Time For A Pay Rise?

It’s true to say that often if you have been in a job for any length of time chances are you may well be lagging behind recently recruited colleagues who have been moving from job to job.  This is often because those that have stayed with a company for a number of years may generally only receive increases in line with inflation each year and may find them selves quickly outside of the market rate. It’s not untypical to find a new recruit doing a similar position to you and earning as much as 20% more in wages!

So what are you going to do about it?

Well you generally have just three options available, stay where you are and do nothing, move on to another company that may give you what you want, or stand up and ask for what you want. On the face of it this appears to be very straight forward but you should consider fully the impact of your possible actions.

If you stay and do nothing obviously nothing is likely to change however you may be learning more in the job and gaining in other ways other than just financially. If you move to another company it may not be as good as the one you left however, sometimes when you feel ready to move on you should go and not look back.

Our web site offers many alternative positions in other companies and this may be something to consider. You can also quickly establish in a number of cases what a competitor’s salary package might be and how this compares to yours. 

Should you decide that you want to ask for pay rise the following hints may be of benefit to you:-

• Research The Competition – check out local recruitment consultants and find out whether they have any positions in similar roles to yours and see what level of salaries they are offering. Purchase the Thursday local paper or trade magazines and look through their recruitment pages to see if there are any jobs advertised similar to yours. Surf the internet and see what type of jobs are levels of salaries are being advertised by other career websites.

• Decide Why You Should Have A Pay rise – it’s no good going to the boss and just saying you want a rise, you have to give some justification as to why he should pay you more. Think about how much unpaid overtime you have done over the last few months, extra work that you have done which isn’t really within your role, how good you are at your job and the benefit the commitment you bring to it gives the company.

When you decide that you are armed with the right ammunition then these are a few hints that might help you:

• Timing is crucial – ask for your rise when you are doing your job to the very best of your ability, it may be that you have just finished a big project and been praised for it by your boss or your team have exceeded their monthly sales figures. Ask when the company is thriving, if the car park has just seen a fleet of new Jaguars arrive in the directors parking spaces then chances are your boss will struggle to tell you that you can’t have a rise because business isn’t going well. Ask for a realistic increase, it’s no good going to your boss and asking him to double your wages it’s just not going to happen no matter how good you are!  Don’t threaten, be rude, be fobbed off, or be unprofessional – it may well be that you will have to stay in your position until you find something else and you want to make that as comfortable as possible. If your boss says no to your request then don not be hasty – sit back and have a long hard think about your position. If you do consider leaving is this purely financial, do you like the people you work with and the job you do. At the end of the day it is more important to enjoy the job you do and the people you work with than be in a job where you earn twice as much money and hate every minute of the day, take your time and assess your situation.