Right. Only squeaky wheels get greased. If you don't actively bitch and moan or threaten to leave, your company will never give you more because they assume you're happy.

Mine gave me what appeared to be a fairly sizeable performance bump, percentage-wise, at the beginning of the calendar year.

But when I calculated it out in comparison to all the other increases they'd given me, accounted for inflation as measured by CPI, and excluded the amounts given in "class-wide" salary adjustments, the dollar amount was really put into perspective.

Per their own HR policy, an individuals position within their defined salary band is determined by their skill/merit achievements relative to the job position. Because a class wide salary adjustment also redefines the salary band, and I have a habit of snapshotting the salary bands every few months, I was able to prove with numbers that A) they'd only ever actually given me one "merit increase" that matched the words they use in my review to an actual, measurable, "skill increase" as measured by an individual's position in the salary band.

And because the others had been so poor, using their own HR policy, they were effectively stating that I was only 2-3% better at my job than when they hired me 4+ years ago. Which was impossible, because if it were true, why would they have me actively mentoring individuals more highly paid but in the same band as myself?

It was compelling enough that they offered me an in-department "promotion" to the next grade and it came with one of two new roles, which I was allowed to trial and choose between. HR had previously squashed the grade increase two times over the previous two years, saying I didn't have enough experience, despite pushback from the three levels of management over me. (Our HR is like comic book villain levels of sanctimonious overpowered karens left to their own devices, and are actively holding the whole company back.)

Because I was able to use their own language to state, "either I'm good enough to do the X,Y,Z you currently have me doing and therefore deserve more; or I'm not and therefore should not be responsible for the things I do for the team and will essentially 'behave my class' and stop doing them," I forced their hand.