Okay, let’s face it: salary negotiation generally ranks right up there with root canals for most of us. Nevertheless, understanding how to negotiate a salary that’s fair to both you and your employer – and lets you both pay the rent and eat – is an important professional skill we all need to master.
Fortunately, there are some basic steps you can take to 1) diffuse your anxiety factor and 2) help up your chances of actually getting that raise.
The Five Steps to Confident Salary Negotiation
1. Pull together relevant salary information. Salary information should include “comparables,” or information about what people in similar jobs with similar skills and seniority in your particular industry generally make. A great resource for this is Payscale.com. Also, consider what is happening trendwise in both your local community and in your industry – if the papers are reporting bad economic news, industry layoffs, etc., you may want to lower your raise request just a bit to reflect current circumstances.
2. Identify and be comfortable (but not obnoxious) talking about your contributions and strengths. One of the mental barriers people with disabilities need to overcome is a feeling that they are simply lucky to have a job, rather than focusing on their value to the team and the company. Focus on your contributions, your increasing skills, the projects you have successfully supported or led, your positive impact on the team’s efforts and goals. People with disabilities are often the most effective, reliable, mature, dedicated staffers in the office – you are an asset, not a liability, and you need to highlight that. (By the way, never enter a salary negotiation with a raise request based on simply “needing more money” – this almost never works.)
3. Be prepared: rehearse your salary negotiation scenario. Trust the Boy Scouts: being prepared is a good thing, especially when it comes to salary negotiation. So rehearse your presentation, plan for different scenarios (paths the conversation might take) and decide how you’ll respond, and practice speaking the lines where you actually ask for a raise with a specific amount. Getting these words out is stunningly difficult, so practice it over and over again until you know you can say it without stammering or turning white. Also, you want to be calm enough that you can listen carefully to your boss’s comments and responses in case you need to counter or clarify.
4. Decide on what points you’re willing to negotiate. You may go into a salary negotiation intending to ask for a 5 percent raise for example, but your boss says they simply can’t fit that into the budget. What other items could you negotiate for instead? Tuition reimbursement, an extra several days of vacation, financial support for professional memberships or conference attendance, stock options, etc.? This is where your salary information can help you with comparable information – if you know the standard salary is $30,000 but you’re making $25,000, you might want to negotiate for alternative benefits or compensation that offset that $5,000 gap.
5. Before you have the conversation, decide what you’re willing to risk. If you ask for a raise and are turned down, you’re going to have to decide whether or not to continue with your employer, and whether you will still be able to feel positive about your job. If, after assessing your personal circumstances, you determine that you cannot afford to leave your position, then you need to know you can accept a rejection of your request gracefully and still contribute at your previous level. Or, if you determine that you’re simply not willing to stay unless your request is met, it’s wise to have laid the groundwork first for finding a replacement job.
Also, if the salary negotiation doesn’t work out as hoped, ask two questions: 1) what else could I be doing/learning/contributing that would merit the raise I’m requesting, and 2) when can we revisit the salary issue (shoot for 3 months if possible).
Salary Negotiation for People with Disabilities: Is it More Difficult?
The reality is that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is appalling, and we all know it. Because of that, one of the most important parts of learning how to negotiate salary is to understand that your disability has nothing whatsoever to do with your value to the company as an employee.
Your job performance is the only thing that matters in terms of your contribution; whether you make that contribution from a wheelchair, with a prosthetic arm, or with a screen reader is of no relevance. (To that point, if you believe you are being underpaid because you have a disability, you may want to enlist help from an advocacy group or discuss this with one of the government agencies to see what your options are – but this should be considered a last resort.)
Salary negotiation is difficult under the best of circumstances; for people with disabilities, it can sometimes be difficult to muster the requisite confidence level to have the conversation as easily as we would wish. But keep in mind that your value has nothing to do with your disability, and you’re probably proving that every day on your job. Now start rehearsing the phrase, “… and because of those contributions, I would like to ask for a raise of ….”
