Negotiate A Raise By Asking About Your Worth To The Company


Wrangling a raise out of your boss often seems like an impossible task. Give yourself a better chance of succeeding by starting with a discussion about your value to the company.

Photo by iQoncept (Shutterstock).

Stuart Diamond, who teaches negotiation strategies to government and corporate managers, says you should start by asking the manager how he or she thinks you’re doing. That helps set the stage for demonstrating why a raise is fair.

Diamond’s tactic after getting a favourable response about how he’s been doing at work is to ask a direct question: “Am I worth less to you now than I was worth last year?”

The editor would invariably say no, and Diamond would introduce the fact that the consumer price index, the government’s inflation measure, had risen, say, 3%, causing Diamond’s compensation to be worth that much less. “If no one in the company was getting a raise at the time, I would say, ‘I just want to get paid next year, what I was getting paid this year,’” he explains.

It’s a bold strategy, but Diamond says it has never failed for him. If your boss is adamant about no raises this year, Diamond suggests asking what you need to do in the next year or what has to happen for you to get a raise and then ask to have the conversation again in the next few months.

How to Negotiate a Year-End Raise [Forbes]


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