Advice for Boosting Your Salary

With our 2024 in-plant salary survey underway, we looked back at the tips offered by managers a few years ago to help fellow managers improve their salaries. Here are some of their suggestions:

• Take on more responsibilities. Add services. Do the things no one else wants to do. Work on projects that require considerable effort. Complete every request on time or before. Volunteer for committees. Show management what differentiates you from your job description.
• Do more with less. Show management that having less staff and producing more with it makes you more valuable.
• Self promote. Anything positive your department does, send it up the hierarchy to as many folks as you can. Do not take credit, but paint your department as positive as possible. If anyone offers a compliment, get it in writing and copy it to your supervisor.
• Get involved in peer organizations. Become an officer. Study for industry certifications, such as IPMA’s CGCM. Win awards. Publicize it all.
• Save your parent organization money. If you can show that one of your decisions, programs or plans saves the parent institution money, you'll impress management.
• Give tours to outside persons and publicize it. If outside groups are coming to look at your operation, surely you're doing something right.
• Ask for more money and detail the reasons you deserve it. Your supervisor won't know you'd be happier with more pay unless you ask.
• Look out for your staff. Skilled people, like press operators and prepress professionals, often downplay their responsibilities. Help staff write reclassification requests, stressing all they do and how essential they are to the organization. The more your staff makes, the more you're likely to make.
• Cross-train. A more versatile staff is more valuable and can justify better compensation.
• Benchmark your staff's salaries with other organizations. If they're low and you can get them increased, chances are yours will grow.

To find out how your salary compares with other in-plant managers, take our short salary survey now at this link.