How to assess your contribution at work in a monetary sense?

[AkydefGoldberg]

I've been in my job for over three years now and I'm fairly content despite the challenges, and internal politics it brings.

Over the last year it would be fair to say that I've had more responsibility my way through additional tasks that might not normally be assigned to me, but we are a small team and it has been an opportunity to add more strings to my bow if I decided to go for another job.

With our work for the next year increasing, and myself having more things to do, my colleagues have encouraged me to request a wage increase to compensate me for the additional tasks I've been doing. But the problem is this: I'm not a confident, or a assertive person so broaching this subject in-depth (incidentally, I've mentioned a pay rise in a meeting last year and was told by my manager that across the board, there weren't going to be wage increases) makes me a tad nervous. It's not the fact that the answer would be no, but more so if I might not be adept at defending myself as to why I deserve a pay rise.

I intend to scrutinize my job specification to see whether any additional tasks I've been doing fall into my role as I don't want my manager to say: "Well, you should be doing those as it's in your job role."

And, how do I talk about figures? I don't know how much more I should get. My colleagues want a cost of living increase which I might base my recommendation on (they haven't had a wage increase for 4 years and are on different contracts that confuses things)

I know money is available so as an organisation we are not struggling and I'm not desperate for a wage increase as I'm happy to be in work and would rather my colleagues and I all benefitted from more money rather than just me.

If anyone has any tips on the best way to raise this subject, how to prepare for it etc would be much appreciated!

[The Legend]

That's difficult. Unless you are in sales or pricing in some capacity where you can show how much money you make the company it's hard to prove monetary value. You are basically worth what the company (or another company) is willing to pay you.

Outside of that if enough of your tasks fall outside your job description that you can justify that you are doing another job than your title you could get a raise and promotion to a different job title, but that would be a raise up to them what it would be.

[AkydefGoldberg]

Thanks for the reply.

Another complication is the possibility that the company is planning to change my job title but essentially my roles will stay the same. So the question that comes to mind is, whether that qualifies for me to be given a raise because my job title has changed - IDK whether it'd be in a official/informal change but that's something I'm awaiting further information on.

[PorkChop]

Aky, I listened to this recently which you might find interesting:

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2017/01/2 ... tion-year/

[Hanley!]

Without working in Sales or a commission driven field, it's really impossible to tell how much you're really worth. The only metric that really means anything is the amount the company is willing to pay you. But that in itself is pretty difficult to figure out, because there might be a pretty sizable gap between that figure and your actual salary.

It's something I struggle with occasionally, working for the private sector. It's hard to know if you're being paid what you're actually worth. One way to get a better impression of what you're worth could be to check for vacancies in other companies for similar roles. If other companies are paying more for this sort of work, then you might deserve more from your current position.

There's also the chance that your company just pays below the market average, in which case trying for a similar role in another company might be your best option. In some cases it can also force your employers hand. Sometimes if you hand in your notice, you might learn suddenly that they're willing to go a little higher in order to save themselves the trouble of hiring and training in a new employee. Though that should obviously only be attempted if you do have another job lined up.

I'm in sort of a weird position myself, because I'm working in a position that doesn't exist in a lot of other companies here. So it's very hard to figure out if I'm being paid fairly.