What advice does money.stackexchange have for those looking to negotiate within their own company?
Last time I was on here I was in pretty bad shape financially. I had just lost my job after not getting paid the prior month. Thanks for Personal Finance & Money I am in a pretty okay spot. Things are getting better. I was able to find a job and bonus season is coming up. This is pretty much the one time each year where it is socially acceptable to negotiate internally. I know 2020 has been hard for a lot of people financially and my heart goes out to everyone in this boat, so I am not losing site of that.
I am grateful to have a job at a company that has done well. I kind of messed up the initial negotiation process, because as you will infer from my prior question, I was a little desperate. So I put out a number first with someone that I knew prior to the call (a negotiation mistake I know) and they wound up offering me 10k more than the number I gave them, which is never a good sign, I know, for negotiations (That is, I did not state a base salary high enough and they had plenty of slack to go higher, or so it would seem).
In 2020 I have done a really good job. I have a lot of things I can point to, but I have only been at the job about 1.5 years. I have had one performance review already and I've had many performance reviews in the past. One of the things I find extremely difficult is how to ask for a raise within a company. I tend to have some, how to put this, emotional challenges when dealing with money that I want to minimize (I am grinding my teeth just thinking about this). In dealing with compensation I find it very hard to not take lack of financial recognition personally.
So there is this huge aspect of my question that is emotional. The other part of my question is "What do managers and companies care about in deciding whether or not to award a raise?" "What does a successful request for a raise look like?" In past, these types of conversations have gone like this for me:
Me: I'd like a raise.
Twice-Removed Manager: No.
Me: I am disappointed. Look at XYZ.
Twice-Removed Manager: Sorry, no.
The thing about this is that the person delivering the news of compensation is not the one that sees my work on a day to day basis. As far as I know, my manager(s) do not know how much money I earn. This may make it more or less difficult to negotiate. I am not sure.
The thing is, I really do not want to leave this particular company. I have read a lot of books on negotiation, and I may have to go back and read them (e.g., Negotiation Genius, Getting to YES, and Never Split the Difference). There are a lot of really great resources on negotiating for a new salary when you're first hired (this article being one of my favorites on the subject). But there seems to be a relative dearth of material on the matter of negotiating within a company. The bit about not wanting to leave the company is to say, I cannot really be bothered to go get another BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement) right now, i.e., get an offer at another company for more money. I would love to get paid more without having to go to the lengths of having another offer in hand. I get it if this needs to be done, but what else must I do, or show, in order to make this negotiation process go smoothly?
My apologies if this is long-winded.
