees of a salary delay, you need to keep the focus on your employees. While this notice is about sharing why payment is delayed and when it should be coming in, you need to skip the company jargon and keep the focus on the employees.
While your business is going through a tough time, your employees rely on you and you’re not meeting that obligation. So, this notice is not about you. It’s about them.
Do you have experience informing employees of a salary delay? Share your tips below!
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Tae started out as a journalist before following the money into the corporate world. But it turns out that the grass isn’t always greener and now you can find her spending most of her time writing about all the things she loves. Namely, money, travel and business with a hefty dose of self-deprecating humor. She is a podcast fanatic, blogging aficionado and loves to find new ways to turn passions into cold hard cash!