How To Ask for a Raise: A Script You Can Adapt

A raise request fails for one of three reasons: no evidence, bad timing, or the wrong framing. Fix those and the conversation becomes straightforward — you are proposing that your pay catch up with the value you already deliver.

Build the evidence before the conversation

Spend an hour writing a one-page summary containing:

• Results, quantified. Revenue influenced, costs cut, time saved, errors reduced, clients retained, people trained.
• Scope growth. What you do now that you did not do when your pay was last set — extra reports, extra region, extra direct reports, extra system.
• Market data. What comparable roles pay in your city and sector.
• A specific number. Not "a raise" — a figure or percentage.

If the page is thin, that is useful information: spend three months creating results worth citing, then come back.

Time it deliberately

Good moments: after delivering a visible win, during a formal appraisal cycle, when budgets are being planned, when you have absorbed extra responsibility, or when you have just been asked to take on more.

Bad moments: during a hiring freeze or layoffs, immediately after a mistake, in the same week a colleague resigned angrily, or in a corridor between meetings.

Ask for the meeting properly

Could we book 30 minutes this week or next? I would like to discuss my role and my compensation, and I want to give you enough notice to look at the numbers.

Naming the topic in advance is a courtesy, and it stops your manager being ambushed — an ambushed manager defaults to no.

The conversation

Open: Thank you for the time. I want to talk about my compensation, and I have put together a summary of where the role has gone over the last eighteen months.

Evidence: When I started, I handled monthly reporting for the two Addis branches. I now handle all six branches, I built the automated payables report the management meeting uses, and I have trained two new joiners. The month-end close has gone from twelve days to seven.

Market: Comparable senior roles with this scope in Addis are advertising between ETB 30,000 and 38,000. I am currently at 24,000.

The ask: I would like to discuss moving to ETB 32,000. How does that sit against what is possible this cycle?

Then stop talking. Let your manager respond. Silence is not something you need to fill.

If the answer is no

Do not argue and do not threaten. Convert the no into a plan:

I understand. Can we agree what would need to be true for this to happen — specific outcomes and a date to review? I would rather work towards something concrete than raise it again in six months with the same conversation.

Then send a short email summarising what was agreed, including the review date. A written record is what makes the follow-up conversation easy.

If the answer is "there is no budget"

Ask what else is available: a title change that supports your next move, a training or certification budget, additional leave, a flexible arrangement, a one-off bonus tied to a deliverable, or a phased increase. Non-cash items often come from a different budget line and are genuinely easier to approve.

What not to do

• Compare yourself to a named colleague's salary.
• Base the request on personal expenses.
• Threaten to resign unless you are genuinely prepared to.
• Raise it in a group meeting.
• Ask with no number in mind and hope for an offer.

If two well-evidenced attempts twelve months apart both fail, and market rates are clearly higher, the answer may be that this employer cannot pay what you are worth. That is worth knowing too.