Salary Advance

Working the HR streets can sometimes be perilous. Why you ask? For the simple reason that HR's mandate is to provide service to fellow employees. This places HR on the path of peers who will not hesitate to bay for blood if HR's do not fall in line with their wishes. The unscrupulous are few but they are enough to make any HR Professional squirm. This is a snapshot of my experience(s) with Salary Advances.

The Lies Told. Life happens. As such, even the best laid plans do not cater for acts of God, sudden illness or tragedy. In most cases, Companies have made provision for staff to access salary advances to help sort out and or mitigate urgent/unexpected requirements with minimal upheaval. Most salary advance policies are very explicit on the list of events considered "emergencies" that form the pre-requisite to access funds. I cannot tell you the number of times employees' uncles/aunts who "raised" them fell critically ill/died, home sewage systems burst, vehicles vandalized, you name it, I have heard it. Don't get me wrong, there are many instances that the incidents are genuine. On the flip side, some of the times the incidents sited were a tad creative, repeat requesters stories did not add up and some staff were blatantly careless with the truth in order to justify their applications. This forced the acquisition of a new skill-set - how to smell a rat & half truth from a mile off.

Your Signature. Be careful what you sign. Appending a signature on any document including a salary advance request signals assent. It is a mark of HR's approval of the facts presented and confirming eligibility of an employee for a Salary Advance. Herein lies the problem. Once your mark (read signature) is on the application form, you are answerable to all questions that follow as to the authenticity of the request. One time, whilst humbly serving employees, I fell into the frying pan after signing a salary advance request. The situation morphed into a serious infraction when it turned out to be a ruse. I was sewed in using the famous "name dropping" method. I was convinced of the assent of the senior most official to the application and proceeded to sign as well. This is when I executed a neat dive into the fire! I was confident in my decision until red-hot questions stared making rounds on email. Boy, was I in trouble! I only realized the enormity of the situation when I received summons, the subject of which was my signature on this particular application. All other approvers absolved themselves stating that HR had essentially given an all clear. My goose was cooked! Served with a helping of a show cause memo and for desert, I enjoyed a stern warning letter. It left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Painful Consequences. Stepping out of a hotter than hot fire like the one I landed in due to inexperience and manipulation, one does not emerge unscathed. When you learn the hard way, you become tough.

"Mistakes are a a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing enough to learn from them".

Needless to say, the requests that followed "the grilling" were subjected to intense scrutiny before my pen landed anywhere near the signature line. I was battle hardened and no amount of grumbling, begging, strong arming or coercion moved me. My resolve was tested a couple of years later in a different organization. The cold sweat that trickled down my back ensured that I stood my ground.

Lessons Abound. I attended a session a while back on this topic and through fellowship with other professionals, there are 4 take-aways that I use as my rule of thumb:

1. Salary Advance is not a right. It is given at the discretion of the employer.
2. Salary advances should be recovered within 3 months or are liable to attract fringe benefit deduction.
3. The employer is NOT a financier. Best thing is for employers to sign up for this feature with their internal banking providers in order to refer staff requiring such facilities directly to the bank or have staff make salary advance requests to their respective/preferred bankers.
4. It does not auger well for the reputations of senior officials/members of the management team of any organisation, when they repeatedly appear on the list of employees who owe the Company money accessed as a salary advance - most especially if payouts are done consistently.

My name is Marsha Muchiri AKA Madam HR, and this is my work-life tidbit