Negotiating salary increase

LegacyUser

Hello all,

I'd like to get people's opinions on this. It might be a bit long-winded but I want to lay it all out.

I work in a small company (~20 people). Our work is project based and we have public email folders where all emails relating to individual projects are stored as a record of all correspondence. As well as this, there are folders that store emails relating to proposals - projects we're currently trying to get involved in. Now, being interested in the health of my employer and what projects I might be working on in the near future, I have a glance through these folders every so often. Again, every member of staff has access to these emails.

About a month ago, I came across an email from one director to another with an attachment containing the salaries of everyone in the company, among other things. So I know exactly how much each person in the company makes. I am the lowest paid graduate out of about 4 or 5 in the company and to be honest, I'm p!ssed off about it.

Last year, I called the director after receiving the offer and attempted to squeeze a bit more on the salary. The response I received was (almost verbatim) "I'm sorry, I can't really do anything on the salary front. That's what all of our graduates start on and it wouldn't be fair to start you on more" - basically a "take or leave it response". At the time I was under extreme pressure trying to get through my master's dissertation and I absolutely had to start working in the near future so I had no choice but to take the offer. The industry has been in bad shape for a while and jobs were few and far between, especially in the location I was after.

Fast forward to almost a year later and I have my annual review coming up soon. Now, I would consider myself a modest person but that's not going to get you anywhere in the workplace so forgive me for blowing my own trumpet here. I have a masters with distinction from one of the top universitys in the world - arguably *the* best university in the world for my discipline. Since starting at this company I have worked on a really huge range of things and taken on a lot of responsibility. I am one of the only people in the office that can use all of our software packages. I have worked long and extremely hard to meet my deadlines, even when they were totally unrealistic. I've adapted to a huge variety of tasks and undertaken some very complicated analysis. I believe I am at least as valuable as the other grads (who don't have my level of qualification) yet I'm being paid less.

If I had said nothing at the offer stage and just accepted the first thing they threw at me then I could accept the lower salary as my own fault. The thing that really irks me is that the director just told me a stone faced lie. I can tell from that spreadsheet that I'll be getting a 2% increase at my annual review but I want an increase in my base salary as well. But how to go about this?

I don't think I can let him know that I saw that email. Even though it was in a public folder, I reckon he'd still think I was snooping around. If I allude to knowing other grads' salaries without reference to the email then he'll think I've been going around asking everyone else what they're on. Both of those scenarios reflect badly on me. Problem is, my position is much weaker from his point of view if he thinks I don't know the other grads' salaries.

One thing that's probably in my favour is that we've lost our two best staff in the last couple of weeks and there's a definite feeling of people "abandoning ship". I think they may be wary encouraging more people out the door. That probably won't be enough on its own to get me what I want. They might have had me over a barrel a year ago but that's definitely not the case now.

Anyway, thanks for reading if you made it this far. I'd appreciate views on the situation and how I could go about negotiating a raise. Maybe I'm overreacting here?

tl;dr Found an email with everyone's salaries. I'm on less than other people of my grade. Feel I deserve more. How do I go about this?

Giblet

Ask for what you want, if you don't get it, express your disappointment and say you won't consider anything less. Are you looking at new jobs?

TwoShedsJackson

Definitely don't tell them you saw the spreadsheet.

You are on less than the other grads - but how much less? If it is a question of a couple of thousand per annum it may not be worth rocking the boat too much, but if you are being paid considerably less you may want to try asking for more.

LegacyUser

Its an employers market OP, but even if it wasnt; unless you can directly link your contribution with generating financial value for the business as opposed to 'he's a good guy who knows how to use the XYZ programme' then you'll never be in a position to negotiate higher pay.

Lux23

psosirn diswek wrote: »

Its an employers market OP, but even if it wasnt; unless you can directly link your contribution with generating financial value for the business as opposed to 'he's a good guy who knows how to use the XYZ programme' then you'll never be in a position to negotiate higher pay.

I think this is the key to it. If you can show how at least one piece of work has contributed to the bottom line then you have a case.