How to Negotiate a Pay Rise in Your Current Role

If you enjoy your job, you might not want to move to a different company—or even to a different role within your current one. But does that mean you’re stuck with your current salary? Not necessarily. As we’ll explore in this article, it’s possible to negotiate a pay rise even if your responsibilities haven’t changed. Let’s delve into it!

Step 1: Make sure you’re performing well

This might sound obvious, but if you’re doing a terrible job, your chances of negotiating a pay rise are close to zero. That doesn’t mean you have to work long hours or try to impress your boss every single day—but you do need to be seen as a solid contributor. If your manager and team recognise you as someone who adds value, you’re starting from a much stronger position.

Step 2: Know your market value to negotiate a pay rise

Everyone has a market value. It’s the amount people with your profile—same role, experience, skills, and industry—tend to earn on average. To negotiate a pay rise effectively, it’s essential to know your market value.

Understanding your market value helps you determine if you’re underpaid, giving you the leverage to ask for a raise based on solid data. It also ensures you’re not overestimating your worth, which could lead to unrealistic expectations.

Evaluate your market value

There are a couple of ways to estimate your market value:

Ask around. If you’ve got friends or co-workers in similar roles—and they’re open to sharing—you can ask what they earn and then take the average. Or better yet, the median, which is less skewed by extremes.
Use websites like Glassdoor. LinkedIn and levels.fyi can also be useful. Pick whichever one has the most data for people in roles like yours.

Both approaches have their limitations. If you ask around, you’ll probably only get a small sample size to work with. On the other hand, websites like Glassdoor usually offer more data points, but the information can be outdated or not entirely reliable. The best option? Do both and see if there’s a big difference between the two!

Assess the gap between your salary and market value

Once you’ve done that, you can estimate the gap between your current salary and your market value. As you might expect, if you’re earning less than the going rate, negotiating a pay rise will be easier. If it’s the other way around, it’s not necessarily impossible—but it will be trickier.

So, you know what your expected salary is, and you’re doing your job well. What next? You need to make it obvious to your manager that you deserve that pay rise.

Step 3: Track your wins with a success log

Today, your co-worker Jack completely messed up. Everything was about to go awry—but you noticed, stepped in, and saved the day. Your manager also noticed and even congratulated you. He offered you a pint later that evening. “That’ll really help with my salary negotiation,” you think.

Why memory isn’t enough when negotiating a pay rise

Unfortunately, it probably won’t. Managers—like everyone else—interact with a lot of people and juggle a ridiculous amount of information. In other words, they forget things.

If you want to negotiate a pay rise, your manager needs to remember all the great things you’ve accomplished. The best way to ensure this is by keeping a log of your achievements and bringing it up when it matters most (we’ll talk more about timing below).

How to build a great success log

At this stage, don’t worry about filtering anything out. My rule of thumb is: if it might be important, write it down. You can always trim your list later. On the other hand, adding something from months ago is much trickier. And if there’s any metric or measurement to go with it, make sure you include that too.

What you log will depend on your specific job, but here are a few examples from different roles to give you an idea of what I mean:

Sales: Jan 18th – Sold product XYZ to company ABC for £55k with an operational margin of 12%.
Marketing: Jan 18th – Increased sales of product XYZ by 30% using a new approach (specify which). Corresponding revenue increase: £62k.
Customer Service: Helped 835 customers in February 2020, leading to £90,650 in orders.
Developer: Fixed 15 bugs in the new app, which has brought in 200,000 new users and generated £1,000,000 in revenue over the past 6 months.

Key considerations when adding to your success log

Obviously, only include numbers that work in your favour. And always try to link your achievements to a monetary value. It can be tricky for non-customer-facing roles, but it’s worth the effort. Finally, make sure you highlight your contribution—no “the team did xyz”; this is about you!

If you ever get positive feedback from your boss or co-workers, make sure to log that too!

Step 4: Take high-visibility tasks to get noticed

Another great way to boost your chances of successfully negotiating a pay rise is by taking on optional tasks that will get you noticed by both your manager and your co-workers. But you have to be careful about the types of tasks you choose.

Choose the right tasks for maximum impact

Those additional tasks should be:

Low-effort: Keep in mind that these tasks will be in addition to your current duties, so avoid time-consuming tasks that will require extra hours or cause you to neglect your regular work. As a rule of thumb, aim for tasks that take no more than 1-2 hours per week, on average.
High-value: Don’t just bring coffee to your manager! Choose tasks that require specific skills—preferably ones that only you have—and are considered valuable by both your peers and manager.
High-visibility: The goal here is to get noticed. If no one sees you going above and beyond, you’re not any closer to your raise. Pick tasks that involve a lot of interaction, ensuring your manager and colleagues are aware of your extra effort.

Tailor tasks to your role and seniority level

Of course, the tasks you take on will depend on your job. If you’re relatively junior and work in an office, for example, you could volunteer to organise the weekly team meeting, arrange team-building activities, or coordinate internal communications like newsletters. These tasks are visible, low-effort, and help showcase your organisational skills.

If you’re in a more senior position, look for opportunities to mentor junior staff, lead cross-departmental projects, or improve team workflows. Senior-level tasks should reflect your leadership abilities, like creating training programmes, facilitating important meetings, or driving strategic initiatives. These activities not only highlight your skills but also increase your visibility within the company.

And most importantly, be sure to track these tasks in your success log as well!

With a solid track record and increased visibility under your belt, it’s time to prepare for the moment that really matters—your performance meeting—where you’ll actually negotiate a pay rise.

Step 5: Prepare for your performance meeting

This is crucial. You absolutely need to prepare for your performance meeting. Think of it as an investment: you’re trading an hour or two of your time for the potential of a significant pay rise. Sounds like a good deal, right?

Scheduling your performance meeting

As a starting point, if you don’t already have regular performance meetings with your manager, make sure to ask for one. Don’t bring up performance in the middle of another meeting—it will catch your manager off guard, which is never ideal. Plus, if you try to discuss performance while also addressing another issue like how to solve problem XYZ, you won’t have enough time for a proper discussion.

Selecting the right achievements to highlight

So, the first step is to make sure you’ve scheduled a dedicated performance meeting with your boss. Once that’s sorted, it’s time to revisit your success log and pick the wins that are most likely to resonate with your manager. The achievements you highlight should be:

Spaced out over time – If your performance meeting is in December, don’t only talk about wins from January! You want to show that you’ve consistently over-delivered throughout the year—not just had one good month.
Memorable – It’s okay if your boss doesn’t remember your wins straight away, as long as they nod in recognition once you bring them up. If a success is too obscure or too far in the past, consider swapping it out for something fresher.
Impactful – Some things might have felt important at the time, but didn’t end up moving the needle. Focus on the ones that had a clear, quantifiable impact. Extra points if your work also made your manager look good in front of their boss!

Linking your achievements to negotiate a pay rise effectively

Now that you know which successes you want to highlight, think about how you can tie them all together to show a clear pattern of strong performance over the past year—or the past six months, if your reviews are bi-annual. That’s how to negotiate a pay rise effectively: by making it obvious that you’ve consistently gone above and beyond. You want your boss to think, “Wow, I didn’t realise it, but Sam has been absolutely smashing it this year!” And if you’re lucky, they might have noticed before you even bring it up.

Using market comparisons to strengthen your case

Now, there are two secret ingredients you might want to sprinkle in. The first one is especially useful if your salary is on the low side compared to your expected salary. Be careful, though—you don’t want to charge in like a bull in a china shop. The goal is to subtly convey two things: a) you’re aware that your salary is below market rate, and b) you have options—you’re not tied to your current role indefinitely.

Subtlety is key here. Never say something like, “If you don’t give me a raise, I’ll resign.” That sort of statement will come across as a threat—and threats almost never lead to a raise.

Leveraging life events to negotiate a pay rise

The second secret ingredient is what I like to call the “life event” argument: use any significant life changes that temporarily or permanently increase your outgoings as part of your case for a raise. For example:

You’re getting married
You’re getting divorced
You’re about to buy a home
You’re having or adopting a child
Your child is heading off to university
You’ve taken on new caring responsibilities

And the list goes on.

It might feel a bit uncomfortable since you’ll be discussing personal matters, and this approach only works if your manager knows you reasonably well. But in my experience, it’s an incredibly effective way to demonstrate why you need a raise.

Be careful when leveraging your life events

Three major warnings here:

Don’t use it every single year – If you bring up a life event every year, it will start to feel less genuine and more like a strategy to get a raise. Managers might start seeing it as a pattern rather than a genuine reason for a raise, which could backfire. Think of it as a tool in your toolbox, not something you should pull out too often.
Be genuine – Never lie about your life events. Your manager will eventually find out, guaranteed. Authenticity is key—if you fabricate or exaggerate, it will come across as insincere, and that could damage your credibility.
Don’t appear desperate – This isn’t about asking for charity. You’re asking for fair compensation for your hard work, and the life event is just a context for why this is especially important now.

An example of using life events to negotiate a pay rise

For example, if you’re planning to buy a home, you might say something like:

“As you know, my partner and I are looking to buy our first home next year, so, understandably, the salary I receive will have a significant impact on our plans. That’s why I wanted to discuss how my compensation aligns with my contributions.”

As with secret ingredient #1, how you phrase it is really important. This should be the icing on the cake—and the cake is all of your amazing achievements over the past year. That’s how to negotiate a pay rise successfully: with subtlety, good timing, and a clear track record to back it up.

Rehearsing your conversation to negotiate a pay rise successfully

Now that you’ve gathered all the ingredients for a successful performance meeting, it’s time to rehearse the conversation. Yes, you read that right: if you want to sound confident, you need to practise what you’re going to say.

When you’re at home, pretend your boss is sitting right in front of you, and go through the conversation just like you would in the actual meeting. Do it several times, ideally on different days. Just don’t overdo it—you don’t want to sound like you’ve memorised a script. The goal is to hit that sweet spot where you know exactly what you want to say and can deliver it smoothly and naturally.

Step 6: How to stay calm and confident during your performance meeting

Ok, it’s the big day! You know exactly what you want to say, you’ve rehearsed a few times, and you’re heading into that performance meeting with your boss. But there are still a couple of things you can do to boost your chances of success.

How to prepare mentally for your meeting

If you’re feeling nervous, try some deep breathing exercises for a few minutes beforehand. It will help slow your heart rate, reduce stress, and calm your nerves.

Then, take a moment to recall a time when you felt proud of your work—really proud. Picture the scene vividly and allow the emotions you felt in that moment to come back to you. Confidence is often about mindset, and tapping into a memory like this can help you walk into that room with your head held high.

Doing those exercises right before the meeting will calm you down and help you come across as far more confident. If you’ve never heard of these techniques and want to dive deeper, I highly recommend The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane—it’s packed with practical advice on how to appear calm, confident, and likeable (even when your heart is doing the Macarena).

Making the most of your performance meeting

Once you’re in the meeting room with your manager, make sure to speak slowly—people often rush their words when nervous—don’t interrupt (also common when stressed), and most importantly, look like you’re genuinely happy to be there. You’re not walking into a courtroom—you’re walking into an opportunity.

Step 7: Didn’t get the pay rise? Here’s the nuclear option

In my experience, following the steps above will significantly increase your chances of getting a raise. But they’re not fool proof. Whether or not you succeed also depends on external factors—like your company’s financial performance, internal politics, or even how well your manager gets on with you.

Use an external offer to negotiate a pay rise

If nothing else works, there’s one final card you can play: apply for jobs elsewhere and try to land a solid offer with a higher salary than your current one. Then, go back to your manager, tell them about the offer, and gently let them know that you’d much rather stay—if they can match (or at least come close to) the new salary. Keep the tone respectful and collaborative. The message is: “I value working here, but I also have to do what’s fair for my career.”

Now, this is the equivalent of launching a nuclear warhead in salary negotiations—there’s no going back. If your manager says, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do,” be prepared to walk away. And if they offer to match only 50% of the increase? You’ll need to decide beforehand what you’re willing to accept and where you draw the line. Think through all possible outcomes before the conversation.

Give yourself time to make a decision

If you need time to weigh your options, you can always fall back on a classic negotiation tactic I like to call responsibility dilution. Instead of responding immediately, say something like: “I can’t give you a final answer just yet—I need to talk it through with my husband/wife/cat/goldfish.” It buys you breathing space and gives you a graceful way to change your mind or renegotiate later (e.g. “My partner and I talked it over, and we feel that 50% is still too low”).

If that doesn’t work either, my final tip is simple: pack up and move on! There are plenty of great companies out there—so why stay somewhere that doesn’t recognise your hard work and value? You deserve better.

If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out my other posts on Money Milestones. I’ve got plenty more tips to help you take charge of your financial future—one milestone at a time!

How to negotiate a pay rise in your current job: A step-by-step guide