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Welcome to the second edition of this blog series where Elaine Brady, Managing Partner, Barden Dublin shares some insights and tips for effective salary and package negotiation strategies.
In the first edition Elaine covered an overview of salaries in the current market and pin pointing an exact market rate for salary.
In this edition she will cover the differences between male and female behaviour when it comes to negotiating, further differences when negotiating salary with external and internal career moves and other variables that can affect how you can negotiate your salary.
When It Comes to Negotiating Is Behaviour Different Between Men & Women and?
In further preparation for topic, I gathered some additional data from the accounting placements across Barden since the beginning of this year.
What I wanted was some data, or some stats on what the reality actually is out there, and to work out if males actually do negotiate more than females, or is it just a misperception that’s out there?
And unfortunately, the findings made for very grim reading. The facts were that men are actually 2.6 times more likely to negotiate their salary than women, when changing roles in the marketplace.
So, for every 5 men who negotiate their salary when changing roles externally, only 2 women do the same. Of course, not all are successful, but it really is a very sobering statistic for us all to reflect on.
When It Comes to External or Internal Career Moves is Salary Negotiation Different?
We’re all reading about the ‘Great Resignation’, or ‘The Bog Quit’, and wondering what it may mean for our own situations? To stay, or to go is the real career question for 2022, and ultimately the salary negotiation process is different in both situations.
External moves to a new employer and associated salaries are effectively governed by a different ruleset.
They tend to be more market dominated. For example what does the market dictate should be paid for this role? What is the availability of similar talent commanding on the market? What salary band does the organisation have sign off on to go to market with?
The higher the supply of talent in your specialist area, the lower the opportunity to negotiate anything outside of the formal salary band. While it’s important to negotiate in these instances, salary expectations that push outside of this band can become a major barrier to successfully securing the role.
When it comes to internal negotiations, in other words where you currently work for the company already, here negotiations around salary are substantially more complex, as they are based on both previous and potential future performance.
It becomes about your internal reputation, how you are perceived across the business, how well you do your role, what is your leadership potential for the company etc.
These types of negotiations can be highly emotive, and that’s why, sometimes we as women, veer away from having these conversations. The root issue being really because of how uncomfortable they can make us feel.
It’s here that having prepared yourself properly, in advance of the conversation, is key. For example having a conversation with a specialist expert recruiter in advance of any negotiation to gather specific market information and rates, that a salary survey just cannot pinpoint accurately enough.
I delve into this part of the negotiation process again later in my tips section.
What Else Might Affect How You Can Negotiate Your Salary?
So, you might wonder, outside of your own experience, what else might affect how you can negotiate your salary?
One of the findings from the Leinster Salary Survey is that we are essentially at full employment across the market with 96% of chartered accountants are in full time employment. From the client side, 18 months of pent up demand is also now being released on the market, and the employment prospects, or volume of roles out there, has never been greater.
The fundamentals of economic demand and supply hold true here…When the demand for accountants on the market is higher than the number of candidates available, then you’re in a very strong position to negotiate salaries and packages. And that’s completely gender agnostic.
However, interestingly, we know it’s not all about the basic pay for people either.
We also know from our Survey that 81% of you would sacrifice between 5-10% of your salary for better work life balance or more flexible working arrangements.
‘Location Flexibility’, which is essentially the location from which you do the majority of your work, is THE new variable in package negotiations. How much time you save on your commute, the costs associated with both getting to, and being in, the office, have become key considerations for people when negotiating new or existing packages.
As touched on earlier, internal salary and package negotiations, have that additional layer of complexity not as present in external negotiation.
In the next editions of this series we share top tips when it comes to negotiating your salary.
Other editions in this series…
To read part one of this series see here.
About Elaine…
A Guide to Effective Salary and Package Negotiation Strategies – Part 2
Elaine Brady is Managing Partner with Barden Dublin. Following an undergrad in business with Trinity, Elaine joined the recruitment profession in 2004 and held a number of leadership roles with key recruitment firms before founding Barden in 2014. Working with a team of 15 experts Elaine advises leadership teams across Leinster on their talent attraction and retention strategy and is a regular speaker at institute events. Contact Elaine at elaine.brady@barden.ie or via LinkedIn.