What Makes You Think That You Deserve A Raise?
As a new year gets underway, it might be a good time to have a talk about one of your most important types of negotiations: asking for a raise. Wait a minute: did I see you just grimace? Did you turn away? Why the reaction - it's your paycheck after all, shouldn't you be taking charge of how much you make?
If you are counting on getting a big raise this year, you might want to think again. The folks over at Hewitt Associates are saying that raises this year are going to be running at about 3% or so - nothing to write home about.
What you are going to want to do this year is to find a way to get in the running to get your hands on some of your company's incentive pay. The folks at Hewitt are saying that the budgets for incentive pay are running at about 7% or so - clearly there's more money to be had in this bucket.
A Little Strategy Goes A Long Way
If you are going to have a chance to be successful in getting more money out of your employer this year, you're going to have to come up with a plan in order to make it happen. Robert Moskowitz has spent some time studying what needs to be done and he's come up with some suggestions for us. Here's what he thinks that we need to do:
Create A Price Tag For Yourself: Just how much are you worth in today's market? This is a critical piece of information that you need to know. It may require a bit of research on your part: talking with head hunters, reading online and print ads for similar positions, and generally asking around within your network. With a little luck you'll find out that you are being underpaid!
Boost Your Value: Every company has a different set of skills and responsibilities that they view as being the most valuable. You need to take a step back and understand what is the most important to your company: is it financial skills? Marketing skills? Selling skills? Once you know what is the most valued, you need to take steps to increase your value in these areas.
Get Your Head In The Game: The odds of you getting fired for asking for a raise are so slim that you need to not worry about it. Increase your feeling of self confidence by picturing yourself as being successful and don't worry about any pushback that you might get.
See Into The Future: and identify what objections your boss might bring up. Make sure that when you make your request for more money you touch on these points and offer solutions to then before they are bought up.
Good Tactics Can Make All The Difference
Even before you go into your boss' office to request a raise, there are a number of things that you can do in order to improve your odds of success. Here are a few of them:
It's All About Performance: You need to spend some time creating a list of why you should get more money. Weak reasons like the length of time since you got your last raise won't do the trick - it's got to be based on bottom line results.
Documents Count: having physical proof that you have had superior job performance can be critical to making your case. This of course means that you need to have been keeping a file that shows what you've accomplished throughout the past year.
Practice, Practice, Practice: In order to prepare yourself for the big event, spend the week before you make your request practicing with yourself. This will help you to get your words straight and will allow you to prepare to deal with common feedback that you should expect.
What All Of This Means For You
Coming out of the global recession, we are all probably not being paid what we are worth. It's time to ask for either a raise or at least a bonus.
As scary as the prospect of asking for a raise may be, there are things that you can do in order to boost your odds. Keep in mind that it's your value to the company and your past performance that will boost your odds of getting more money in your paycheck.
It is possible to ask for a raise and get it. It just takes a bit of preparation and some good negotiating skills...!