3 Things You Should Know Before Asking Your Boss For A Pay Rise

On June 13th, Women in Banking and Finance were delighted to welcome Jo Painter for an interactive and motivating session on “3 Things You Should Know Before Asking Your Boss for A Pay Rise”. Jo Painter is a Confidence and Career Impact Coach with 17 years of experience coaching people in a major corporate company as a pharmacist, in management and personal development. She now has her own business, Confidence Coaching for Women, to help other women with their self-assurance and direction in their lives. She shared her expertise with us to help build confidence and encourage open communication with management regardless of what we’re asking for (not just a pay rise!).

Lloyds Banking Group were kindly hosting this engaging session and industry colleagues from Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, EY and PWC attended. This interesting mix of backgrounds led to thought-provoking discussions.

The beginning of the session focussed on the difference between men and women when it comes to both applying for jobs and asking for a pay rise. A shocking statistic mentioned was that 42% of men are happy to ask for a pay rise whereas only 1 in 4 women are confident to do so. Both figures are quite low but relatively only around half the number of women are happy asking for a pay rise compared to men. Jo reflected on the background of gender differences such as stereotyping and self-belief as well as touching on “nice girl conditioning” to explain this statistic and how we can overcome it.

The presentation involved interactive discussions in small groups to lead up to a toolkit that each of us could use when approaching our manager to ask for a pay rise or similar. A particular useful preparation tip that was raised was looking on GlassDoor.co.uk to see what wage your peers in the industry are earning. This research can then be mentioned in the conversation with your boss, or purely just for confidence that you really do deserve a pay rise! With everyone working together we managed to gather a flipchart worth of sentences to use in the conversation with your boss. As discussed, sometimes it is the simplest things such as not knowing how to word it that is holding you back from asking.

Throughout her presentation, Jo highlighted: the importance of knowing your worth; evidencing your achievements; building a network; and how it is essential to be proud of what we achieve in our roles and voice it. Jo left us with an inspiring statistic from a LinkedIn survey: “25% of women said they had asked for a pay rise, but of those 75% got it”! Everyone left the session feeling ambitious and better equipped to achieve our career aspirations.