Afraid Of Being Replaced If You Ask For A Raise?

We have fielded dozens of Fifty Buck Hour calls — yes, still at a reduced price! — and we've learned a lot about your thoughts and fears during this pandemic. Here's a testimonial from a recent client:

"I just wanted to say thank you to Victoria for the time spent with me last week helping me to draft an articulate and strong negotiation for a new title and pay rate after assuming new work responsibilities. It's been difficult to convince myself that even in the uncertainty of this COVID crisis, this new role should be valued with increased salary. Victoria's insights and experience really helped me remove apologies from my ask... and, ultimately, to get what I wanted with very few concessions!"

During those calls, some have expressed the view that they can't ask for a raise because there are ten other people who are ready, willing, and able to take their job for even less pay than they are making now.

Au contraire.

The loss of human capital cannot be rectified by replacing existing staff (with their good client relations, institutional knowledge, and good team relations) with people who must be trained, brought up to speed on company or client projects, and integrated into an existing workforce.

People are not widgets in a widget factory. They bring unique strengths and talents to the workplace and cannot be easily (or cheaply) replaced. Attrition also affects the smooth running relationships in the workplace, causing workers who remain to be wary, defensive, and unproductive.

You are valuable and irreplaceable. Click here to chat about negotiating for more.

This quote from a 2013 New York Times article still holds up today. It's about workers being valued by the time they work (assuming that they're easily replaceable) rather than by the unique value they produce (which is irreplaceable).

"A few years ago [the accountant subject of the story] realized that the billable hour was undercutting his value — it was his profession’s commodity, suggesting to clients that he and his colleagues were interchangeable containers of finite, measurable units that could be traded for money. Perhaps the biggest problem, though, was that billing by the hour incentivized long, boring projects rather than those that required specialized, valuable insight that couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be measured in time. Paradoxically, the billable hour encouraged Blumer and his colleagues to spend more time than necessary on routine work rather than on the more nuanced jobs."

Knowledge workers are not college students flipping burgers in a local diner nor employees performing one task at a time on an assembly line.

You cannot be replaced. Your employer can find someone who will take the place you vacate, but they will lose your unique value, talents, skills, political value (alliances), and client or customer relationships.

Please don't ever forget that.