So you want a raise for the great job you’re doing?  Nothing unusual there, we all want a bit more money.  However, have you ever really thought about whether or not you deserve that raise?

Doing A Good Job Is Not Enough

Yes, I know, you’re good at your work.  Sorry, that’s not good enough.  When your employer hired you, do you think they hired you because they thought “Let’s find someone mediocre!” or “Let’s find someone that’s just barely good enough”?  No, they hired you because they expected you to be good at your job.  That means just being good is meaningless.  You’re expected to be good so why would you get additional rewards just for doing what’s already expected?  No, in order to get that raise you need to go above and beyond good; you need to provide real additional value.

What Does Value Mean?

At most jobs, providing value means doing things that will help the business make more money.  Making money is after all the goal of the business.  This is slightly different at non profits and I’ll talk about those later.   At for profits companies though, if you’re not adding value to the bottom line then you don’t deserve that raise.  So if you want a raise, you need to make your boss think “wow, this person is really helping us make / save more money than we expected.”

Let me illustrate with an example.  I have a friend called Chris who’s a personal trainer at a local gym.  Chris is paid by the gym, not by his customers.  In other words, Chris is an employee of the gym.  Chris started out at $20 an hour but it’s now been a year and Chris thinks he should get a raise.  So, does Chris deserve a raise?  Doesn’t seem like it.

Personal trainer clients pay the company $60 per session.  That’s what they paid a year ago and that’s still what they pay now.  Out of that $60, the company has to pay for the facilities, various overhead expenses and then give Chris $20 of salary, which leaves them with about $20 of profit.  So every single additional dollar they give Chris is one less dollar the company makes in profit.  If they give him a $5 raise, they make $5 an hour less.  There’s not a company in the world that really wants to make less money so my friend Chris is well and truly screwed.  He will not get a raise, and frankly, he doesn’t deserve one.  He’s not making the company more money so why should they give him more money?

Dead End Jobs

By the way, this is a classic example of a dead end job.  There’s just no way to advance in a position where any raise will cause the company to make less money.  You’re either going to be stuck with the same pay forever or you need to get a new job.  Quite a few low paying jobs are similar to this.  Think about security guards or airport screeners.  There’s almost nothing they can do to add value to their positions.  No one thinks to themselves, “wow, that airport screener is really efficient!  By being quicker, they just helped the Transportation Safety Authority (TSA) save money!  They should get a raise.”  Realistically, any job in which you can’t really prove value to your employer is one in which you’re never going to get a raise based on merit.  You might get one based on seniority or some union contract but you might as well forget about performance based raises.  Your performance doesn’t matter and so you’ll never get a raised based on it.

How To Make A Dead End Job Less Dead End

There are three ways of making a dead end job less dead end.  First, you can go into business for yourself.  For example, if Chris quit his job at the gym and started working as an independent personal trainer, he could charge what he was really worth.  If he was a great personal trainer, he would get more money from his customers and thus a raise.  This is a great example of why working for yourself is in many cases better than working for other people.  You get to keep the profits you make, so if you’re motivated and hardworking, you may want to consider working for yourself.  Conversely, if you’re not so motivated and prefer the easy life where you don’t have to work very hard, working for someone else may make more sense.

The second way to get a raise in a dead end job is to help the company overall.  What does that mean?  Well, let’s think.  There’s no way Chris can directly make his employer more money.  He simply doesn’t have more hours in the day to take on more customers.  However, what if Chris comes up with a better way of scheduling clients that doesn’t require as much overhead?  What if gets his clients to recommend the gym to their friends and therefore build up a bigger customer base for the gym?  What if he gains some extra certifications and works with the gym to offer “Extreme Personal Training” sessions for $70 an hour?  In all of these cases Chris is helping the gym make more money and therefore he deserves a raise.  However, I would argue that if Chris is this motivated, he should really start working for himself.

Third, Chris can make himself indispensible.  That means Chris becomes so good at his job that he becomes something more than just another personal trainer.  For example, what if Chris was such an amazing personal trainer that his customers would quit coming to this gym if Chris stopped working there?  In this case the gym’s decision is a little different.  Now if they don’t give Chris his raise he’ll quit and his customers will stop paying the gym their $60 an hour. The company’s decision is not between $20 profit (no raise) and $15 (after giving Chris a raise).  Instead it’s $15 an hour profit (If Chris stays) vs. $0 an hour profit (if Chris goes and takes his customers with him).  Now it’s clearly to the company’s benefit to keep Chris around.  Note that even in this case it’s probably better for Chris to go work on his own.  If he’s that good, he can keep a lot more of the money his clients pay him.

Non Hourly Jobs

If you’re like me, your job doesn’t really pay you by the hour.  You have a certain role and you’re expected to fill it.  This may sound very different than being a personal trainer paid by the hour but it’s really not.  You are still contributing value to the company’s bottom line (profits!).  If you want to get a raise, you need to contribute more.

Assume for a second that your boss is competent.  If so, that means he or she hired you knowing what kind of value they expected you to provide.  So just doing a good job doesn’t mean you qualify for a raise.  Doing a good job is basically what’s already expected of you.  Therefore, to qualify for a raise, you need to do better.  Let me give you some examples:

• My friend Dan works in IT.  He does his job well which means he deserves his normal pay.  Last year Dan also came up with a project which ended up saving the company $20,000 a year in printing costs.  This was something that Dan’s boss did not expect of him.  Dan did it on his own time and with his own initiative.  End result, company saved a lot of money and Dan got a 6k raise at a time when other people were getting pay freezes or laid off.
• My friend Wesley works in technical support.  He doesn’t have a college degree or a technical background but he was good enough to get this job.  In the years since landing this job Wesley has gone out and improved his skills through courses at a local community college and he’s volunteered for multiple tasks that were not normally expected of him.  Result, Wesley got a hefty raise each year he was at this company and is now in line for a nice promotion to a management position.

Both of these are examples of people going above and beyond what was expected of them and increasing their value to the company.  So now let me go back to you with a few questions.

• Are you going above and beyond or are you just doing what is expected of you?
• Are you providing additional value to the company beyond what they hired you for?
• Are you indispensible?  That is, how quickly can the company replace you?

If you answer these questions honestly, you can figure out if you deserve a raise or not.  Once you do that, go have a polite talk with your boss.  If you’ve really been providing extra value, he or she has probably already noticed.  If you haven’t been providing value and can’t figure out ways to do that, go have a talk with the boss anyway.  Tell them what you want and ask them for suggestions on how to increase your value to the company.  Trust me, most bosses love employees with this kind of initiative.\

Good luck, and enjoy your raise