Inspired (and infuriated) by a good friend’s plight at work, I created two projects on IdeaOffer to solicit the advice of the internet community on two of the hardest things that an employee ever has to do: tell a boss “no” and ask for a raise. Many people avoid doing either of these things at all costs, but they are important steps to take if you don’t want to be taken advantage of, even if your boss is a fair one but has too little time to devote to you and your unique situation.
I’ll start with how to ask for a raise because that was the first issue that came up with my friend. She had been working at her job for over a year and had been lured in with a higher wage than she ended up getting. In that time she had been given very favorable reviews and significantly more responsibility. But no raise — not even up to the level the company had initially promised her. What to do?
I got a lot of good advice on IdeaOffer, and I’ll copy the highlights from the winning response below, but if you want to view the whole project (which I recommend) then you’ll just have to visit the project page. The majority of responses focused on putting her value to the company on display and pointing out that her workload and responsibility level were no longer equal to her pay grade.
Michael DeVries, who wrote the winning response, also made a good recommendation:
I would recommend that your friend develop essentially a Business Case justifying in very concrete, tangible, bottom line = dollars ($), ways that her value to the company has increased thereby justifying the (specific) amount of a raise she is seeking / feels that she deserves.
This is a very important point, because at the end of the day it is about the bottom line.
Next, let’s turn our attention to how to tell a boss “no.” As I write this, the project is still open, so if you want to weigh in then feel free. So far many of the entries seem to have a similar common thread to the first project: using solid facts to show that what your boss is asking you to do is not possible.
If you are going to tell your boss “no” then you better have a good reason. “I don’t feel like it,” probably won’t cut it, so you need to be able to explain why you would be unable or unwilling to do the job. Perhaps this is because you are too busy already; perhaps this is because you are uncomfortable taking on a task of that magnitude — either way you need to have a solid case prepared, much like you would if you were going to ask for a raise.
These two situations may be difficult, but they don’t have to be impossible. With the right amount of preparation, any employee should be capable of saying “no” or requesting a raise.
John J. Walters is a freelance associate with WasabiVentures
