I’m curious if this is happening across Extra Space Storage or if this is just happening in certain districts.
Our district is a bit of a mess, we had a call without the DM, and people started comparing what they got for raises in January. Turns out nobody got more than an $0.10 raise
Not just people who were average. Not people who were underperforming. Even top performers got around 10 cents. That’s honestly insane.
An $0.08 raise is about $4 a week before taxes. That is not a real raise or a merit increase. That is barely enough to notice on a paycheck.
What makes it worse is that the company’s own compensation guidelines say merit increases are supposed to reward employees who meet or exceed expectations. But if the people who actually perform well are only getting less than 10 cents, then what exactly is being rewarded?
It feels like they want to say they gave raises without actually giving raises.
And this is after they already took away the monthly rental incentive/bonus and replaced it with an extra 50 cents an hour. On paper, I’m sure that was supposed to sound like a raise. But at the end of the day, a lot of us are making less now because the bonus/incentive had more upside than the flat 50 cents.
So we lost the rental incentive, got a small hourly bump, and now the actual yearly “merit raise” is less than a dime.
Rent can go up, groceries can go up, insurance can go up, and incentives can be removed, but they can still say, “That’s not what merit raises are for.”
Fine. But then when performance is good, the raise is still under 10 cents.
So cost of living does not matter, and apparently performance does not matter either.
That is the part that makes no sense. Especially in a HCOL market.
Managers are expected to deal with everything: rentals, sales, collections, auctions, liens, customer complaints, maintenance issues, security problems, retail, deposits, lock checks, cleaning, rate complaints, and sometimes covering multiple stores.
A lot of locations are also dealing with old buildings, broken equipment, understaffing, bad leads, angry customers, and unrealistic expectations from above.
Then after all that, the reward is 5, 6, or 8 more cents?
It honestly feels more insulting than getting nothing. At least if they gave nothing, they would not be pretending it was a performance based raise.
And this is where they loses people.
Because if you can be reliable, hit your goals, cover other sites, keep the property running, handle customers professionally, and still get the same meaningless raise as everyone else, then why would anyone keep going above and beyond?
At that point, the message is pretty clear: staying does not pay.
The only way to get a meaningful raise is probably to leave, come back later, or jump to another company.
I’m curious if this happened in other districts too. 2024 going into 2025 was normal. Most of us got at least a dollar+ raise.
Now the bonus/incentive is gone, the 50 cent replacement does not really make up for it, and the merit raise is less than 10 cents.
Is this just certain districts, or is this basically what the “merit raise” system has turned into?