MON, MARCH 28, 2011 AT 11:39
Simon North founder of Position Ignition offers some career and salary negotiation advice on making sure you get what you’re worth. This is an article we wrote for STV (Scottish Television).
Asking for the salary you believe you deserve right now is a fairly sensitive subject, particularly in today’s uncertain economic climate. Many businesses will be focussing on managing their costs tightly and not particularly interested in inflating any of these costs by increases to anyone’s reward package.
It’s probable that there have been downsizing and structuring exercises going on particularly as restructuring costs tend to be fairly substantial and often have to be paid up front. All of these points make it a difficult time to be asking for a rise and you should bear these in mind but remember they are not reasons to give up.
If we look at this from an organisational point of view in the medium to long term, the company will want to keep hold of its best people and retention is always a tough challenge for organisations. Knowing who is good and worth keeping is as much an art as it is science. Many organisations do not really understand the level of talented people that they employ.
It’s important to understand your value when asking yourself “should you be worth more”. How familiar you are with the market rate for what you do and where you are relative to those benchmarks will give you a good idea of what you should be worth to an organisation.
You need to look carefully at how good your current performance is, perhaps what the organisation or your managers have said about how well you are performing and how valuable your contribution is to the business.
There is also the question of potential and how much you know of the view your organisation has of your potential. Very often we don’t know or have a completely different view to the organisation. If you don’t research this with trusted colleagues or mentors you could find yourself fighting a losing battle.
When it comes to talking about reward for our work, we are all too often fixated with money. One way of making this easier on the organisation is to request a bonus scheme as this may be more acceptable in the current climate particularly because it is based on delivering on your objectives and targets.
Perhaps there is another form of reward you would prefer and be considered more acceptable to a cash-strapped employer, such as more flexibility on hours, working fewer hours, having more time off etc. Often organisations can offer benefits believing they cost little but the value to the employee may be very different.
It’s important to know where your organisation is going in the future as this will indicate whether a pay rise or further benefits are feasible or not. You need to find out where you fit in an organisation’s future plan and if you are key to their strategy as this will provide some leverage in your negotiations.
You may also find out that you don’t have a future at all and perhaps it’s time to reconsider, wither way this information is crucial to your next steps and it’s better to know sooner rather than later."
Author: Simon North is founder of Position Ignition the career consultancy and advice experts.
If you no longer wish to receive email blog updates from Executive Leadership LLC please send an email to cb@exec-leadershipllc.com with "BLOG UNSUBSCRIBE" in the Subject box. Thank You.
