Are Employees Earning More Than Their Pay?

In many organizations, it’s common for employees to take on multiple roles and responsibilities, sometimes leading to them being compensated less than their contribution or market value. This situation is not just a concern for the employees but also for employers who might be losing talent. When discussing this topic in a tech interview, especially when SQL is involved, it is essential to understand how to query databases to identify such discrepancies.

Let’s consider a scenario where you have a table named employees, containing various fields such as employee_id, name, salary, and market_value. The goal is to find employees whose contributions to the company might be undervalued compared to their market worth.

Here’s how you can approach this using SQL:

Sample Table Structure

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Inserting Sample Data

To analyze, we need some data. Let's insert a few records:

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Querying Underpaid Employees

To identify employees earning less than their market value, use the following SQL query:

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Example Output

Executing this query would yield:

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In this example, Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Eddie are underpaid based on their market values. This data is crucial for employers to understand where there might be talent retention issues and potential dissatisfaction among employees.

Addressing the Issues

Once you have this information, the next steps involve analyzing why these discrepancies exist. Employers can take action in several ways, such as conducting salary reviews, adjusting pay to match market standards, or improving role clarity to ensure that employees know their worth. The use of analytics in HR decisions can significantly affect employee morale and productivity.

Additionally, companies may benefit from using a more comprehensive approach whereby they regularly assess and benchmark salaries against the market, ensuring fair compensation and minimizing employee turnover.