Mike Richards from a treasury recruitment company walks through how to prepare for salary conversations: understand your employer's process, document what you've accomplished, and practice handling pushback. Concrete steps for finance professionals to negotiate from a stronger position.
So hello from Mike at the treasury recruitment company for Mike's Insights. January pay review time. So we are sending out our salary survey results. Literally today We've got over 1300. We're now approaching 1400 treasury professionals globally taking part in the survey. So thank you very much for doing that. So you're having these conversations, they're coming up. You are finance professionals, you know what you're doing, but you need some more help. It's an uncomfortable conversation, sometimes a bit awkward, but if you're prepared, it makes all the difference. So I've done a guide and a worksheet for you. I'll put a link in the show notes where you can go there and it goes through and helps you prepare for this situation. Prepare this conversation if you like. So, a couple of things, three things actually. First of all, understand your employer, understand their pay review process. Is it going to be a formal pay review cycle as it is in larger companies, or is it maybe a more informal discussion that does make a difference if it's formal? Larger companies work by the process, they work by the book. You know your timeline fine. And you can get in front of it so you can plan for it accordingly. Smaller firms, sometimes not quite as prepared, bit more informal. If there isn't a schedule, get one. Ask for one. When is it? Question, when is the next time going to be right? Is it month, end, quarter, end? Probably not. You want to try and avoid those, but get it in the diary when it's crazy, when it's not. So what's point two? Build your black book. Okay, before I go on with this, it's like a little black book actually. You write down all the things, all the contributions you've made and that can be weekly, that can be monthly, quarterly, yearly. So as you go through what I want you to do and you can reflect on this for the past, back to 2024, go through and track your wins, track the achievements, track where you have saved the company money, maybe made the company money. Treasuries aren't profit centers, but you are cutting costs. Your numbers is your own personal P L if you like. And your numbers guys, you know what to do with that. Where have you made savings? You've renegotiated with your banks, you put in a new facility, you brought in a new system, you've saved your company money, you might saved another person's salary equivalent. Put that in there, jot it down, make a note. You can put it in your outlook diary. Go back through, look at some of the projects you've done. That's where you're making a difference. Okay, point number three, you go there and they have some objections. Sorry, at the moment, we have not got budget. Okay, when will you have it? If it's not going to be budget and purely cash? Okay, working from home, maybe you're being asked to come back in the office five days a week. If you. Are they going to pay for your travel? Can they contribute to that? That's fine, you'll come back in. But it's obviously going to cost you more. So you want that back. Or maybe you have extra flexibility more. Leave what the other things. Okay, if it's not the right time, when is the right time? When could you have your next pay review? That's another thing to ask. Three months, six months. You know, if they're not going to come back, then you. Maybe we should be talking other thing. You go to them and actually, I had this as a practical example the other day. One of the treasury managers I was talking to, they were saying, look, I'm below average, not in terms of performance, but in terms of salary. What leads you to believe this? I have this impartial salary survey from the UK and it was to look at the UK sample that says I'm below average out of 80 treasury managers. And they're like, oh, wow, okay, we need to review this. And actually it's really going to help. And I think he's going to get that pay review he deserves. If he's not, if he doesn't, we're going to talk further. Go to treasurysalary.com you can actually see already the Q3 results there. They're going up today. But also, if you take part, I will then send you our January 2025 results. Yeah, there you go. Easy if you can say it. We'd love to have you as part of the survey. Take part, Take part. And I'll immediately send you those.
