Get the Pay Rise You Deserve

Hints and tips for negotiating and getting a salary increase.

Asking for a pay raise can be difficult, especially in this economic climate. However, if you’re really providing great value to your company and you believe that your pay, salary or compensation isn’t quite enough, you’re probably justified in asking for more.

If you want the most chance of getting a pay rise, you need to be prepared for that conversation with your boss; this article provides some hints and tips to help you prepare and how to handle the conversation itself.

Following the advice here can help to maximize the chances of you getting a salary rise, but you’ll need to put aside enough time to get your thoughts in order and ensure that you handle your meeting with care and professionalism.

You can achieve this through the following:

• Plan your approach ahead of time — Gather information and think about your approach
• Stay positive and constructive — Focus on the good things about your role and don’t bring up the negatives
• Leave opinion and emotion out of your conversation — Stay calm and be agreeable
• Control the situation — Have facts and figures in mind and rehearse the conversation
• Understand the value of the role — Investigate market rates and your job description
• Focus on the value that you bring — How well do you perform your job?
• Fallback position — Do you have a fallback position if you don’t get a pay rise?
• Remember your boss’s position — Understand where they are coming from

We’ll cover each of these in more detail below.

Plan your approach ahead of time

• Spend some time thinking about what you are going to say — You will want to partly rehearse the conversation and how you are going to put your points forward. This will help you to avoid being flustered; although the conversation might not go exactly as you have planned, having your key points in mind will help you steer the conversation towards them and focus on your reasons for a pay raise