Let's delve into what this means and how to address it if it arises in your business.

Act Your Wage: Understanding the Trend and Its Origins

The "Act Your Wage" movement emphasizes recognizing one's value and the worth of one's time. Employees should only take on extra tasks if they are recognized and paid for their work. In essence, it follows the principle that an employee's pay should be proportional to their contributions.

This movement is an extension of the quiet quitting trend, promoting a healthier work-life balance through professional boundaries. Economic factors also play a significant role. From April 2021 to January 2023, inflation outpaced wage growth, even during months of high wage increases. Also, the federal minimum wage has not increased since 2009, causing minimum wage workers to earn less money in real terms. An analysis showed that if wages and productivity had increased together, the federal minimum wage in 2021 would have been $22.88 per hour, much higher than the current rate in 2024. Meanwhile, the cost of living—including essentials like groceries, gas, and housing—has risen significantly.

Given these conditions, it's understandable why employees might be reluctant to take on extra work without additional compensation. On a societal level, many people feel they are not adequately compensated for their work. Hence, "act your wage" means doing only what your job description requires unless you are fairly compensated for more.

Goals of the "Act Your Wage" Movement

Employees who adopt this practice typically do so for three main reasons:

Reducing/Preventing Burnout

Setting clear boundaries between work and personal life helps employees balance their responsibilities, reducing stress and preventing burnout.

Avoiding Exploitation

Some employers may overload team members with tasks outside their job descriptions without additional compensation. Employees who act their wage seek to prevent this exploitation.

Achieving Better Outcomes

Focusing on their actual work duties allows employees to perform better. By acting their wage, employees take responsibility for ensuring they can give their best to their primary tasks.

Addressing "Act Your Wage" in Your Business

To discourage this behavior and promote productivity, consider the following strategies:

Enable Growth

Offer advancement opportunities through training and professional development to prevent employees from feeling stagnant in their roles.

Define Responsibilities

Ensure there is no confusion about job roles and expectations. Clearly outline how each role contributes to the business' success.

Promote Personal Time

Encourage a healthy work-life balance to enhance the quality of your team's work and keep them productive and satisfied.

Reward Accomplishments

Acknowledge and reward employees for their contributions to successful projects to boost morale and motivation.

Offer Competitive Pay

Pay employees competitively and adjust their compensation as their roles grow. Reducing outside stress, such as financial concerns, allows employees to focus more on their work. Higher pay also means employees will be more motivated to exceed expectations.

The motivation to "act your wage" often stems from an imbalance between job expectations and realities. Addressing this imbalance can foster a more productive and motivated team.

Patriot Tech Services Inc. is here to help. We can give your business the tools to work better, so you can concentrate on keeping your team happy. Contact us at 877-874-4629 to learn more.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)

Operating under the same general umbrella, AI and ML can provide the personalization that modern businesses need to close sales. Machine learning algorithms predict future trends, helping businesses make data-driven decisions, while AI-powered chatbots can provide instant customer support and engage users in real-time, enhancing customer experience.

Marketing Automation Platforms

Built-in or integrated into many Customer Relationship Management platforms or email, marketing automation can trigger email campaigns, segment audiences, and track performance. Businesses also need to keep an eye on their social media so having a dedicated social media management platform that can centralize and automate social media posting, monitor engagement, and analyze metrics is invaluable.

Customer Relationship Management Systems

CRMs are a must-have tool for most businesses. They can help a business integrate sales and marketing initiatives that provide a unified view of customer interactions. The CRM does a great job of managing and analyzing customer data, improving targeting and segmentation. Obviously, the main purpose of the CRM is to cultivate and improve customer relationships. CRMs can track customer interactions which is a key element in enabling more effective and personalized communication.

Websites

Websites can be one of the most useful tools for marketing your products. Most websites have a content management system (CMS) built in. CMS platforms simplify website creation and content management. CMS tools assist with search engine optimization, improving website visibility and traffic. They enable easy distribution of content across various channels, including blogs, social media, and email newsletters.

With marketing being a major part of today’s business, having the technology in place to help streamline the process can make all the difference. If you would like to have a conversation about your business’ technology, give the IT professionals at Patriot Tech Services Inc. a call today at 877-874-4629.

To begin, we’ll explore why having a scalable infrastructure is so crucial, especially to the small and medium-sized businesses of TriState.

What Benefits Do Businesses Get from a Flexible, Scalable IT Infrastructure?

There are many reasons that today’s businesses not only benefit from scalability but also actively need some degree of it to remain competitive in their market. First and foremost, it is inherently integral to a business’ growth.

The long and the short of it is that one of the few ways to increase a business’ operations (thereby bringing in more revenue) is to expand its capabilities without sacrificing the standard previously set. Scaling up technology allows this to happen, as it adds utility without negatively impacting the user experience regarding responsiveness or performance. As such, your team can accomplish more.

On a related note, your team will be able to shift priorities quickly, confident their IT will keep pace with them and allow them to pursue new opportunities while also using their resources most effectively. This flexibility can even extend into remote work capabilities and should be present in your business continuity preparations.

In short, there are plenty of reasons you want your infrastructure to have some level of flexibility… and this is far from a comprehensive list. So, let’s discuss some best practices for managing your IT infrastructure and ensuring it is scalable.

Best Practices for IT Infrastructure Scalability

Understand What You Need

To chart a path that will facilitate your business’ scalability, you must first understand your goals and what your company will need to support them. What will you require to meet the responsibilities that growth would bring? This line of questioning helps inform your strategy moving forward, as you can select tools and resources that will provide precisely what you need.

As you do so, you should ensure you’re building in cybersecurity, redundancy, backup, and other preventative measures to help protect you over time as you confirm that you align with applicable compliance standards.

Keep an Eye on Performance

It’s also important to closely monitor how your business’ IT infrastructure operates daily to improve it efficiently, either by identifying present issues or by spotting potential upgrades. Ideally, by being proactive, these improvements can be made before any real problems arise and impact your operations.

Don’t be afraid to make changes to your infrastructure and processes as you pursue these performance improvements. Utilize monitoring tools to capture data points and evaluate the effectiveness of your changes.

Turn to Professionals for Assistance

As many of these processes and procedures can be somewhat time-consuming, it can be challenging for many businesses to devote sufficient energy to them… never mind that many companies don’t have the in-house experience required to keep up with their other needs even before scaling is factored in. For these businesses, outsourcing these responsibilities to an external provider is a great option—especially if that provider happens to be an MSP (or managed service provider) like Patriot Tech Services Inc..

An MSP Makes Scaling—and Doing Anything Involving IT—Easier

An MSP will step in and serve as an IT department, either supplementing an in-house staff or as a fully outsourced entity. In doing so, the MSP takes responsibility for the future of a business’ technology in any way needed. 

If a business needs consulting, the MSP will be a consultant. 

If a business needs additional support, the MSP provides that support.

If a business needs an advocate to work with vendors, the MSP will be an advocate.

You get the idea. Naturally, monitoring and managing an IT infrastructure also falls under an MSP’s purview, including helping the client scale it appropriately. We can be your MSP, providing all this and more. If you’d like to learn more about us and our services, please call us at 877-874-4629.