Improving Your Salary In 2016

Our friends at Payscale wrote a great piece full of advice about what to do if you're staring ahead into another work year without a pay raise.

The author, Lydia Frank, talks about a few trends that will support you in your effort to get more money. First, she points out an encouraging trend towards more salary transparency. The more you know about what co-workers make, or people with comparable backgrounds and job descriptions earn, the more likely you are to understand whether your wages are in line with marketplace rates.

Second, Frank raises the idea that the first step towards making a change is realizing that you may need to ask for what you want. For example, we were surprised to read that men, on average, initiate negotiations four times as frequently as women and ask for 30% more than women do. 

Finally, Frank points out that some employers are evaluating compensation practices in terms of gender because it's the right thing to do (and probably helps retain employees, too). Salesforce and GoDaddy, for example, have been leaders in this area. 

Unfortunately, we can't all work for enlightened employers. For most of us, that means we'll have to simply do our due diligence, ask for what we want, and make sure we keep exploring our job options if the answer is a 'no'.