How to ask for a pay rise

As we continue to settle in to a new year, you might have been thinking about your career path and where the year will lead you. If you’re happy with your current employer, you should think about  how you can progress internally – and the first stop is a pay rise.

This blog will offer best practices and guidance on how you can ask for the pay rise you deserve!

Choose your moment

Research by XpertHR has found that employers are planning lower pay rises, or waiting to see if inflation falls before making pay decisions. Before you begin to put together research and stats, you need to take a look at your employer and their future plans. If there have been recent redundancies, hiring freezes or slow business progression, it’s safe to assume now may not be the best time to ask for your pay rise. However, that doesn’t mean it will never be the right time!

If you feel now isn’t the time to bring it up, this allows you more time to achieve more goals,  highlight how well you can handle your workload, and how you can go above and beyond your responsibilities. This will help you put together an even stronger case for a pay rise when the time comes around.

If business is booming and everything looks positive, it could be the right time for you to begin putting together a case for a salary increase.

Do your research

It’s good to get to know what other people in your role earn across the UK, so researching salaries is a good place to continue your preparation. There are many tools online you can utilise for this, including Lorien’s own 2023 Salary Survey. Our salary survey highlights annual and daily salary ranges, alongside the average time people will spend in these roles.

It’s important to note that location plays a part in salary, so it’s worth searching for similar roles in your area. You can do that on Lorien’s website here.

Put together a business case

Before you take the pay rise proposition to your manager, you should find ways to evidence what you’ve done for your employer in the last year. The more evidence, the better! If you can show you’re consistently meeting targets, you’ve contributed to improving revenue and you’ve taken on extra responsibilities, you should build your case around these points.

If you have any statistics to evidence how you’ve helped the business grow and improve, you should definitely make a note of them to pass on when you make your case. Additionally, be sure to include any thing you’ve achieved as part of a team – remember team work makes the dream work! Soft skills like teamwork add value to your business case, and if you’re good at timekeeping, you’ve demonstrated you can work in an agile environment and you can communicate effectively, you should highlight this in your case.

Asking the question

You’ve examined the circumstances, researched your role and put together a business case; the time has come to take your case to your manager. You should do this in private – a video call if you work remotely, or a meeting room if you can do it in person. Many managers schedule regular one-to-ones with their direct reports to discuss goals and performance – this kind of meeting would also be a perfect setting to bring up your pay rise query.

Make sure you’re familiar with the facts of your business case. It’s normal to feel nervous, but having to read from a script may not help your case. Maintaining eye contact and a regular pace of speech also conveys confidence, so try to do this where possible.

Deliver your business case with a brief introduction, leading into your evidence and the value you’ve added to the business. You can finish up with a summary, including the salary you believe you should rise to based on the evidence you’ve compiled.

After you’ve delivered your case, be prepared for a small negotiation – nobody ever accepts a first offer! CIPD have stated that the average pay increase for 2024 is 4%, so be sure to factor that in to your proposed salary.

For more Lorien candidate insights and tips, click here. If you’re looking for a new role, upload your CV to our talent network here.