Time for a pay rise? This is how you ask for it.
2 September 2019 at 8:19 am
The “money” chat with your manager can be awkward, especially if you’re working for a charity with not a lot to spare. But remuneration for your hard work is important, and sometimes there is no way around it but to ask for that pay rise you know you deserve. We ask Richard Green from NGO Recruitment for some tips.
Ask the hard questions first
Asking when you’re going to get a pay rise before you actually get the job might sound weird. But if your chances of securing the job are looking good, asking about the remuneration process first up might set you up for success.
“If you are being considered for a role, raising talking about money at an appropriate moment is a really positive thing to do,” Richard says.
“It’s important because if anything’s going to wreck the process, it’s going to be different expectations of salaries and increases from there.”
Introduce the idea as early as possible
If there has been no mention of getting an annual pay rise in your first couple of months in the job, then introduce the idea to your manager as quickly as you can.
“Introduce the idea of getting a pay rise into your weekly or your monthly supervision meetings and start asking questions around what sort of system the organisation has in place for pay rises, and how it works for everybody else,” Richard explains.
Go to your HR team
If these questions to your manager are for whatever reasons, falling on deaf ears, take it to the experts.
“Be upfront about it, you need to ask them what the process is and what the system is,” he says.
Don’t come across as greedy
There is a point where you can overstep the mark, particularly if you’re working for a smaller organisation.
“NFPs can’t afford to pay big salaries, so if you’ve been in an organisation for three or four years and you’re wanting more than $100,000 a year, you’re probably in the wrong job,” he says.
“It’s about doing it in a way that it’s about a system and it’s about the employer investing reasonably in personnel and staff as a valuable resource.”
Richard also notes that in an ideal world, the topic of a pay rise should be left to the employer and not the employee, because these conversations, especially as a junior, can be incredibly intimidating.
