Employers are spreading raises like peanut butter – and workers are paying the price | Gene Marks
Looking forward to a raise in 2026? You may be getting “peanut butter”.A new report from compensation software and data provider Payscale predicts that in 2026, many employers will be giving “peanut butter raises” to their employees – increases given “across the board” as opposed to being calculated individually based on performance or merit.They’re spread evenly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread.“In total, more than 40% of organizations are either using or actively considering standardized across-the-board or peanut butter pay increases in 2026,” the report said.“This increases to 56% for top performers (organizations who reported that they would exceed their revenue goals in 2025).
”Most employers, the survey says, plan to give an average of 3.5% raises in 2026, which Payscale says is similar to last year (although based on the millions of employees in its system, payroll company ADP said that employers actually gave anywhere from 4.4% to 6.5% salary increases last year, depending on whether they left or stayed at their jobs).Regardless, inflation is about 3%, so raises are keeping up, if not staying ahead.
But please, if you’re a business owner or manager and you’re considering a peanut butter approach to your pay increases this year – and you’re blaming inflation – please, don’t.Your higher-performing employees deserve better than this.And your lower performers should be put on notice.I have nothing against peanut butter.Or jelly.
But this practice is simply lazy.And – let’s face it – you’re probably doing the same with your performance reviews.We suck at performance reviews.We don’t document.We don’t reward.
We don’t mentor,We don’t coach,We’re too busy chasing profits,Instead, most of us are still going through the motions of the outdated annual review,Many of my clients are way behind in the process.
The workplace has changed dramatically over just the past decade.Millennials and gen Z workers now represent more than half of today’s workforce.Younger workers grew up receiving real-time comments on their social media posts and received Little League trophies just for participating.They want immediate gratification when they do something good.And they deserve honest feedback when they don’t.
Yet most employers still behave as we did 20 years ago,A 2015 study from the Society for Human Resource Management found that more than two-thirds of employees were dissatisfied with performance reviews, with 65% saying the exercise wasn’t even relevant to their jobs,Managers also overwhelmingly said that their company’s performance review process was not satisfactory,A 2025 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey of more than 10,000 employees found fewer than one in three workers thought their performance reviews were “very fair and equitable”, and a majority of employees and managers lacked trust in performance management,A June 2025 report described broad misalignment between employees and leaders on performance, with many employees feeling their reviews were unfair, stressful or just a checkbox exercise, and only about 29% of workers trusted their evaluation outcomes.
Which is why it doesn’t surprise me that so many businesses are opting for “peanut butter raises” this year.It’s the easy way out.Why spend the time to individually evaluate your people when you can just slap an across-the-board increase on everyone and just be on your way?When a customer pays you, it means they’re satisfied with what you delivered.It’s the same with your employees.Raises are a true benchmark of performance.
Employees should not only receive them, but know how their raise compares to the average in their group.If they care, they’ll seek to exceed the average.If they don’t care, and consistently rate below average, then that tells you something else.And if you do let that person go, they (and their attorneys) can’t say they weren’t forewarned.The right way to do this is to set specific goals and give raises twice a year if those goals are met, along with incentive bonuses at the end of the year, depending on how well a worker performed.
The bonus doesn’t need to be cash either.Today’s worker loves flexibility, so additional paid time off works well.If you can’t afford either, consider a smaller pay increase coupled with a new title.Titles are important too.If you’re one of those organizations that are considering a peanut butter raise for your employees, rethink this practice.
Ever seen the famous scene in Mad Men? Where Don Draper tells his employee Peggy Olson, who complained that he never said thank you, that “That’s what the money is for!”He isn’t wrong.Raises matter.But so does regular feedback.Don’t be lazy about either.
Top players reject offer to have greater say in running of major tennis championships
The tennis pay row has escalated further with the world’s top 10 male and female players rejecting an offer from the grand slams to set up a player council that would give them a greater say in the running of the major championships.In correspondence sent to Wimbledon, the French Open and US Open last week, the players turned down the offer of a meeting with representatives of the three grand slams at the Indian Wells Masters in March and accused the tournament organisers of ignoring their concerns about pay and player welfare.“Before committing to another meeting, it would be more productive for the grand slams to provide substantive responses, individually or collectively, to the specific proposals the players have put forward regarding prize money at a fair share of grand slam revenues, and player health, welfare, and benefits contributions,” the letter states.The players have been lobbying for a greater share of the money made by those organising the grand slam championships since last year’s French Open when a delegation, including Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff, urged executives from all four tournaments to increase their prize funds to 22% of revenue by 2030, which would be in line with ATP and WTA Tour events.Alcaraz will receive AUS$2
Leopardstown success shows Dublin Racing Festival is galloping past Cheltenham on value
Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, had two reasons to be cheerful after the Irish Champion Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival (DRF) at Leopardstown on Sunday. His seven-year-old mare, Brighterdaysahead, had just won the feature race and she was cheered back to the winner’s enclosure by a sellout crowd that included several thousand visiting racegoers from Britain. “The Dublin Racing Festival has been a great success and certainly it’s the first time you’ve seen a lot of English people coming over for the racing,” O’Leary said. “It’s a great festival in its own right and they’re all very welcome. I hope they flew Ryanair
Wolff urges Mercedes rivals to ‘focus on themselves’ amid 2026 engine row
Toto Wolff has dismissed claims from rivals over the legality of his team’s new engine, insisting it is within the regulations. The Mercedes team principal said that the onus lay with the other manufacturers who had missed an opportunity and that they should get their “shit together”.The row over whether Mercedes and Red Bull have stolen a march on the opposition in their engine design has dominated the buildup to the new season and Wolff notably did not rule out other teams protesting against the legality of their engines after they are used competitively for the first time at the Australian Grand Prix on 8 March.The disagreement centres on Mercedes and Red Bull having taken advantage of the regulations in increasing the compression ratio of their engines, set at 16:1 but measured when the car is at rest. It is believed both teams have made use of the thermal expansion of certain components to increase the compression ratio to as much as 18:1 when the car is running – equating to potentially as much as a 0
Winter Olympics 2026: what you need to know if following from Australia
The 2026 Winter Olympics officially open in the early hours of Friday 7 February, Australian time, with the opening ceremony at Milan’s San Siro stadium. The Games run for two weeks, culminating in the closing ceremony on 23 February in Verona at the same time of 6am AEDT.Several sports with packed schedules, including curling and ice hockey, begin a couple of days before the opening ceremony. Australia’s mixed curling team just missed out on qualifying, despite being ranked No 1 in December last year, while Australia won’t be represented in ice hockey in Italy. The ice hockey will be the final event of the Games with the men’s gold-medal game at 12
Team GB slider Matt Weston: ‘I don’t ever stand at the top aiming for anything less than gold’
The 28-year-old has rebuilt from crushing disappointment in the skeleton four years ago to become Britain’s best hope for Winter Olympic gold at Milano Cortina“Excitement is definitely the word I’d use,” Matt Weston says as the world No 1 and the reigning world champion in the skeleton looks ahead to the start of the Winter Olympics this week. Weston has just won the skeleton World Cup, winning five out of seven races and finishing second to his teammate, Marcus Wyatt, in the two others.The 28-year-old is clearly Team GB’s strongest hope for a gold medal at Milano Cortina and enthusiasm and belief pour out of him. “I’m just so excited,” he says. “The pressure is higher, it’s a bigger event, and there are a lot of eyes on me
Alcaraz makes strong case for being the best young male player tennis has seen | Tumaini Carayol
There were many things that could have rushed into Carlos Alcaraz’s mind following his attainment of a goal he has chased his entire life, the career grand slam, achieved by defeating Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open.He could have thought about the immense hard work and discipline it took to achieve all of this, his comically large, tight-knit team and family that faithfully follows him around the world or even how close he came to losing his semi-final two days earlier.Instead, as Alcaraz navigated the long line of post-slam interviews for the seventh time, while tightly holding the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup, his thoughts cast back to … his haters. “I’m thinking about the people who said I wouldn’t make it, who thought I’d come here to Australia and not even make it past the quarter-finals,” he told Eurosport Spain.“That I’d come here to Australia and not play good tennis
FTSE 100 ends day at closing high after gold and silver fell in ‘metals meltdown’ – as it happened
UK manufacturing growth accelerates as export orders rise
Viral AI personal assistant seen as step change – but experts warn of risks
What is Moltbook? The strange new social media site for AI bots
Pakistan boycott shows growing divide between cricket’s commercial needs and political reality | Taha Hashim
Steve Borthwick asks for England fans’ roar in support of grieving Maro Itoje