Our aim is to ensure that everyone has an excellent learning experience. With this in mind, here are some tools which might help you to achieve this:

Using the NVDA or JAWS screen reader for learners with vision loss.

Using Texthelp Read & Write for learners with dyslexia or other reading difficulties.

Please note that all downloads and links in the module will open in a new tab.

Accessible alternatives

To ensure that everyone has a great learning experience, all the learning and activities are accessible or, where required, are supported by accessible alternatives.

Tough Leadership Conversations: Navigating Pay Rise and Promotion Requests (download transcript)

Adam Lacey

Hello and welcome to the Tough Leadership Conversation series. I'm Adam, the co-founder of Assemble You, the Audio Learning Experts, and I'm joined by Ruth Farenga, executive leadership coach, TEDx, speaker host of the Conscious Leaders podcast and author of the brilliant Next Level Leadership. Together we'll examine how to navigate some of the most challenging workplace discussions.

Think pay rise requests, performance reviews, managing managers, dealing with divergent views and talking about mental health. Unclear communication can lead to an erosion of trust, staff absenteeism, a breakdown of relationships and a decline in performance. So getting these tricky conversations right is absolutely essential. And this series is as much about reflecting inward as a leader as it is about your day to day management practices and techniques.

In the series, we'll discuss approaching situations with a positive intention. Fundamentally, we get the most out of individuals when we concentrate on what's working rather than what we perceive to be broken. So with that in mind, let's get started. So Ruth, what are we talking about today?

Ruth Farenga

Today, we're talking about navigating pay rises and promotions.

Adam Lacey

Oof, a goodie. Looking forward to getting stuck into this. Kick us off, Ruth. Why is this one so important? I guess this one, it might be obvious, but maybe worth saying.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, I really think it's worth focusing on because there's a lot of fear associated with asking for a pay rise or promotion. Like you might have the occasional egotistical employee who's really punching above their weight, but most people, I think this is to build up the courage to ask for a pay rise promotion is actually quite a big deal.

So I think first of all putting ourselves in the shoes of the employee is quite useful because there's going to be lots of factors to play here from an organisational perspective, from a personal career perspective, performance perspective. But yeah, I think it's useful thinking about where employees are coming from when they may come to us with these requests.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, and actually it's something that people really struggle to do. So as managers we've got to be aware, conscious, able to kind of manage that emotional side of it as well because it's very personal, isn't it? You know, how much I am being paid will influence, you know, what I can do at home, the house I can buy for my family, the, you know, all these kinds of things.

And so it is a really difficult topic for that reason. And actually a couple of stats we found when researching kind of back that up and a lot of people don't like talking about pay rises or asking for them. So one People Management survey we looked at found that 55% of women admitted they'd never negotiated on their salary.

So like never, you know, and they were asking people from all different kind of times in their career and that's actually compared to 40% of men. There's a gender imbalance here as well in that men are typically, I guess, a bit more confident on this type of topic or have a bit more bravado or you know, or a less kind of like, I don't know, less emotionally aware and just, just don't really care if they, you know, get batted away.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, more confident with it.

Adam Lacey

Exactly, exactly. And it's a really, really interesting one. The other kind of stat that we found that is more of a recent phenomenon (and again it was from a People Management survey) is that homeworkers are less likely to be promoted or receive bonuses. And that's from Office of National Statistics set of data.

So that's a really interesting one and that adds another layer if you like to how a lot of knowledge workers in particular operate now in a kind of hybrid or home working environment. And because they're not there in the office and they're not, you know, in person in the meetings, they are...

Well, from what the data's saying, it looks like they're being overlooked. I think it's especially tricky where some of the company or some of the people are in an office or in a centralised location and others are remote a lot of the time, you know, I think that's where you, you can definitely start to feel that divide a bit versus the people in the office having those water cooler incident, incidental kind of conversations that aren't, that just aren't happening on Teams.

Ruth Farenga

But you can, you can structure things with breakout rooms and they're having water cooler time that you know, like coffee catch ups or whatever. But yeah, it is harder.

Adam Lacey

Right. So the idea this episode as this whole series is we're going to try and offer some advice around how to have this tough conversation as a manager. So as a leader, what are the kind of things that we need to look out for. So first of all Ruth, I wanted to ask, you know, why is this a tough conversation to have?

Why do people clam up or just don't take action on this a lot of the time?

Ruth Farenga

It's all about acceptance as human beings. I think we want to be, you know, accepted by the group and if we feel that we are ruffling feathers by asking for promotion or pay rise, we may shy away from it. It's all about value, isn't it? What value does this organisation associate for me? And if I'm feeling like my value is not honoured, do I ask?

And how do I ask? And then I think from a manager's perspective it's easy to avoid this because again, we don't want to ruffle feathers. Maybe if people are looking happy, they must be happy. So we might be like leaning away from that because we don't want to have the difficult conversations up the chain to negotiate perhaps pay raises for our high performers or for people that we think really deserve it.

And we might be delaying the inevitable. But we can, you know, sometimes we just want a quiet life, right, which can short term, can work, but can come to bite us later.

Adam Lacey

I think we're preconditioned to take the path of least resistance. In so many walks of life. That kind of awkward feeling or that fear of rejection, fear of denial, all that kind of stuff. Fear that actually how I value myself versus how my employer values me doesn't line up, you know, none of that exists until you have that conversation.

Ruth Farenga

You really brought it to the surface, haven't you? Yeah, yeah. Yes.

Adam Lacey

And so it's one of those things, it's very emotional, it's very, you know, it can be very personal. And there's also I guess a complex web of different factors to take into account here in that you may report to somebody in an organisation but it might not actually be their end decision in terms of like being able to say yay or nay to a pay request or a promotion request.

It's a really interesting one. Let's start on a more positive note though. Shall we talk a little bit about some of the things that we should do as managers? What can we do to be positive here? What can we do to be on the front foot? How do we make sure that we actually take this seriously and have something in place that works for our people?

Ruth Farenga

I think a lot of this is around preparation and regular scheduling of conversations around this. Now this could be just your regular performance discussions now, you know, listeners may already be ready, be aware, but this kind of annual performance discussion is quite outdated now. So we need to be having regular check-ins, perhaps quarterly, perhaps even monthly, where we're reviewing someone's performance against like key goals that also could include things like behaviours.

So we might have sort of hard metrics like maybe sales numbers or other things that are very easily measurable. But we might have behavioural metrics around things like confidence or around things like presentation skills or empathy, like things we want them to be displaying in the team and from that behavioural sense too.

So I think a lot of this is about preparation. When we're talking about being on the front foot, it's scheduling that time with people so that they can review their performance with you and then it should be very clear how you're doing. It should be very clear when you know someone's asking for a promotion or maybe you're talking to them about a promotion, it should be more obvious that they're ready or not ready.

So rather than something coming out the blue like a pay rise request or a promotion request, we're kind of tuning into them, you know, on a quarterly basis at least I think is a really good benchmark, you know, so that you're really aware. And when you are doing those performance objectives, you're really balancing those key KPIs that they need to be meeting for the business along with the behavioural stuff.

And you might also be talking to wider individuals in the business, so you might be understanding other colleagues that work with them, other project leads or what's the opinion of others in the company about them and also broadly, what was their career trajectory like? This moment in time is a performance review. What is that in terms of where this person could ultimately go?

Is there a vision for their career? Let's assume we have a career-oriented individual here. We've got a job with high potential. What's the breadth and opportunity to kind of grow and show that they're doing great things for the organisation? Can we set up those opportunities if we're seeing that someone is ambitious?

Adam Lacey

I like that idea definitely of kind of supporting ambition and helping people see the path as well. I think that's a real underrated skill. A lot of the time as a manager, as a leader, is helping people see exactly what they need to do to get to the level that they want to get to and what that journey looks like.

And then combining that almost with appropriate skills development, training, mentoring, coaching and you know, this doesn't have to be stuff you're spending huge amounts of money on. It could just be putting them in contact with someone who's done that before and done that very well and is a kind of high flyer in the business and having them as a mentor or coach or something like that.

I think there's an enormous amount of value in that.

Ruth Farenga

And I think it's still as important even if you are worried that the money isn't there for pay rises, for example, you know, the breadth you can offer that person in the time they're with you is important. So it might be kind of, you know, developing within their job role, or it might be also wider opportunities within the business that, you know, are helping them broaden their skills.

Adam Lacey

Let's talk about this middle manager paradigm, this difficult situation. I'll give you a scenario here. I kind of mentioned it earlier, but we've got, you know, you've got a couple of very good people in your team. You see that there's a pathway forward for them. They could be great in senior roles, but the management layer above you, for whatever reason, organisational efficiency, etc.

They are not A) not giving out any pay rises and B) not giving out any promotions. And actually this is really common. When companies, especially some bigger companies have a bad quarter or a bad couple of quarters, there's a knee-jerk reaction and it's right, there's a hiring freeze, there's a pay rise freeze and it's like, well, hold up, you know, is that...

Anyway, we could get into a conversation about that. But the really important bit here is like, how do you manage that in your position as a leader?

Ruth Farenga

I don't know if you mind if I take a little step back here because before we go into this, because I think in terms of the steps in a way where people are requesting these promotions and pay rises, I feel like there's another key step. So we've talked a little bit about the preparation you're doing in terms of your regular check ins and really understanding individuals around the business, what they think of them, what the career trajectory is about for them.

So then you're there with them in a discussion and they say, "I'd like to talk to you about my salary. I don't think I'm paid well enough." I think it's really tempting to feel caught off guard even if you're prepared because you haven't expected this conversation. And I think the ability for a leader to listen and to acknowledge what we talked about about the staff, which is that this may have been quite difficult for them to raise for you.

So it took some courage. Probably. We all know the individuals where it didn't take courage and they're asking for this sort of thing all the time. But for most people they're avoiding these conversations. They might have been avoiding it for a year and suddenly they come to you. And so the ability to listen and tune into what it is they're saying, I think is really important.

And if you take notes, if you're attentive, if you're showing they're willing, regardless of what you think is possible, you know, you need to honour their request. And then you're in a situation where you're going, probably, if you're a middle manager to the rest of the business. You're going up the chain to find out about this.

So you want to let the person know he's come with this request, that you'll get back to them within a certain time, that "Thanks for sharing all this stuff." You know, you're giving them a realistic time frame. Let's just say it's three weeks and "I'll be back to you within three weeks, hopefully before.

But I'm going to need to have some conversations up the business." This is assuming that you. It is possible to make pay rises outside of a normal cycle. Let's just say we're talking outside of a normal cycle here.

Adam Lacey

Yeah.

Ruth Farenga

And then you're in a position where let's just say you're going into bat for this person. So you think they're a high performer and you want to talk about that up the chain. I think as a middle manager you need to better gather as much data as you can from those wider individuals in the business, from maybe any targets they've reached or anything you can put your finger on with it.

Maybe you've been really well managing their KPIs and you can show...I know some people do like amber, red, green, don't they? You can show all the green lights happening. And the only reason things are amber is because of other stuff in the business. So you're also talking about the career trajectory of the person and how they could be a really high performer in the business long term.

Maybe they've got potential for senior leadership. So you then go armed with all that information when you talk to your senior leaders to show them how critical this is for this person. And then when you're having those conversations, depending on how well your senior leadership listen, it may be very tempting to be very personal about this and be like have trying to be heavily persuasive, but essentially you want to present them with the facts and, you know, I mean, this is hard for me as well.

Take the emotion out of it as much as you can. This is, I'm an emotional person, I would say, so this is not an easy task, I think, especially if you really care for your individual. Doesn't mean you can't show you care. But if the decision is not with you, it's good to be really clear with the facts that you're presenting and then, you know, assuming it's possible, it should be really obvious to promote that person or there's just a really difficult reason like the business isn't promoting anyone for the next six months, period.

So the answer is very clear, in which case you can go back to the individual and we can talk about that step too. But yeah, it's sort of arming yourself, I think, with as much data as you can.

Adam Lacey

In those rare situations where you know, this person clearly deserves a promotion and pay rise, but we can't give one. What's your advice there for managers having to go back into that very tricky conversation?

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, this is a tricky conversation, but it's a really common one. I think a lot of businesses are in a position where they're having to hold back maybe six months on promotion, something like that. I think it's really then about being clear with what you can do for them and also saying it very clearly and directly.

I'm sure we'll talk about this a lot in this tough conversation series. You know, don't beat about the bush. Go back and say, "I've got some really bad news for you. Unfortunately, I went into bat for you, I really gave it my best go. But we're not making any promotions for the next six months," for example, and

there's no opportunity for that. "So, that's what I can't do for you. Let's talk about what we can do for you within the business so that you can still continue to grow your career and opportunities. So come in six months' time when these conversations can open up again, I've got a heap more evidence.

You've had a great time in your job, you've explored more opportunities, you've done that kind of breadth as opposed to height of the role. You're doing more of what you enjoy and maybe getting rid of things you don't enjoy. Like, is there anything we can delegate from your role that you don't like?"

This is about enjoyment as much as pay, isn't it, work? So how can we, if we're talking to a high performer here, how can we help you enjoy your work within the limitations that we have? What's going to really help that, help you grow here.

Adam Lacey

You shouldn't underestimate that as well, actually. How job satisfaction, as well, you know, that is incredibly important is. Actually we spend so much time at work that actually that level of coming home every night and saying, "I had a really good day" is a really nice place to be for a lot of people.

Yeah, and I think you can think of it creatively here. You know, if you're in an organisation that's got, you know, I guess like a bigger organisation, are there projects outside of your immediate team that they could get involved in that would expand their knowledge in ways that they want to expand it, that helps them meet their kind of bigger career goals?

You know, are there things that you could say, "Well, actually, you know, if we take that off you and put you in as part of this project, you're gonna get a more rounded experience. You're gonna build towards that next step." If that next step is management or something like that, maybe they start by coaching or mentoring somebody more junior to them.

Give them a bit of practice, let them kind of... give them some time as well. And if you can do that, I think that's really important. So give them some time to explore, develop and work on the things that they're passionate about. That will really help. And then obviously, if it's a red, if the whole promotion and pay rise is a red line for them, then, you know, you have to tell that to the business and you say, "Well, we're going to lose this person if we don't do this."

And as long as the business.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, and that's another bit of feedback up the chain, isn't it? If they're very clear that that is what they need, then there could be, sometimes exceptions come when you're like, "Okay, this person is actively job hunting now," so...

Adam Lacey

Yeah. Or this person got a job offer. I mean, that happens so much.

Ruth Farenga

Probably some money comes out somewhere sometimes.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, some money appears because. Oh, actually, no, yeah, we can't lose them.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, and that's what I think that's where we have to decide how important this person is to the business. Because normally once they've got a job offer, it's normally too late. 80% of the time they'll go anyway. Even if you do put another 10 salary on the table for them.

Adam Lacey

You've kind of missed the boat at that point, haven't you? If they've been interviewing and they're excited about a potential new role and it's actually then two, three, four, five times harder to keep them, I'd say,  at that point. Yeah.

Ruth Farenga

And for your kind of low performers, where they've come with a request. I would say this is less often but possible. I think we need to go... We probably are taking that research and notes. Just if we don't need anyone else's consultation, this person won't get a pay rise or won't get a promotion.

I think it's still really important to honour them and to help set them on a trajectory where they can turn around their performance and to be really clear with them. So, you know, we talked about being direct with your high performers if you can't. And same with your low performers if you've got someone that isn't performing well.

And I'm sure we'll talk more about this in the performance discussion section of this series, but I think being really, really clear that that is very unlikely to happen will help. Hopefully none of this comes as a surprise if you've done your quarterly planning of goals and things, but if you haven't and you know, you've joined the series and you're like, "Okay, here I am," then being really straight with them and then setting up those quarterly opportunities to review and improve their performance, I think it's really important and just being very, very direct. Still kind, but direct with them.

Adam Lacey

Yeah. Tie it to numbers, tie it to KPIs, tie it to OKRs, whatever you use, you know, tie it to "This is where you haven't met expectations. If you want a promotion, if you want to pay rise, this is where you need to get to. This is the delta," if you like.

"And what we're going to do is together we're going to work on how we get you there." And yes, we've not had many performance conversations in the past. You know, hold your hands up as a manager, that's your fault, maybe you're coming into a team new and it's just not something that's been done by previous leaders.

May not be your fault, but just I think, work on how to correct it then and say, "Right, okay, we're going to do every quarter, we're going to specifically talk about this." Put the time in the calendar, block it out, make sure it's there, make sure they know that's what they're talking about, make sure you gather the data and make sure you're there to, you know, just talk about that rather than other stuff.

Right, Ruth, what shouldn't we do? This is a good question and we're going to use this question across the whole series, you know, is there anything that we should absolutely not not do? I guess the opposite to what we've been talking about, but are there any clangers we can talk about here?

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, some of this will be obvious to people, but I think it's really important not to react as a manager and to try not to collude too much with their opinion, because let's just say you can't give them a yes or no answer right away. You want to better hold a bit of space between what they're asking, make your notes, be reflective, listen really well.

So don't go in like, "Oh, yeah, I'm sure we can get you that" if you're not 100% sure, and even if you are 100% sure, you can get them a pay rise, you shouldn't work like that. You shouldn't be like, you know, someone comes to you and be like, "Can I have a pay rise?"

"Yeah, I'm sure we can do that." You know, there should be a process, right? Otherwise everyone would just be like, all you have to do is talk to, you know, your manager, it's sorted, you know, there needs to be a process, so always take it away and consider it and, and try not to side with them too much.

I know this is a really hard balance because you may really want the pay rise for them, but say you have to bring bad, poor information back to them, or negative information, take responsibility for it. If it's a performance issue, you need to own that and say, "Down to your performance, we can't give you this pay rise now" or "I can't give you this pay rise now.!

It's a little different when it's blanket stuff across the business.

Adam Lacey

This is change isn't there when you become a manager and this happens to a lot of people because a lot of the time they'll be working in a team and they might be promoted to supervise or lead that team, and then all of a sudden they've got this extra responsibility. You've got this extra responsibility of actually, you know,  people's careers and livelihoods and all the rest of it. And it's a really big step and I feel like it's a step that is kind of not talked about enough. It was part of the reason why we wanted to do this series, in fact, was actually to, you know, open the can of worms and talk about it all in as honest detail as we could.

And there's a lot of the time when you might still be very good friends, you know, and you may be very good friends with your team, you may see them outside of work, you know, all these kind of things. And actually, that is really tough to then have a performance conversation or to say no.

And so actually you're kind of not colluding and not promising stuff. I think that that is really, really important. You've got to put your manager hat on and you've got to say, "Right, this is what we need to do to get you to this. I'm very supportive of it, but I can't confirm anything right now because there's a process and this is the process". And I think you can, you know, fall back on the process, fall back on the way that things are done or the way things need to be followed in order to make that decision. And yet, like you say, don't fall into the trap of, "oh, yeah, no worries,

I'm backing you on this. It's in the bag."  That's one of the worst things you can say.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. I think the whole manager tightrope is a difficult one to walk. When you think about being too friendly versus being authoritative, that is. That's one of the toughest things I think managers have to do. And people have to decide how much do I want to be people's friends or at least friendly versus how distant.

It's harder if you're very friendly and friends with people. But it's still possible and it's wonderful when it works. But it means you've got to be able to draw the line somewhere with the kind of professionalism.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, yeah, indeed. One thing that I thought of when reflecting on this question, what shouldn't we do, was frame a role change as a promotion if there's no pay rise included. And I've seen this happen before.  I was on a conversation with like last week with somebody who had been given a change in role that was framed as a promotion, but it didn't come with any extra pay.

And guess what? They were really annoyed about it. You know, they were like, "Well, hold up, if it's actually a promotion, then surely that means, you know, a slight change to pay or an increase in some sort." And it wasn't. And so that is one where, you know, you can really tie yourself in knots as a manager or as an organisation if you're doing things like that, if you're giving people more responsibility, say, and if you're giving people more, you know, things to do and you say, "Right, great, here's your fancy new job title, put it on LinkedIn.

By the way, your pay’s staying the same." You know that that's a horrible message to receive and it's like, "Okay, so hold up, you want me to do more work, take more responsibility, take more risk, but you're not going to compensate that. So you clearly don't actually value me in this." And I've heard this before, don't tell someone they're not worth what they want.

I've heard conversations around that before and you've got to be sensitive to these things and you've got to recognise that people's expectations of their performance might not match up with how you're seeing things. And actually it's on you as a manager to help realign that rather than expecting them to realise that they're not quite there.

So I think that's another big one. Don't be flippant.

Ruth Farenga

Perceived value, isn't it? If they perceive their value as higher, there might be a reality check for there somewhere along the line. But that needs to be backed up by evidence and be very clear as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction for sure.

Adam Lacey

Yes. Those are my two big don'ts.

Ruth Farenga

Very wise, Adam.

Adam Lacey

I guess some of the more practical things on here like how do we know it's the right time to have a conversation like this? Obviously we mentioned quarterly around performance.

Ruth Farenga

I don't think people should be expecting promotion every year as well. It really depends on the type of organisation, doesn't it? Because some have fast trajectories for some people, whereas others will be in a smaller business where the opportunity for promotion isn't that great and the role itself has limitations. So that really, really varies. But certainly normally people check in on pay I think once a year.

Adam Lacey

But again, I think with all those, be really clear with that person as well on we're going to review your performance every quarter because we see you as a high flyer, we see you as a future leader in the business and we want to make sure and then I guess if they're in a role where that isn't really option then make sure there's not a mismatch around expectations.

You know, make sure that person who you're chatting to doesn't think  they're going to have your job in six months and they're disappointed when they don't. So I think that's really important as well. Fantastic. So Ruth, I think we're coming up on time so should we just go through our top points to remember on pay rise?

Ruth Farenga

I think this goes into a process that people can go through. So first step is to prepare for the conversation. So if let's assume this doesn't catch you off guard and you've got a system in place, do the work ahead of your quarterly meeting so that you can review where people at and that comes into trajectory and all of that type of thing as well as their day to day performance.

The second is really listen to their request. If they're asking for a pay rise and promotion, what is it they're really saying? What do they really want? Is this about money? Is this about other things? And then take that information away. Next acknowledge then that this has been difficult, you know, to actually bring this up, that's quite a big deal.

It takes courage and then really evaluate the opportunity to gather data from around the business, from others in the organisation. Might be from benchmarking their role across the industry as well. And then you've got to negotiate up the chain in the organisation. So if you're going in to bat for someone, really take all that data with you, try and take the emotion out of it and then feedback to them.

Either you've got some great news to give them, this is easy, much easier, or you know, you're being really clear that nothing's possible right now. You're being very direct, that needs to be honoured essentially. So prepare, listen, acknowledge them, evaluate the opportunity, gather data, negotiate up the chain and then feedback. They're the six kind of steps you can run through.

Adam Lacey

Brilliant. Thanks ever so much, Ruth. We'll be back soon with another episode in this Tough Leadership Conversation series.

You’re a team leader, and one of your high-performing team members, Priya, requests a meeting to discuss her pay.

During the conversation on Teams (Priya works from home), she shares that she feels undervalued given her consistent overachievement. She feels frustrated and expresses concern that others in the team—particularly those who work in the office more frequently—seem to be getting more recognition and opportunities.

While you agree she’s an asset, you're aware the company is currently in a promotion and pay rise freeze due to a recent drop in quarterly earnings. You want to support her, but you also know you must be realistic about what’s currently possible.

1. How can you balance empathy with honesty when delivering disappointing news about pay or promotion during an organisational freeze?
2. What systems could you implement to ensure future conversations around pay and progression are better anticipated and free from built-up frustration?

Navigating Pay Rise and Promotion Requests

Preparation is key. Regularly schedule performance check-ins, track KPIs, and discuss your reports’ career trajectories.

Understand an employee’s perspective. It can be difficult to ask for a pay rise or promotion; different factors (such as gender) and work location (remote vs. in-office) can impact opportunities.

Encourage open communication. Listen actively, take notes, and acknowledge concerns. Avoid reacting instantly and making false promises.

Present a strong, fact-based case to senior leadership and use data to support requests. Track employee performance against measurable goals. Gather feedback from others.

Handle denied requests with care. Be direct and honest about company limitations. Offer alternative growth opportunities (mentoring, skills development, project leadership).

Don’t

Promise pay raises or promotions without approval.

Frame a title change as a promotion without compensation.

Dismiss an employee’s value.

(download infographic)