Annie:
Welcome to The Whole Assistant Podcast. I'm your host, Annie Croner. I'm a former assistant who's passionate about our profession, and I'm also a certified coach who's invested in your success. You've come to the right place if you want to know what it looks like to stand in your power and achieve success as an assistant through overwhelm and burnout. Now on to today's episode. Welcome. So today I'm answering a listener question from my "Ask Annie Anything" link found below this show in in the show notes. And if you want to submit your own question, please feel free to click the link and fill out the questionnaire.
Annie:
It will ask you questions regarding how you want to be recognized for submitting a question. And today's question comes from Amber in Denver. Amber writes, "I am an executive assistant, plus do a lot of administrative management that other eas in my company do not do. How can I approach management on the possibility of differentiating my role with a different title or added title at a higher pay rate? It feels inequitable to be at the same range as those who are not handed near the level of responsibility that I hold." So this question brings up a lot of other questions. My first question is, what is a progression plan for administrative support roles in your company? So I come from a background where I worked in very small organizations. Most of my career, I was not a huge corporate girl, which I loved because that meant that I could have my hands in anything. But then benchmarking my role, role benchmarking my pay grade, all of that became super tricky because there are only just a handful of us, maybe two or three other administrative professionals or executive assistants in my organization.
Annie:
So then what do you do, right? How do you actually have those conversations? My first kind of step would be to get clear on what the benchmarks are for success in your company and then also what the pay ranges are for those benchmarks. And so if you're working for a larger organization, this is a much broader question and much larger question. But even if you're not, I feel like benchmarking success for executive assistants in their roles and then assigning a pay range to those benchmarks is a great starting point for having this conversation. And I love that you want to lead the charge, and I love that you want to make sure that you are really articulating your value proposition so that you can, can get a pay increase and potentially a title shift as well, or title change as well. And for me, I'm just going to say, for me, I wasn't really bent out of shape about my title because I knew the value I was giving my executive was so high. And I also knew that my title wasn't tied to any sort of pay range or pay grade. Right. But that was just in my last role.
Annie:
And honestly, that we, there was such a small organization, there were only eight of us in the entire venture capital firm, and so we ran really lean anyway, so I was able to really make my role to be whatever I wanted it to be. And I wasn't bent out of shape that my actual title, I'm using air quotes here, was executive assistant, because I just knew I did so much more than that title said I did. But I was also compensated fairly for all the hard work I did. I had two bonus structures. I had a really amazing base salary. I had a really amazing benefits package, and I knew that I was well taken care of. And I could also go to my executive at any time and share my value proposition and all of that. And I.
Annie:
I could also bring up the idea of a pay raise without having to really compete with other people in my role at my company. So I think my first piece of advice to you is to really consider what matters to you. Is it the pay primarily, or is it the title? Really just figuring out what is it that really matters? For me, the title meant nothing because I knew all that I offered to my executive. I was basically, like, coo of this guy's entire life and world, and I was never bothered by the title of executive assistant. And also, I just knew that when it came to what really mattered, what really mattered to me was my pay range. So figuring out what that thing is that really matters to you will be paramount to your success and really articulating what it is that you want moving forward. And then I think that it's important that whatever you come to the table and have this conversation, that you come with data. And by data, I mean you really want to be able to articulate your value proposition.
Annie:
So that's the first piece of data I would bring is what value are you adding that everyone else in your office isn't adding? That should warrant a pay raise. That should warrant a title change and bring that to the table. So, for example, when I'm talking about, like, asking for a raise, which I'm going to be delving into in the next couple episodes. So in the next couple episodes, I'm going to be discussing how to have your best annual review ever, and then also how to ask for a pay increase. So stay tuned. For those. But one of the things that I'm going to talk about and dive into is your value proposition. And I do think that it's really important that you kind of view your role and look at the job description you were given when you started and then consider all the additional value you're bringing to your executive and organization.
Annie:
Okay. You want to come well armed with all the data and then also bring some examples of job descriptions within your desired salary range. So in my past role, when I asked for a raise, I actually asked some other people who worked in this, in the same industry, which is wealth management. I asked some other people who I knew what they were making and that gave me a good base for going to ask. And then I actually found the data online to be able to support my claim to a higher salary raise. Those are the things that I really want you to bring when you consider coming to the table, what is your value proposition? What are all the things that you're managing? What are you managing that goes above and beyond what you originally took on in your role and then also come with a plan. This is more for in review, but now is the time of year to consider all these things. Come with a plan for what you want to do moving forward.
Annie:
And I would also say that if you don't have this in your organization, opening up the broader conversation with regard to support roles and benchmarking those support roles and creating salary bands for those support roles is someplace I would start because it will give everyone else the inspiration to maybe raise to the occasion or rise to the occasion and consider their career progression within your current organization as well. Oftentimes we create our own kind of way forward or our own professional ladder, if you will, in our organizations, because for a lot of us, we have nothing in terms of career progression. And I've worked with larger organizations or I've worked with several assistants in larger organizations. They're like, we need help setting this up. We need help like setting up those benchmarks. We need help setting up those salary bands, and we need help getting clarity on what that looks like. And unfortunately, in the support role, it's just so nebulous. You guys manage so many different things.
Annie:
You manage everything from like high level financial documents or whatever, all the way down to organizational things, organizing the supplies or whatever. Like, there's just so much that we touch that it can be really, really hard to capture all of that information and to create benchmarks and then from there create the subsequent salary bans. I think that's worth having that larger conversation. And in the upcoming episodes, in the next two episodes, I'm going to share how to have the best performance review ever. And then I'm also going to share my favorite strategy for asking for a pay raise. And that strategy is based on my own personal experience as an executive assistant going to my executive and they're again submitting my value proposition and then advocating for myself to receive a pay raise. I'm also a big fan of just women asking for more money in general. So if you identify as a woman, I'm a big, big fan of that because we often just take what's, what has been offered to us.
Annie:
We often don't like to upset the Apple cart. We have a lot of limiting beliefs around our salary, like I'm not contributing to the bottom dollar, which I'm going to break down that too, because I think that's total b's. You are contributing to the bottom dollar by making your executive more efficient and by pointing out roadblocks that they may not be aware of or different interpersonal dynamics that they may not be aware of that can totally affect the company culture, that can totally affect that bottom dollar. So even those things where we aren't really sure how we're contributing to the bottom dollar, I'm going to break all that down in an upcoming episode. But when it comes to how to actually ask your executives for a pay raise or a different title, you really, really want to be able to articulate your value proposition and then do your research. Come with data, data, data. I don't know about your executives, but mine were always about showing the data to support any claim that you have. So making sure that you know you're pulling things from your past test list, which is there.
Annie:
Again, why I'm such a fan of a digital task tracking system. Because you can pull all that stuff back up again instead of pulling it from sticky notes or from your email inbox. We only tend to really recollect like the last three months worth of tasks. And if you've been in your role a long time, less than that. Because if you're doing things on autopilot, you probably are not even aware of your value proposition in its entirety, because there are things you probably do that you just do without even considering them as part of your value proposition. So those are my best strategies for really approaching your executive for a pay raise, approaching your executive for a title change, and selling yourself, essentially to get those things. All right, guys, that is what I have for you guys today. I hope you find it helpful if you would like to submit an ask Annie any anything question or a listener question, there is a link below called ask Annie anything.
Annie:
Just click on that link, fill out the form and I'd be happy to give you a shout out. Or not. You can also submit an anonymous question and I'd love to answer your questions. So please, please fill out that form and I look forward to answering your question as well. Alright guys, be intentional, be whole. That is all for now. I help assistants apply the concepts I share on this podcast. If you're ready to take your growth deeper and you're curious whether working with me in a coaching capacity is right for you, please email me at [email protected] to schedule your complimentary discovery call.
