Your company hands out raises once a year, like clockwork. However the increment amount is the same as last year and the previous years.
To get more than a cost-of-living adjustment, you need to stand out and demonstrate that the work you’re doing now is more valuable than the work you’ve done in previous years.
However, telling that to the management is not an easy job.
Following the four tactics below is the best approach if you think you truly deserve a bigger raise.
* You have to start planning ahead. Because cost-of-living adjustments are typically budgeted in a straightforward way.
If the company has decided it can afford a 3 per cent increase for each person, that’s what’s available at that point in time.
By planning ahead and asking for a raise when you’re not competing with all of your colleagues for a small piece of a fixed budget, you have leverage.
The ideal time to ask varies by company of course, but a good rule of thumb is that you should plan to ask for it about 90 days after the annual performance reviews.
* Now that you’ve got a timeline to work with, you’re ready to start preparing your case. It’s in your best interest to do as much of the legwork as possible to make it easy for your boss to want to give you the raise you deserve.
Summarise your valuable accomplishments, best accolades, set your target salary.
* Now that you've done all the legwork and decided on the best time to ask, you need to devote some thought to how you ask.
In person is ideal, but it’s also a good idea to give your boss a heads-up about it.
Don’t just request a meeting and be all cryptic—mention in your email that you’d like to speak about compensation so you don’t catch them off guard.
A well-stated case of your achievements will make it easy for your manager to see the merits of your request and advocate for you. Which brings to the next point…
* Once you’ve asked for your raise—and hopefully gotten your boss’ blessing—the hard part is done. But you’re not finished yet!
After your meeting, follow up with an email summary of your request. This is another way you make your manager’s life easier—instead of leaving it to them to summarise your request for HR or the finance team, all they’ll have to do is forward your email summary along to the powers that be to see what’s available.
To speed up the process—or just ensure it doesn’t fall through the cracks—you can plan to reach out to your boss in a week or two and ask if there’s anything you can do to help.
But what if you go through all these steps and still get a no? Well then you have two choices.
You can either ask what’ll make you eligible for a promotion in the next official rounds of reviews—and then work hard to nail everything on that list.
Or you can start to look at roles outside your company to see if you can find one that’ll make you happy and compensate you fairly.
Courtesy: www.themuse.com
