How To Negotiate a Pay Rise and Get Your Boss To Agree

When it comes to salaries, you should get out what you put in. If you feel overworked and underpaid, you can and should do something about it. Employers have a responsibility to evaluate and respond to the positive contributions of their employees. If this isn’t happening for you, you have every right to approach the relevant personnel to find a solution. Here’s how to do it:

First, you need to work out what your positive contributions actually are. Working for the same company for a long time does not mean that you qualify for a pay rise. Employers aren’t going to reward you simply for being there. There needs to be a fair trade of value between you and your company: what you make, they should match - financial or otherwise.

Once you’ve got this sorted, you need to make these contributions quantifiable. Arguing your case in today’s competitive environment can be tough; employers are less willing to part with their cash, so you need to prove your worth. Concrete facts and figures make it easy for your employer to warrant a salary increase.

If you are actually making a positive contribution to your company, this shouldn't be difficult. Draw up a 12 month review of your work within the company, demonstrating its active role in generating or impacting revenue. If you’re in finance, for example, you might have influenced cash collection and reduced debtor days. Or maybe you work in HR, and you’ve implemented schemes that have improved employee retention. Think about how you have directly impacted the health of your company, identifying specific areas in which you personally make a difference. When you present this evidence, make sure it’s well organised, easy to understand, and straight to the point. It’s like another CV, really.

I speak from experience: when an employee approaches me with soft skills that have no traceable effect on the company’s welfare, I often hesitate to comply with their demands. This is because I think of pay rises as paying off my debts - if an employee has gone above and beyond my expectations, I owe them. I need to even the playing fields, so that their salary parallels their service. Like most people, I don’t take debts lightly. So, when I am deciding whether or not to increase a salary, I like to have real evidence of what’s at stake. In other words, I need numbers - or something similarly objective.

Salaries are, at the end of the day, just another type of transaction. You wouldn’t make a transaction without knowing the facts and figures. Do your homework, make a case, and trust that your employer will want to do justice to your work.

 Have you ever had success in asking for a pay rise? How did you go about it?