How to get a pay rise after 12 months
A year in, you’ve proven yourself. You know the business, you’ve delivered, and the salary that felt fair on day one may now be behind where you sit and where the market has moved. Getting that corrected isn’t about asking nicely at the right moment. It’s about having built an undeniable case long before you open your mouth.
1. Build the case all year, not the week before
The rise is won in the eleven months before the conversation, not in the conversation itself. Keep a running record of your impact, in numbers. Cost saved. Margin improved. A fundraise closed. An audit cleaned up. A reporting process rebuilt. Cash freed up.
When you walk in, you want a short, specific list of what you’ve delivered, quantified. That is what turns “I’d like more money” into “here is the value I’ve created, and here is what it’s worth.”
2. Know your market rate, honestly
You can’t make the case without the number. Know what your role pays across the current market, in your sector and at your size of business, and benchmark yourself against it honestly. If you’re sitting below the median for what you now do, that’s a clear, data-backed reason to revisit your pay, and one your employer will find hard to dismiss.
Get the number before the conversation. The Finance Pay Index shows you exactly where your salary sits against real UK finance professionals at your level and in your sector, free and anonymous, in two minutes.
Check where I rank →3. Time it to the business, not the calendar
Timing matters. Raise it after a strong result, at the natural review cycle, or just after you’ve delivered something visible, not in a bad month or the week the numbers disappoint. Read the room. The same case lands very differently depending on when you make it.
4. Frame it as value, not need
Never argue from need or tenure. “I’ve been here a year” and “my costs have gone up” are weak ground. Argue from value delivered and value ahead: “here is what I’ve delivered, here is the market rate for it, and here is what I’m taking on next.”
You’re not asking for a favour. You’re realigning your pay with the value you create and the market you operate in. That is a conversation between professionals, and it’s the one that works.
5. Have a fallback ask
Sometimes base pay is genuinely frozen, for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Don’t let that end the conversation. Have a second ask ready: a better bonus structure, a bigger title or remit, a development budget, more equity, or a firm date to revisit the base. You can usually move something, and a partial win keeps momentum without burning the relationship.
The honest summary
Build the evidence all year. Know your market rate cold. Time the ask to a moment of strength. Frame it as value delivered and value to come. And have a fallback so you never leave empty-handed.
Do that and a pay rise stops being a nervous request and becomes what it should be: a calm, evidenced realignment of your pay with your worth.
Members get the full negotiation pack: your defensible ask range, your pay versus the market line by line, the words to use, and answers to every objection, plus alerts the moment the market moves so you know when it’s time to ask.
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