Understanding your company's salary structure and career ladder is the first step in figuring out what's possible in terms of a raise or promotion. You also need to be aware of any special situations that could affect your raise. Here are some examples:
- Salary cap - During tough times, management may elect to cap salaries within in a role (like Admin II) below the maximum of the range. Hopefully, this is just temporary, otherwise they should reduce the maximum if no one is allowed to get it.
- Percentage caps - Some companies will give department heads or managers a lot of leeway in issuing raises provided that the department as a whole doesn't exceed a certain percentage. For example, the R&D dept may be given a target of 5% raises. If there are three people in the department each making the same amount of money, they all could get 5% raises. Or one guy could get a 15% raise and the other two get nothing. You can see why you want to know whether your boss is operating under a percentage cap.
- Hiring/Bonus/Raise Freeze - Again, if times are tough the company can elect not to hire, promote or give raises to anyone. They will usually announce this policy, and justify it as a way to save the jobs of the existing employees. It's going to be very difficult to negotiate a raise under these circumstances.
Before you get into a serious discussion with your boss, you should ask whether there are any special situations regarding salary or promotion which might affect you. It's really pointless to prepare all your arguments for a raise and then find out that there is no money in the budget for raises for anyone.
