Tips and advice on salary dialogues for employee

Tips and advice on salary dialogues

Think back – what have you achieved during the year?

The first step in preparing for your salary dialogue is to review how you have contributed to operational objectives over the past year. Base your arguments on your performance and what you have achieved, what responsibilities you are shouldering or whether your job content has changed.

Arguments for higher salary

The valuing of work begins with an assessment of the content and the skill with which the work is performed. So it is important that you know what tasks and what kind of skills are especially highly valued at your workplace. You also need to know how you are doing in terms of salary level and how your salary has developed over the years.

Consider your performance against the background of:

Local salary criteria

KTH's regulations and guidelines for setting salaries

Find out:

Current salary statistics

Market salary levels

Start from your development dialogue

Go back over your development dialogue for last year. What did you and your manager agree you should do? Refer back to your development dialogue when you describe your performance and argue for how you have developed since then. Start from targets and describe how well you fulfilled what was asked of you.

Come prepared

Summarise the above points in material that you can take with you to the salary dialogue. Use it as a basis to support your arguments in the discussion with your manager.

A good dialogue

It is important to get a good dialogue going between you and your manager. Go into the meeting with a constructive approach, be straight and honest and ask questions if anything is unclear.

After the dialogue, you should have been told

How the manager regards your job performance and your development

What you can do to influence your salary, also in the longer term

Ask your union

A sounding board is always a good idea. Contact your union or your union representative. They will help you with any questions or worries you might have.