Sumeet Tagde, Marketing Intern, Women in Tech forum
When it comes to negotiation, women face unique challenges. Research shows that women are much less likely to negotiate and receive a salary increase than men, both for internal promotions and for career moves. After attending an event held by Women in Tech Forum, Knowing your Value in the Workplace, the audience came away with practical advice and sure-fire ways to secure your next promotion, negotiate the pay you deserve and understand your true value in the workplace.
Learning that more than twice as often women who ask for a pay rise will receive one, over women who do not ask. This is a step in the right direction, however the not so good news is that when negotiating, women pay penalties. Those penalties are generally seen in the form of being too emotional, aggressive, or unlikeable when they do it. Women also have the tendency to underestimate their professional value.
Jane Dobson, Consulting Director at Oracle, posed a very crucial question to the audience. “Do you know your market value?”
If you don’t, there are a number of areas where you can gain information;
- Review similar jobs, what are they offering by way of pay
- Talk to recruiters, you may not be proactively looking at the moment for another job. But if a recruiter reaches out to you, it is a chance to obtain information about the marketplace.
- Your personal performance against appraisals – How are you performing? If you’re seen as a top performer that is increasing your overall market value.
- Your work must have an impact on the value of the overall business or department? Can you articulate this?
Once you have this information it is time to think about your next steps to having a conversation about your pay rise or promotion.
3 tips to help you negotiate your next pay rise or promotion
Prepare
Firstly, you need to prepare to manage your career, no one else will do this for you. Set aside some time to map out your career plan, if you haven’t done this already.
To help you track against your plan, it is strongly encouraged that you meet with your manager regularly. This is a fantastic way to keep your manager up to date on what you are working on and what you have achieved. Remember unless you tell somebody what you’ve done, how will they know!
To prepare you for such conversations, you should always familiarise yourself with your organisation’s pay rise and promotion policy – each company is different, but many only have this occur once a year.
Go for it
The next step is you should now ask. If you don’t ask you don’t get.
Once you have shown your value in the workplace, and it’s the right time to ask, have that conversation with your manager. Treat it as a business meeting, pick your timing and location – as no one needs to be distracted, prepare what you are going to say and sell yourself.
The Aftermath
Finally, if after this entire process you have not succeeded as you liked, it is not reason to give up, but rather ask your manager why you were not successful this time. Then you will need to work with your manager on establishing actions on what you need to do to in order to be considered for the next round, and to be successful then.
There are other options you may also like to consider as a successful negotiation if the pay rise is not forthcoming at this time and they may include; a change in job title, flexible working arrangements, a sabbatical, or extra holidays.
In summary, you need to believe in yourself, you need to sell yourself and you need to know your value. Have the conversation.