Asking for a pay rise can be scary. That's why BIZ is here to help.

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Now it's time to talk about pay rises. With a little prep and the right approach, you can make conversations about money less painful.

Let's break it down:

How to ask for a pay rise.

Preparation is key. Here's how you do it.

Do your research and read the room.

1. Know how your company approaches promotions and pay increases.

• Chat to your manager, if there's a process — learn it. Read the (eyewateringly boring) documentation.

• Are you asking for a pay rise out of a review cycle or within one?

• Is your manager the approver or someone else many levels above?

2. Check external market data to benchmark your salary.

• Hudson's Salary Guide

• Hayes Salary Guide

• Think & Grow Tech Salary Guide (startups)

3. Understand the situation.

• Is your company turning over high revenue/results or are you working in an environment of decreasing budgets? Having mates in the Finance team helps with intel.

• When does your company do annual budgeting? This can help you time your ask.

• How long have you been at the company? If it's under 12 months, it's a little too soon to be pushing for a pay rise (unless your role scope has changed or you're just… completely knocking it out of the park.)

4. Get into the right mindset.

• Mental flip: pretend you're the boss: "Why do I want to give [your name] a pay rise? What's the benefit to me?"

• Usually the answer to that is: they want to keep good talent (recruiting is expensive!), they want to motivate good talent (when you feel valued, you deliver more value to the company) or in some cases, it may be clear you're being underpaid and they'll want to correct.

• Good leaders ask for what they need and want at work all the time. With prep, this can be a demonstration of your leadership.

• It's not personal. If you can keep emotion out of it, you're going to put your best foot forward.

• Look inwards. Asking for a pay rise is about you, your role and your output — not competing against other people's experience, role or output.

5. Collect evidence as you go.

Who even remembers what they did six months ago? Check out my screenshot hack to make your life so much easier.

The three-word method.

OK, you're prepared. Now it's time for the three-word method. Here's what you do — you frame your value with these three prompts:

• Experience: What knowledge/experience and expertise are you bringing to the role? What unique insights/secret sauce do you have? How has your expertise grown? How have you invested in your own up-skilling (e.g. you took a course).

• Output: What output have you driven for the business? What was expected of you and what did you deliver? Key metrics and results. When presenting these always bring it back to larger company goals and priorities. Include your contributions to company values and culture. Your output is not just what you did, but also how you did it.

Here's an example of what that might look like (Content Marketer role):

Contributing to the company's goal of acquiring 1M new customers in 2024, developed and launched our first-ever influencer campaign "Project X". The campaign exceeded target, driving 100K unique users to our website (vs 80K goal), helping us overtake A, B & C competitors in share of voice for the first time.

Cultivated relationships with 10 external partners (Media and Creators) helped to create $0.5M in earned media — Partner A shared, "Of all the brand partnerships I've done, this was the most authentic and inclusive."

• Role: What's the scope of your role and has it evolved? Have you taken on/ been given more responsibility? Do you operate outside of your job scope?

Listen to the first episode of BIZ where Host Em Vernem gets career coaches Michelle Battersby and Soph Hirst to share their proven framework for getting what you want at work. Post continues after audio.

Putting it into practice.

But, how exactly do you quantify soft skills? Here's how:

• Link the skill to the impact. This sentence structure is my go-to: Demonstrated [skill] by [doing what] which meant that [impact].

• Give context. Why was it great? Or why was it challenging? E.g. First time it had been done, involved multiple different team, tight turnaround time and dealing with roadblocks and delays.

Examples:

Demonstrated adaptability by reworking our launch plan to overcome three different product delays, which meant that the project still launched on time, and we met our team goal of X resulting in Y.

Demonstrated leadership by bringing together stakeholders from four different teams who've never worked together before, which meant that [link to impact].

Strategically influenced the Research Team to prioritise our project vs others, which means that [link to impact].

How to actually have the conversation.

Remember, preparation is key.

• Give your manager heads up on the meeting (if you're doing this outside the formal company performance review process). E.g. "I'd love to have a career focused 1:1 to talk about my impact and achievements over the last year."

• How to start the conversation. E.g. "I love being part of this team, I've been given so many opportunities to grow in this role, I'm committed to helping with the big priorities the company has this year like — XYZ. I've put together a summary of my impact and contributions and how the scope of my role has changed over the last year. I'd love to walk you through the examples and have a conversation around compensation if you're open to it."

Bonus… role-play your way to a 'yes'.

If you want to take it to the next level, here's a simple ChatGPT prompt to help you write a script and role-play the conversation.

• Prompt: act as an executive coach. Help me write a script for a pay rise conversation with my manager by asking me a series of questions. Ask me clarifying questions until you are 95 per cent sure that you can complete the task successfully.

• Follow-up prompt: now help me role-play the conversation.

The beauty of the three-word method — experience, output, role — is that it's all about facts, not fluff. It's your secret weapon to take the pressure off, stay focused, and show exactly why you deserve that pay bump. So book in that meeting, you got this.

Soph Hirst is your favourite new internet career mentor 💖, BIZ podcast host and founder of Workbaby — helping Gen Z fast-track their careers without hating their lives.

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Feature Image: Getty.