Is it possible to get a 50k payrise?
Dec 15, 2023
The short answer - yes. Let me share with you a real life case study.
When I met Joanna she was working as an estate planning lawyer in a boutique firm earning a 90k salary. She was accountable for completing client legal work, plus system improvements… plus business development… plus managing three direct reports.
Add to that she was a young single mum to a primary school aged child trying to juggle a 50+ hour work week.
Talk about unsustainable.
On the outside, based on her years of experience, post admission from law, that salary wasn’t too far off the mark for her (at that time). That’s why she didn’t really complain or look for work elsewhere.
But here’s the thing. Over time, the lack of acknowledgement of her time, effort and outputs were wearing her down, and when I helped her break down her salary into an hourly rate, she may as well be serving food at McDonalds. At least then she’d have some form of work/life balance.
Exponentially increasing your salary is first knowing if you’re being underpaid, and by how much. Or, being in a role that is less than your skills or qualifications.
Although market rate was about that for her “role title”, it didn’t take into account the added accountabilities of managing direct reports and ensuring the online systems were in optimum form. Let’s face it, if those things broke down, the business would be in serious trouble.
What we did next was get strategic. This doesn’t happen overnight but it is imperative to get right.
Together, we did the work on reviewing her position description including detailing her accountabilities. What had changed, what was added in and not yet accounted for, and we got laser focused on the impact and outcomes of each.
This formed the base of a highly influential business case.
Then we got into salary benchmarking. We reviewed salary survey data across numerous platforms and found the range of this particular role (based on the upgraded accountabilities).
This last piece is the most important. Joanna had to set boundaries and be ready to make the decision to leave (or drastically reduce the accountabilities of her role), should she not get what was fair.
With that mindset in place, she was able to have a super robust conversation (we planned it carefully) about the value she added, the impact if she was to leave the organisation and what she was prepared to accept.
Three conversations later (around 2 months in total) her salary increased to $150k.
This whole process also gave her the confidence to set boundaries about her work hours and output, and ultimately create a better work/life balance for her and her kiddo.
So here’s the thing.
If you are wanting / deserving an increase in salary, do the prep work to make it happen. You may not think you have options, but there are ALWAYS options available.
We can help you work through it. Simply hit reply and let us know.