Plan and hold a conversation with your manager about a raise or promotion.
Before you plan anything else, find out three dates for your own company: when the salary budget is set, when managers submit their recommendations for pay and promotions, and when the results are announced. If you ask your manager or HR plainly, they can usually tell you. Those three dates decide whether a request for a raise can still change anything.
Most companies decide pay and promotions on a pay cycle. Budgets are set first. Managers then put forward names and numbers, a committee or senior leader approves them, and the results are announced. By the time you hear your increment, the decisions are months old and the money is already allocated. The time to ask is before those decisions are made, while your manager can still put your name forward.
Joanne runs customer operations for an e-commerce company in Tai Seng, and every figure in her story is an example. Over the past year her team grew from four people to seven, she took over the returns process, and the complaints backlog dropped from two weeks to three days. In March her manager warmly told her she'd had a great year. Her increment was the same small percentage as everyone else's. When she asked about it, her manager said they wished she had mentioned it in November, because the numbers were all decided by December. She had a strong case and made it four months too late.
Plan to raise the topic early in the cycle, ideally a month or two before recommendations are due. Asking outside the cycle can still work, especially if your role has changed a lot or you have an outside offer. Asking inside it is easier for your manager to agree to, because they are already doing that work at that time of year.
A request based on personal need, such as rent going up or a new baby, is understandable but weak. Your manager has to justify any increase to someone else, and your personal circumstances are not a justification they can use. What they can use is your results.
Write down what you delivered this year, with numbers where possible, and how your role has grown. Phrase each line so your manager can repeat it in a meeting without checking it. Your manager is the person who makes the case to the decision-makers, so your job is to make it easy for them to argue on your behalf. If you kept them updated through the year, much of this evidence is already in your sent folder. Communicate at work, lesson 3.3, "Agree how and when you update your manager", sets up that habit.
Joanne's list has three lines. Her team grew from four to seven, and she hired and trained the three new staff. She took over returns in June. The complaints backlog went from about two weeks to three days.
Results show you are doing more. Market data shows what that work is worth elsewhere. Use the same sources as lesson 7.1, "Find your market rate from real sources": MOM's wage tables, recruiter salary guides and current job listings for roles like the one you now do. The role you now do may be bigger than the one you were hired for, so look up the market rate for the bigger role. Market data gives your manager a second argument, which is that the company would have to pay more than your current salary to replace you. Joanne found operations manager listings for teams her size with ranges starting above her current pay.
Name an exact amount and a percentage. Joanne's ask is to go from S$5,000 to S$5,400 a month, an increase of S$400 a month, or 8%. With a 13th month, that is S$5,200 a year more.
If the scope of your work now matches a higher title, mention it, because a promotion may be the easier route for your manager to get approved. Joanne's scope now matches an operations manager title, so she plans to raise that alongside the salary figure.
"No budget" may be true, especially when a company is cutting costs. Don't argue with it. Turn it into a plan by asking what would need to be true for a raise or promotion, and by when.
Agree a specific date to revisit the conversation and confirm it in a follow-up email, the same way lesson 5.4, "Close the deal and write it down", has you confirm any agreement in writing. A vague "let's talk about it later" tends to drift, while a date in both your calendars gets kept.
When the salary budget is tight, ask about things that cost less than base pay: a title change, a one-off bonus, a training budget, or an earlier review. Lesson 7.2 calls these trading currency. They are easier for a manager to approve than a higher base salary, and they can sit inside the same dated plan.
Joanne's first step this year is the one she missed last year: finding out when her company actually sets pay. Find that out for your own company, then pick the date by which you'll raise it.
Find out when your company decides pay and promotions, and write down the date by which you will raise it with your manager.
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