How much are you worth? Or rather – is the answer to that question equal to the sum paid into your bank account by your employer?
If not then you need to ask for more, and that means you have to negotiate with the person who pays your wages. It’s something that puts the frighteners on a lot of people. It shouldn’t.
“No one ever got fired for asking for a pay rise” said Pip Jamieson founder of the professional networking site, The Dots. “In fact rather the opposite – asking for more money shows ambition and shows you want to stay with the company.”
But there are good ways of asking for a pay rise and there are bad ones. So here are some dos and don’ts when it comes to asking for a bigger salary.
DO: Research properly
Go to a salary comparison website or talk to a recruitment agency or your Human Resources department (HR) to find out the kind of pay your job should be getting. You need hard evidence to back your pay rise – sales targets reached, contracts signed, goals met. Remember, it’s surprising how little the person who decides your salary, especially in a big organisation, may know about what you do.
“Work at it,” says Dulcie Shepherd Swanston, author of It’s Not Bloody Rocket Science and founder of the business training company Profitably Engaged. “The sort of qualities you need for getting a pay rise are the same sort of qualities you need for being a good employee.”
DON’T: Randomly demand more money
Tessa Fyson had been working in the NHS for six months when she decided to ask for more money.
“When I got asked the inevitable question, ‘Why should we give you a pay rise?’ – I froze!” she said. “Any type of meeting with management can make you nervous and I lost all ability to speak. It made me feel and look incredibly naïve and I was told to think of the reasons why and then come back.”
Ms Jamieson insists employees should see pay as a commercial contract, not a favour, which should be negotiated seriously.
So you should not argue that you need the money to pay the rent or buy Prada handbags on a monthly basis.
But Lou Goodman, marketing director at the employment website Monster for the UK, Ireland and Benelux cautions: “It’s always worthwhile for a company being empathetic about your personal life, because if they lose an employee, the resources needed to find, recruit and train up someone new can be considerable.
“But in the end, pay should reflect someone’s performance and the performance of the company itself.”