Lesson 5 - Transcript
They Actually Want to Give You a Raise
Kathy:
Hi, and welcome back to Real Raise 101. I’m Kathy Dailey, producer of Real Raise, back again with David Hubbard. In today’s lesson, we’re going to discuss what it takes to get your employer to want to give you a raise.
As we discussed before, to get a raise, someone has to want to give you a raise. Let’s look at the ‘want to’ part of this concept.
We’re assuming that in one of the previous lessons you have already identified the raise you want. And in an upcoming lesson we will talk about identifying the right people who are going to give you the raise. Don’t worry about the people part yet; we’ll get there soon.
So how are we going to get them to want to give you a raise? Well, what are the conditions under which people give raises? In other words, why does anyone ever give out raises?
Have you thought about this before? Most people never have. Your competition certainly hasn’t.
David:
See if this makes sense. There’s only one business reason that raises are given. That is: to keep you from leaving the company. I know sometimes there are more personal reasons that raises are given and we’re not going to get into those. They don’t work long term.
You get raises when your employer determines that the best course of action to retain you is to give you a raise. There are a few things implied here.
First, your employer has to want to keep you around. Does he or she perceive you as having value to them? Don’t underestimate this one. You will need to find out if they would be just as happy to have you there as have you leave.
Why might they not want to keep you?
If your employer doesn’t like you, you’re definitely not getting a raise. In fact, if you’re not liked, there is very little you can do to get a raise in your present position.
This is not the end of the world. Don’t worry, you can still get a raise. You can find new employers who will like you better and pay you more money. And you’ll probably have more fun there too.
Kathy:
Liking you is just part of wanting you to stay. They may like you, but for other reasons, they may not want you to stay.
You might not be a good fit for the job. They may feel that while they like you and you’re doing good work, you may not have the right skills or coworker or customer relations for the job. There may be a feeling that someone else could be a better fit.
David:
Please don’t think I’m suggesting that your employer does not value you. I just want to make sure they do before you spend the energy on positioning yourself for a raise in your present position; otherwise you’re just going to run into rejection and frustration.
Another reason they might not want to keep you is if they’re considering layoffs. I once worked at a giant telecommunications company in a department that highly valued college degrees. Employees without degrees were not promoted, they were left to stagnate.
I worked there with a wonderful lady named Pat. Pat was one of those without a degree. At an annual review she had, a manager told her that she would never get anywhere without a degree. So, Pat spent years in night school busting her tail to get a degree.
The proud day finally came when Pat graduated and of course soon she was in her new manager’s office asking when she would get the raise she had worked so hard for. That manager was not the same one that she had had the review with many years before.
When she brought in her diploma and asked for a raise, the manager said: ‘I don’t know about that. We’re rumored to have huge lay offs or involuntary salary reductions. You’re lucky to have any job here right now.’
Needless to say Pat was devastated. Fortunately, there is a happy ending. Two months later Pat had a new job at a different company, with more responsibility, making 40 % more than she had with the telecom company.
Kathy:
So when we say you will only get a raise in order to retain you, it is implied that they want to retain you. But what else is implied?
Well, there’s the implication that there is a risk of having you leave. If there is no risk that you would leave, why would you require a raise?
Note that what we are talking about is perceived risk. It doesn’t matter as much what the actual risk is. It’s the perceived risk that counts.
What determines how high that perceived risk is? A variety of factors.
One is the job marketplace; if few people are getting hired in you market, you employer is going to think the odds are slim that you will go to another company.
And how about this: do you appear to be marketable? I recently was in a company where I ran into a guy with an appearance that just screamed ‘Whatever you do don’t give me a raise!’
The guy was scary looking. He always dressed in black. Now, it worked for Johnny Cash, but it sure wasn’t working for this guy. His hair was dyed some kind of unnatural looking black, it was long and cut in a very severe style. He had face piercings all over that must have hurt, and a goatee beard thing that was very different.
The guy would scare co-workers, customers, children and dogs. And there’s no way that he would make it through an interview somewhere else. Why would anyone give this guy a raise? His company is in no danger of him leaving unless it’s to join a heavy metal rock band.
Now if this guy came in to work one day all cleaned up with the scary thing toned down, his employer should certainly be suspicious that he’s looking elsewhere. The perceived risk factor would go up, and so would his chances of getting a raise.
Or, how about this example: I once worked with a guy named Mike. His work was very well respected, although unrewarded. He was very quiet and tended to keep to himself.
The company had been giving him minimal raises for years. And as a result, they were hiring new guys with a fraction of his experience for more money. Mike was not the type to ask for a raise or complain.
Everyone was more than a little curious when Mike’s normal routine changed. He cut his hair short. He started coming in dressed up on Thursdays and taking Fridays off. Sometimes on Thursdays he would have airline tickets on his desk.
After about a month of this, his boss couldn’t take any more. He called Mike in to talk and gave him a 15% raise.
What happened was Mike’s boss thought for sure that Mike was interviewing out of town for a new job. He had always felt Mike was seriously underpaid and was very nervous about the situation.
Ironically, Mike had been going to visit a dying grandparent who like to see him dressed up and clean cut. But he didn’t mind the raise.
There’s one more important implication in ‘You get raises to keep you on the job’. The amount of the raise must be enough to keep you at the job. Your boss needs to feel comfortable that the amount of the raise is enough to keep you from leaving. It doesn’t do your employer any good to give you a raise in order to keep you if you are just going to leave anyway.
This is part of the reason we had you define your raise. You and your boss need to know what is going to work for you in order to get you to stay. Otherwise, we’re not solving anybody’s problem – yours or the company’s.
Another way to look at this is we need your employer to decide whether the pain of potentially having to replace you is greater than the pain of giving the raise you want.
Remember, this is going to be his/her/their decision that they get to make their way. We’re going to do everything possible to make it obvious that the raise is the way to go but there is no guarantee how it will turn out.
That is why it’s vital to have plans B & C in the works so that you don’t need to care how they decide.
One more thing before I sum all of this up for you. You will need to include in your strategy educating your boss and doing some of his homework for him. Specifically, you will need to show how difficult it might be having a new person come in and replace you.
They tend to forget how hard it is to hire, how much productivity is lost in training, and how it may be just as expensive as your raise – or maybe even more so. This will need to be documented so that your boss can use it in the discussions that he or she may have to get your raise approved and in place.
If you can help your boss by documenting the case for your raise, it will be much easier for him to get any approvals he needs with upper management. Often bosses will resist raises not because they don’t feel they are deserved or warranted, but simply because they don’t know how to communicate and document the case for a raise. They will be pleased to see your solution and probably want to use your techniques when they go up for a raise themselves.
To sum up what we have talked about so far, there is only one business reason to give you a raise. That reason is to keep you from leaving the company and going somewhere else.
So in order to get a raise we have to keep in mind these 2 things:
They have to want to keep you there.
And they have to perceive that there’s an actual risk that you might leave.
Another way of putting it is this: the risk of you leaving must outweigh the amount you are asking for in a raise.
So let us give you the specific action steps to follow in order get your raise. These steps are in order and the order is very important.
First you must make an objective appraisal of your situation and make sure that they will want to keep you enough to warrant a raise. If it turns out that you don’t think they will, that’s ok, it just means your raise lies elsewhere and we can immediately start to discover where those places are. They may be within your company in other positions or departments, or they may be at a new company.
Ask yourself about your relationship with your various bosses. Do they like you? Do they like your work? In the next lesson we’re going to pin down exactly who these people are. In your case it may be obvious, but sometimes it’s not.
Ask yourself about the company. Are there eminent lay offs coming for people in your area? I don’t mean ‘is the company doing well financially’. Even if your company is losing money at an alarming rate, it still may make good business sense to give you a raise. And even if they are making a fortune, they may still be trying to eliminate your position.
In any event, plan on hearing from the company that they can’t afford to give you a raise. That is just standard procedure and you bosses would be shirking their responsibilities to the company if they didn’t use that one.
After you have convinced yourself that there are good prospects for a raise in your current position, we want to enhance your position before pressing for the raise. We want to increase their desire to keep you.
We increase their desire to keep you 2 ways. One, become more likeable. Find out the things they don’t like about you and decide which ones are worth fixing. There’s always something that your boss would like done better and usually if you ask, he/she will tell you. You may have some ideas from your last review.
You can also carefully ask co-workers and other members of management. You don’t have to cure everything, but at least take a look and decide what you could work on.
The other way to get them to like you more is to create perceived value. This is very subjective and I don’t want you to get hung up on it. Just keep the thought and spirit of the question: ‘What can I do to create more perceived value for my employers?’ Sometimes the value is already there and your best approach is to make sure that the value is perceived.
We aren’t recommending that you create the perception without the value. This usually gets found out and may come back to bite you in the future.
After you have worked on the perceived value you will next want to focus on the perceived risk that you may want to depart. How do you do this? Sometimes it is as easy as mentioning to the right person that you were approached by a head hunter about a position. If you pick the right person, in no time the company rumor mill will have you being sought after by the competition. This can have the effect of raising your perceived value as well.
If you go through your day with the question: ‘How can I increase the perceived risk of me leaving?’ in mind you will be amazed at what you can come up with.
Some other obvious things to do are clean up your appearance, dress nicer, go on interviews, be seen talking to the competition. Be up on what going on in your industry. Casually mention industry information that would only be known to someone with connections and savvy.
Begin work on plans B & C. Look at the other possibilities in your company. What upward or lateral promotions are available? Update your resume and start talking to recruiters. If for no other reason than career maintenance, go on interviews.
Then, when the time is right make it known to your bosses the amount you will need to stay. We go into a lot more detail in on this in our continuing education offerings. It can be a bit tricky to know the right time and techniques for bringing up money figures.
Since you have gone ahead and figured out in advance what you are after, this part is going to go much more smoothly than it will with your competitors who haven’t done their homework.
Kathy:
And speaking of homework, let me quickly go over this lesson’s assignment. You’ll need to go to realraise.com/studyguides and download and print the pdf file titled Perception Improvement.pdf. Again, that’s realraise.com/studyguides and print out the Perception Improvement.pdf file.
Now on the first page, we want you to list the things that you can do to improve your likeability on the job, and on the second page, list the things you can do to increase your perceived value. Then go back and choose the top 5 on each list, and begin to work on improving them. You don’t have to make major changes, just start making changes.
Well that’s it for this lesson. Thanks for listening, and remember to do your assignment and listen to the audio as often as you like!
