How to Ask for a Pay Rise: Are You Owed One Already?

The knot in your stomach before you say the words

You have the meeting in the calendar. You have typed and deleted the message three times now, and every version sounds either apologetic or aggressive, and neither is how you feel. You just want to be paid for what you do, and asking out loud feels like it might cost you something.

It will not cost you anything like what the not-asking has been costing you quietly for months. And here is the reassuring part: the conversation is much easier than it looks when the case is already written down. Building the case is most of the work, and that work happens days before the conversation, at a kitchen table, without anyone looking at you.

You might be telling yourself the timing is wrong: the economy is uncertain, everyone is quiet this year, your manager is busy. Some of that may be true. None of it is a reason to skip the work, because the case you build is yours whether it gets used this month or in six. And if asking still feels ungrateful, notice what that word is doing. You are not asking for a favour. You are asking about an arrangement, and arrangements get discussed in workplaces all the time, just usually about other people.

First, work out which conversation you are having

This is the step most people skip, and it changes everything about how you open.

There are two different things a person can be asking for. The first is an increase you are already owed: the outcome of an award increase, the annual wage review, or an increment scheduled under your enterprise agreement. That is not a negotiation. It is a question about timing, and asking about it should feel as ordinary as asking when payday falls. The second is a raise on top of all of that: a genuine negotiation, where the amount is yours to propose and your employer’s to decide.

The difference matters because people often walk in asking for the second when they only needed to clarify the first, and they burn goodwill doing it. So before anything else, check which situation is yours. Your award or enterprise agreement sets out what applies to your role, and the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Fair Work Commission are the authorities for how awards and the annual wage review work. This article cannot tell you what your agreement says, because that depends on your job; it can only tell you that knowing which conversation you are in is the first brick of the case. And if the last year has felt like one long sprint, the site’s piece on working at a sustainable pace is worth reading before you decide what you are asking for.

The check takes about twenty minutes and has a shape. Find the name of your award or agreement; it is usually on a payslip or in your contract, and if it is not, your employer can tell you what applies. Then look up what that instrument says about pay movements: when increases take effect, whether they are scheduled or reviewed, and what triggers the next one. The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes the guides, and the point is not to become an expert. It is to know whether you are clarifying something already owed or proposing something new, because those are different conversations and only one of them is a negotiation.

Build the evidence, in a single page

You do not need a presentation. You need one page, and an afternoon.

Start with the difference between now and then. List what you were hired to do, then list what you actually do on an ordinary week. If those two lists have grown apart, you have found the first evidence, and it is the kind an employer cannot argue with.

Then add the things that never made it into your job description. The awkward job you took on when someone left. The client you quietly kept happy through a messy period. The process you fixed because it was driving everyone mad. Two or three real examples beat a page of adjectives, and if you keep a note of these as they happen, this section takes ten minutes rather than an hour.

Finally, do the market check. Look at what your role pays at other employers, using advertisements you can actually find rather than a salary guide’s average. Save the three or four closest matches. This is your research, not your demand; it tells you the range, and the range is what makes your number credible.

A word on how the evidence should sound when you write it, because there is a register that works and one that backfires. Sentences built on what changed are stronger than sentences built on self-assessment: the report that used to take a day and now takes an hour, the client who stayed through a messy period, the gap you covered when someone left. A page of adjectives asks to be believed. A page of events asks to be checked, and checking is what you want, because the events hold up. Where a number belongs, use one you can point to from your own records. Keep a running note of these through the year, on your phone, as they happen; the list builds itself and the afternoon’s work shrinks to tidying it.

Decide your number and your floor, before you are in the room

Two numbers, written down before the meeting: what you will ask for, and what you will accept.

I am not going to tell you what those numbers should be, because that depends on your market, your role and your research, and anyone who gives you a percentage from a magazine is guessing about your life. What I will tell you is why they are decided in advance. Holding a number is much harder when someone is looking at you and explaining their budget; people who decide in the room give the number away. People who wrote it down the night before mostly keep it.

One more piece to see clearly before the meeting: what you are asking for is the gross figure, and what lands in your account is the net. The site’s guide to tax without the last-minute stress is where that difference lives, and it is worth a look so the number you name is the number you actually mean.

Choosing the floor is also the part of the preparation that protects you from yourself. Without one, a generous-sounding sentence in a small room becomes a very reasonable yes you regret by the car park. Decide the number below which you would rather wait, write it on the same page as the ask, and leave that page at home. You only need to have made the decision, not to bring it into the room.

The meeting itself

A few practical things, in order.

Ask for a scheduled conversation rather than raising it in passing; a fifteen-minute meeting with a stated topic is fairer to everyone than an ambush. Open with the work, not the money: the two lists, the examples, the market check. That order matters, because it means the number arrives as a conclusion rather than as a demand. When you say the number, say it once, clearly, and then stop talking. The silence afterwards is doing work for you, even when it feels enormous.

And expect some version of “let me look into it”. That is a normal answer, not a refusal, and it usually means the person across the table genuinely cannot decide alone. The one-pager earns its place here, because it stays in the room after you leave.

Two small pieces of choreography help if nerves are the worry. Book the meeting for a time when you will be fed and not rushing, which sounds trivial and is not. And practise the first three sentences out loud once, at home, standing up. The rest of the conversation has to be alive, but the opening can be learned, and a learned opening carries you into the parts that cannot be planned.

If the answer is no

The conversation is not over when the answer is no. Ask what would change it, and by when. If the answer comes with a reason and a date, you have a plan. If it comes without either, you have information, and that is worth something too. Ask for whatever was said to be confirmed in writing, so it exists beyond the meeting.

And then be honest with yourself, gently. The threads of people who have been through this are full of the same ending: a small increase after long service, then a much larger one at the next employer. The most reliable pay rise in Australia is often a job change, and it is not disloyalty to notice that. It is how the market works, and keeping your options warm while you stay is a fair and adult thing to do. If you do decide to look, look from strength, not from anger.

If a promised review does materialise down the track, hold it the same way you held the first conversation: a date, a reason, and a note in writing. A plan the other side agreed to is a commitment, and treating it like one is not aggression. It is the same clarity you brought to the first meeting, aimed at the future.

What to do this week

Three small steps, none of which needs anyone else’s permission.

Check your award or enterprise agreement, so you know whether you are owed an increase already or asking for a new one. Write the one-pager, an afternoon’s work, no presentation needed. And book the conversation, even if it is two weeks away, because a date in the calendar is a case half-built already.

Opening the conversation

You will not say it perfectly. Nobody does, and it rarely matters. What matters is that you walk in with the work written down, a number you chose, and a floor you can live with, and that you open your mouth at all. The first time is the hardest, and after it, the skill is yours for the rest of your working life.

Sources: Fair Work Ombudsman – pay, awards and enterprise agreements · Fair Work Commission – annual wage review · Australian Bureau of Statistics – Consumer Price Index and wage price index · Jobs and Skills Australia – occupation and labour market data