Eilene Zimmerman wrote a terrific article this week for CBS MoneyWatch about negotiating for a raise despite the tough economy.  She included my ideas about why you may be in a better position than you realize to ask for an increase:

• If you have picked up the work of colleagues who’ve been laid off, you are doing more work so are more valuable to the organization.

• Your manager may be under a hiring freeze which means that she may not be able to replace people who leave ─ so she’d prefer that you, as a current employee stay with the company, and more specifically, with the department.

• It takes time and effort to get someone ramped up ─ your manager may not want to invest what it would take to train someone else to take over your role.

Yet, you still have to plan carefully and proceed cautiously if you are going to ask for a raise.  It can be a “career limiting move” ─ or even worse ─ to use the wrong tone or approach.
Steps you can take to best position yourself to succeed:

• Figure out the right number – what are others with similar skills and experience earning? Consider the industry, the size of your company and geography.

• Carefully build a business case for yourself – what have you accomplished to deserve a raise? Have you increased revenue? Reduced costs? Mitigated risk? Be as specific as possible about the value you have produced; quantify your results.

• Ask without apology, but pleasantly. Never threaten unless you are prepared to make good on the threat – and even then, why burn bridges?

While it’s not a raise – and money in your pocket today, I also suggest people think beyond money. Consider things that don’t cost your employer money yet can benefit you. For example, a fancier title, more flexibility, more responsibility….these times can present opportunities that may not exist when things are good. 


You should also think about the things that may come out of another budget bucket, e.g. money for professional development/training may be budgeted centrally and easier to tap into than your own boss’s shrunken budget.


Even if you do all of the above as well as other actions we’ve suggested in other posts on this subject, be prepared for “no”. But remember, “no” is not necessarily, as Regis Philblin would say, you boss’s “final answer”.

TAGS: difficult economy, LinkedIn, raises

I was inspired by my colleague Carol Frohlinger’s The “Pink Elephant” in the Room (July 27th 2009) post about how important our personal perceptions and experiences when confronted with a difficult issue.  She went on to say that might be what happens when women are asked about their experiences in working with other women.

The phrase (pink) “elephant in the room” describes something that should be very obvious, something you’d certainly notice.  “Elephant in the room” is actually an English idiom for an obvious truth regarding a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue that though obvious, is ignored by a group of people and goes unaddressed, generally out of embarrassment or taboo.

One of the biggest “pink elephants” in the room for professional women these days – is the one in green that begins with:  “We’d love for you to be our keynote speaker” (workshop leader, seminar facilitator, panelist, consultant) and ends with:  “…but we have very little money, so we thought you might be willing to…”

This long ignored “pink elephant” is making the other members of the herd green with envy.  

How can this elephant not even get talked about?  How is it that this elephant doesn’t get researched, discussed, tweaked and resolved the way most of those other touchy, uncomfortable, “oh-do-we-have-to-go-there” pink elephants (issues) do? 

How can this elephant that asks women professionals to donate their services – same event, same time every year, extremely worthy causes but not paychecks – still be standing in the center of the room when the reason for the gathering is to talk about women improving their financial well-being or managing the marketing of their product and brand to improve their business bottomline?

How can this elephant not understand it needs to walk the thin pink line and pay women professionals for their services and promote that mindset within their organizations?

Women now have impressive social networks and access to other professional women through these connections.  But far too often, we’re still being asked to ask each other to provide our expertise without compensation, or below market value or without the other basic fee for services and terms of engagement automatically afforded our male counterparts.

Part of this has to do with expectations.  Our average guy counterpart just isn’t expected to do as many pro bono gigs as the average professional woman.  That’s why I think it’s time for women to change the old mindset by consistently and proactively committing to pay each other (and get each other paid) for our skills, expertise, knowledge, know-how, ideas and anything else that formerly fell under the  ”we thought you might be willing to” category.

Glinda Bridgforth, a long-time and well respected colleague of mine in the field of personal finance, agrees but says it’s also important that women ask for what we believe we deserve.   Bridgforth is President and CEO of Bridgforth Financial & Associates, LLC (http://www.bridgforthfinancial.com/) and offers these suggestions on how to determine what you’re worth, what your compensation should be. 

“It’s important to get as much information as possible from the potential client,” Bridgforth says.  “Ask what kind of budget they have for a speaker.  Ask who the other speaker candidates are to get a sense of the professional caliber of speaker being sought.  The responses to those two questions give you an indication of the kind of fee the client’s willing to pay.”    Her suggestions can helps you get and set a good ballpark figure instead of guessing and potentially low balling your services or blowing yourself out of consideration.

Bridgforth and I both agree that philanthropy and community service should be part of everyone’s work ethic and responsibility.  “Women can do pro bono or work for lesser compensation on occasion because it is a seed that is being planted which can bloom into some other area,” Bridgforth says.  “Perhaps it can come from someone in the audience who will hire you in the future at your full rate.  But clearly, the pink elephant (in green) is in the room.”

Let’s address the “pink elephant” in green.  Let’s not be embarrassed.  It’s time for women to collectively stop participating in the “pink elephant”-in-green-mentality that abuses, confuses or co-mingles female philanthropy with professional compensation. 

Here’s to your health and wealth.

Glinda Bridgforth is the author of “Girl Get Your Credit Straight” and “Girl Get Your Money Straight”.

TAGS: improving women's financial well-being, pay for professional services, pink elephant issue, Thin pink line issue

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, we heard from many women who responded to The Thin Pink Line Survey that their biggest challenge is trying to balance work and family, particularly children. Regardless of the complexity of the issues and the deeply personal choices we have to make when children are involved, it is clear that the employers aren’t all that concerned about helping us to make it work.

While we can certainly debate the extent of systemic change that should take place in the workplace to support parents of both sexes, in the meantime, things are what they are. A 2007  study reported that women identified as mothers were 50% less likely to be hired than women who were not “outed” as moms. And moms are offered, on average, starting salaries $11,000 less than childless women. Mothers are seen as less competent, less committed and less promotable.

What’s more, there’s a thinpinkline component ─ fathers suffered no such “daddy penalty”. In fact, they were seen as more committed to work and offered higher salaries than those offered to childless men.

Pretty shocking, isn’t it – especially since even recruiters have moms? Yet, there’s another side to the story. Consider the following survey comment we received:

“I am about to be passed over for a trial at my law firm. The reason I was given was ‘I’m not sure that a trial is a good idea for someone in your condition.’ I am 7 months pregnant, have not missed any work except for occasional doctor’s appointment. I have not missed or delayed a single assignment and people have even remarked that I haven’t missed a beat energy wise. I am a model pregnant employee! I have no medical reason not to participate in this trial and I am furious that they may take another associate on a case that I worked up from the beginning.”

What’s she thinking?

• I deserve this opportunity. I worked on the case from the beginning.

• I need trial work to get the experience I need to move up.

• This opportunity will give me an opportunity to demonstrate my expertise.

• I’m being penalized because I’m pregnant.

• If they treat me this way before I even have the baby, what will it be like after he’s born?

But here’s the other side:

• She’s 7 months pregnant.

• She’s taken time off to visit the doctor before and now the visits will probably increase in frequency. We don’t have time for that with a trial coming up.

• She’s been very energetic but that was before. What if she isn’t able to keep up with the hours needed?

• What is she goes into premature labor? How will we get someone else up to speed?

• We have to do the right thing for the client.

What might she have done differently to put herself in a better position to get the assignment?

1. Acknowledged that getting this trial assigned was not going to be a slam dunk – that she’d have to proactively negotiate to get it.
2. Thought about the concerns the partner making the decision might have and come up with solutions. For example, she might have arranged for a qualified colleague who wants more experience in her practice area shadow her so that there will be coverage in the unlikely event of a premature birth. (Undoubtedly, that would necessitate another negotiation about how they will share the billing credit but that’s for another day.) She might have asked her doctor to write a note describing how healthy she is.
3. Created an opportunity to broach the topic with the partner, making it clear that she wants the trial assignment, has considered the concerns she and the client may have and come up with suggested solutions.

She still may not get the trial but she surely would have done as much as possible.

What else can we learn from her situation? Whether you are still thinking about having a child, pregnant or already a mom, consider that:

• The less said about your private life, the better. Try to make your doctor’s appointments after hours or on weekends so you don’t have to leave the office. On the hopefully rare occasions when that is not possible, respect the office culture. It may be that you can simply state that you have an appointment without going into detail that it is with the gynecologist. Give advance notice whenever possible. Resist sharing that you are anxiously awaiting the test results. And keep the sonogram pictures for your family and friends.

• Your childless colleagues are not willing to work longer or harder because you need to attend soccer matches, PTA meetings or any other child related event.

• You need a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C for childcare. This is not your employer’s problem.

There is no doubt that combining motherhood and work is both daunting and exhausting.   It requires lots of negotiation, every day in fact.  But the bottom line is that your boss has legitimate concerns about how and when the work will get done.  You’re paid to do your job, not to be a mom.

TAGS: work life balance, Workplace pregnancy

If you aim low, low is what you get. A recent survey of college graduates conducted by the National Association of College Employers revealed:

• When asked what they expect to earn in their first job, women expected to earn $10,000 less than men did.
• Women actually earned $40,000 on average, $7,500 more than they anticipated.
• Men earned $50,000 on average.

While some of the gender differences in both salary expectations and salaries earned can be explained by the fact that women tend to enter lower paying industries such as education and government where as men tend to end up in higher paying sectors such as engineering and consulting, there is still a gap in every industry.

Perhaps most interesting is that in healthcare, an industry dominated by women, the salary gap was the widest ─ over 30%.

Over a working lifetime, the gender gap in pay is estimated to cost a college educated woman over $1,000,000. That’s a lot of money. Not only does it affect your ability to support yourself and your family while you are working, but it also impacts the amount of money you will be able to save for retirement as well as donate to causes you believe in.

How can you best prepare to get what you deserve?

1. Do your homework
   Determine what the salary range is for the job you want in your geographic area and industry. There is a wealth of information available on the internet (for example, see jobsearchintelligence.com) but don’t stop there. Ask people in the industry what you should expect in terms of compensation. Be realistic yet optimistic, assessing your education and experience carefully so that you are able to explain where you fit in the salary range band and why that is the case.
   
   
2. Know what your alternatives are
   In order to negotiate effectively, you must know what alternatives you have ─ what will you do if you are unable to get a reasonable offer from this prospective employer? Do you have other offers or good prospects that may soon develop into offers? If so, you have leverage in the negotiation. If not, what can you do to improve your situation? When the other party senses that you have no alternative but to take what is offered, he or she will be tempted to give as little as possible and you will be anxious to take it. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket; as you move through the interviewing process with a company, continue to explore other possible opportunities.
3. Practice, practice, practice
   Enlist a friend you trust to play the role of the interviewer and practice. Experiment with various approaches ─ what will you say if the interviewer asks you what your salary requirements are? How will you respond if the interviewer throws out a number that is below market? Practice is precious because although it is helpful to have thought about how the conversation will go and how you will respond but it is entirely different to get the words out of your mouth in a way that is comfortable for you. You won’t be able to anticipate and practice the entire negotiation but you’ll be surprised at how much you can foresee.

Don’t be reluctant to advocate for yourself appropriately and respectfully. While you may want the job, if you are underpaid, you probably won’t be very happy.

TAGS: benchmarking salary, negotiating pay, salary, salary sites

I recently spoke with Paul Hill about a new website he’s launched with colleagues, Job Search Intelligence. You cannot afford to look for a job (or to ask for a raise) without investing some time on this site.

Why?

Using “state of the art” methodology (the statisticians involved have serious credentials!), the salary calculator guides you through a series of questions specific to:

• Where you work ─ not only state but the region. For example, if you live in New York, there’s a big difference between what you’ll be able to earn if you work in New York City rather than in Albany.

• The job category ─ e.g. financial specialists, business operations or food services (there are 24 categories in all)

• The specific job description ─ the descriptions are directly tied to the job category

• Your education level ─ if you have a college degree or higher, the calculator factors in: where you went to school as well as your major (and goes one step further to ask you, “How relevant is your degree to the Job Description you are seeking?” and even your grade point average!

• Your work experience

• Your foreign language fluency, if any

• Your credit score

• Your current salary

Once you complete the questionnaire, you immediately receive a comprehensive report that gives you , among other very useful information, a “Market Ranking” (comparison of how you stack up relative  to others seeking the same job in your geographic area), a “Salary Index” and even a “Best Region” suggestion ( good places for people seeking the kind of position you’re seeking.

Paul told me that in certain occupations, gender and race will affect compensation by as much as 30%. So the fact that the Salary Index includes a comparison number for those not impacted by gender or racial bias is particularly useful for women and minorities.

The service is free of charge to job seekers and no registration is required.

The Job Search Intelligence site is absolutely the best site I’ve seen ─ the quality of the datasets, the specificity of the information required and the excellence of the report it generates ─ lead me to recommend it without hesitation.  As I’ve written before, good information is critical for women when they negotiate compensation.

TAGS: benchmarking salary, compensation, salary, salary sites

Women are more vulnerable financially as we age.  Why?  Because we have very unique money issues:

• lower earnings
• work patterns
• health status
• life expectancy
• marital status

We have lower earnings because we work in different and often less lucrative occupations and sectors.  Two-thirds of us earn less than $30,000 a year – a number that has been diminished even more by the ongoing downturn in the overall economy.  U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis says the recession is especially hard on women because we earn less money than men for the same work.  Women earn from 78-cents to 52-cents for every dollar men receive.  (Source: The Womens’ Data Center, Institute for Women’s Policy Research,  http://www.iwpr.org/femstats/wocdata.htm - Asian 78-cents, White 73-cents, African-American 63-cents, Native American almost 60-cents and Latinas 52-cents).  The average 25-year old woman with a college degree earns $500,000 less in her lifetime than a man.  While women are in the workforce in greater numbers, we are often part-time or work for an employer offering few or no benefits. 

Women’s work patterns are different.   Women on average work 13 years less than men.  During our time away – most often to care for children or frail parents or other family members – we’re not increasing our earning power, not vesting in pensions and our lifetime earnings for Social Security income is lower.   Most defined pension plans vest at 5 years.  Women average 4.7 years in a job while men average 5.1 years.  Half of working women have no pension. 

Women spend more on out-of-pocket health care expenses than men.  The system sees our health status differently.  Men have more acute illnesses and die sooner but  their medical needs are covered under insurance and Medicare.  Women at midlife have more chronic illnesses, require specialists and leading edge medicine.  Our illnesses frequently result in the need for long term care – and other needs often not covered by many insurances or Medicare.

We live longer than men – on average about 5 years longer but a woman’s income at age 65 is half that of men.  Women must factor in longer life expectancy as they plan for retirement and should work with a  financial specialist to accurately figure out the rate at which they spend their retirement savings.

90% of women will live alone – by choice or circumstances – at some point in their life.  29% of single, older women are poor or near poor.  Widowed and divorced women are three to four times more likely to be poor than women in couples.  For many older women, Social Security is their only source of income in retirement.

Women deserve economic security.  In order to attain it, we must not allow ourselves to become the victims of this recession.  See and seize the opportunity to become better stewards of our personal money.

Here’s to your health and wealth.

TAGS: benefits, caregiving, chronic illness, earnings, health status, life expectancy, Lower earnings, marital status, pension plans, widowed and divorced women, work patterns

We’ve now finished collecting responses to The Thin Pink Line Survey and are delighted to announce that the winner of the complimentary one hour coaching session has been selected at random from those who completed the survey. Of course, her identity will remain confidential but she’s been notified by email. Thanks so much to all of you who participated in the survey; we very much appreciate your candid and thoughtful responses.

One thing that many of you have identified as an issue in the workplace is the fact that we are still dealing with the gender gap in pay. Recently, here in the US, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law by President Obama. This important legislation restores the ability for women to sue when they have been victims of pay discrimination ─ but proving discrimination in a lawsuit isn’t easy. In Ledbetter’s case, the facts were clear; often they aren’t. If you feel you aren’t getting paid fairly, start by negotiating.

If you’d like more information about how to do that, take a look at the Resources Page on the Negotiating Women website for articles you can download.  If you want to build your negotiating skills,  take one of our e-learning courses.

TAGS: Equal pay, negotiating pay, Pay Disparity

Even though the job market is ugly, don’t sell yourself short. Marty Orgel made the point recently in The Wall Street Journal that answering the inevitable interview question about salary requirements is tougher than ever. Marty recommended the same salary sites that you read about here right at The Thin Pink Line back in July, 2008.

TAGS: benchmarking salary, compensation. gender wage gap, salary sites

Paige Churchman wrote about the “Top Women” lists recently published by Fortune and Forbes in a blog post at theglasshammer.com. She noted that the lists are dissimilar both in the names they include and the compensation numbers they report explaining that these lists are “both art and science.”

While we all may not be inclined to “cry a river” for Meg Whitman (who, as Churchman points out, either made $120.4 million according to Forbes or only $11.9 million according to Fortune), we should be concerned about the persistent gender wage gap even for those women who are household names.  When they are underpaid relative to their male colleauges or counterparts, it hurts all of us.

Churchman writes:

The national average for women in all professions is nearly 78 cents to the dollar of men. That’s the closest women have ever come to matching the male dollar. It’s up from 77 cents last year and 74 cents ten years ago, a far sight better than in the sixties and seventies when the number had a tough time breaking 59 cents. (Women’s Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s, 1951-2007) Even with her one-time million-dollar package, Ms. Whitman makes not quite 63 cents to the highest-paid male executive’s dollar. (The top-paid male executive was Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who made $193 million in 2007.)…Forbes’s top ten men made no less than $72 million, compared with its top ten women’s $12 million─17 to 20 cents to the dollar of the top ten men.

She then cites several reasons for the gender wage gap offered by various reseachers. Although the explanations are myriad (and some clearly ridiculous) they are worth reading.   While the gender wage gap is completely outside of our control on a macro basis, it’s good to remember that we need to pay attention to our compensation packages on an individual basis. More thoughts about this in a post to appear on Thursday.

TAGS: compensation. gender wage gap, economic power, Forbes, Fortune, Meg Whitman, Top Women in Business

Liz Wolgemuth of U. S. News and World Report interviewed me for a piece she published yesterday about the stress women are feeling about the state of the economy. As things get more difficult, women are facing challenges both at home and at work.

She asked me if I thought women were feeling more stress than men.

Answer: Yes, because by 2:1, women serve as the family CFO. And as CFOs, they are faced with decisions about how to make ends meet in the short term as well as longer term issues such paying for college and saving for retirement.

She asked me if women should hold off asking for a raise (or a bonus) given the struggles businesses are facing now.

Answer: Not necessarily. I believe that if you deserve a raise, you should ask for it. Of course, as always, you should be prepared to articulate a strong case on your accomplishments on behalf of the company ─ not just what you have accomplished but how your contribution has helped the firm:

• Increase revenue
• Decrease costs
• Manage risk

If you want the nuts and bolts of how to negotiate compensation, email me at carol@negotiatingwomen.com because I am offering a complimentary download of our e-learning course, Getting What You’re Worth (a $99.95 value) to The Thin Pink Line readers in return for your agreement to let me know how you benefited from it. Please email me right away as this is a limited time offer!

As I told Liz, it has been my experience that stress is exacerbated by feeling powerless. When things you can’t control are going in the wrong direction, be proactive. Putting a full financial plan ─ one that addresses financial objectives, considers ongoing (hopefully rising) income as well as expenses ─ in place will allow you to see where the gaps are and to take appropriate action. You’ll feel better, trust me.

It also helps to breathe deeply.

TAGS: difficult economy, financial crisis, financial freedom, negotiating pay, planning for the future, reducing stress