School Of 72
SM
How To Get A Pay Raise
Importance and Urgency: Receiving a pay raise
is always important financially, as long as the things that enable you
to be paid more do not jeopardize your values, the law, or your well-being and
happiness. It is urgent that you get paid as much more as you can, as soon as
you can, even if it is just a small pay raise and just a little sooner.
General Strategy: Stay focused on your value to
your employer. Don't get caught up in comparing your pay to the pay of
others. Try to learn as much as you can from your company, especially your
boss, about what the company needs from you to pay you more. Improve yourself in
whatever ways are necessary for you to provide the company more of what it needs
from you.
If you are a member of a union, you have made a tradeoff
to assure that you are paid similarly to your peers, and this generally reduces
your ability to receive increased pay based strictly on your own merits. Only
you and your fellow union members can judge whether or not this is a good
tradeoff based on the agreements negotiated between your union and your
employer.
Focus On Your Value: Your performance value is
determined by the quality, quantity and type
of your work. You can improve the quality
of your work by following instructions, procedures, and methods more thoroughly
and more reliably. You can improve the quantity of your work by eliminating all
wasted time during the time you are working, and eliminating any absent time.
You can add to the types of work that you do by learning new skills. Employers
are more likely to help you learn and let you use new skills after you master
quality and quantity with your existing skills. All of these improvements
make your performance value higher.
Your supply and demand value is determined
by whether there are more or fewer people available than needed to do the
quality, quantity and type of work you do. It may seem like you cannot control
the supply of - and demand for - people who do the quality, quantity and type of
work that you do. But you do have a lot of control of this. Everything you do to
improve your quality and quantity, and add new skills, puts you ahead of more
people. If you do not constantly improve in these areas, you are inviting
others to catch up to you and even pass you. When you make improvements
yourself, you catch up to others and pass them up. Making these
improvements more quickly than others makes your supply and demand value higher.
It is best to increase both your performance value and
your supply and demand value. You will be more likely to receive pay raises
in larger amounts and more frequently.
Do Not Compare Pay: How much pay another employee
is receiving is not important to you. You cannot control it, and you cannot use
it to justify a pay raise for yourself without hurting yourself. You should never
tell others what your pay is. Employers often resist giving higher than
average raises to employees who tell others about their pay, because it causes
others to ask for raises based on your pay instead of based on their own value.
Likewise, you cannot use another employee's pay to convince your company to pay
you more. If you try, you will give your company many excuses for not paying you
more, which might even cause you to get a lesser raise than you would have
received otherwise. When you ask your company to compare pay between you and
another employee, you also invite a comparison of all of the other attributes of
the other employee with yours. This usually causes the company to focus on all
of the other employee's strengths and all of your weaknesses. Comparing
pay with others is not wise.
Turn Your Boss Into Your Partner: Tell your boss
that you want to become more valuable, and ask him or her to write
a small list of the most important things that you can control that would make
you more valuable. Bosses are usually busy people, and your boss may not do this
right away. Be persistent without being overly pesky, until you get a written
list. If you get a verbal list, write it down yourself and ask your boss to
confirm that you wrote it correctly.
Earn Your Pay Raise: Treat the list from your boss
as a checklist, and start working on each item. Work hard at making real
permanent improvements that result in each item being checked off. After
a reasonable amount of time, demonstrating to your boss that your improved value
isn't just a short term kick, ask for a pay raise based on your increased
value from doing the things your boss told you would make you more
valuable.
Pay Raise or No Pay Raise: Congratulations! If you
have received a pay raise, you can start this process all over again to get
another pay raise. The only limit to your pay should be your value, so keep
increasing your value. There is no guarantee that your company will pay
you more, even after you become more valuable to them, but you can now hold your
employer accountable because you have increased your power. You
have not only become more valuable to your current employer, you have also
become more valuable to other employers. If your current employer does
not reward your increased value with a pay raise, you can and should consider
looking for another employer that is willing to pay you more.
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SM lessons valuable, please return in the
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