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What if you’re the only one who benefits?

All of this is all very well, but how are you going to come up with a valid reason why your boss will benefit from, say, giving you a better car-parking space? Some perks are clearly going to benefit you alone, but that doesn’t mean you’ve no right to them. Of course, sometimes the perk may not benefit the company, but you’re genuinely a special case. If you can demonstrate that you have a particular need for a perk, you may not need to show any benefit to your employer.

Take the parking space. Suppose you regularly give presentations – more often than anyone else – and two or three days a week you have to load and unload your car with OHPs and powerpoint equipment. This seems like a reasonable justification for having a dedicated parking space close to the entrance.

But what if you do no such thing, and you just don’t like having to walk 200 yards from your car to the entrance – whatever the weather – and back again each evening? We’re talking a straight perk here: no benefit to the company, no special case. Just a good old-fashioned perk. How are you going to justify that?

Perks Instead of Pay
The answer to this one is that you can trade off perks against added value. It’s really not worth asking for your parking space during the salary review and taking it in lieu of part of the pay rise. There’s no need to do that. So long as you increase your value to the organization constantly, you can ask for perks separately from your pay rise.

Suppose you asked for a pay rise three months ago and, since then, you’ve increased in value again? You know your boss isn’t going to agree to another pay rise so soon – they’re not that enlightened – but you can easily demonstrate that you are worth even more now than you were when the last rise was agreed. You’ve exceeded your targets and you’ve taken on yet more responsibilities than were planned back then.

So here’s what you do. Fix a meeting with your boss and go through a similar mini-presentation to last time. Agree the current situation, the reasons why it is already unrealistic again, and your proposed solution. But this time, your proposed solution is different. Tell your boss: ‘I feel another pay rise is more than justified here. However, I’m aware that it may be difficult for you to award a second pay rise so soon when you hadn’t budgeted for it. So I’d be prepared to compromise by finding rewards that don’t make demands on the budget at the moment. And if my value continues to increase at this rate – as I plan that it will – you’ll be able to build appropriate pay rises into the budget for next year instead.’

Now you’re cooking with gas. You knew damn well you weren’t going to get another pay rise (even though you really should). But instead of putting pressure on your boss, you’re letting them off lightly. All they have to do is give you a decent parking space and half a dozen extra leave days a year, for example, and you’ll leave them alone. (Until next year, when you’ve already forewarned them to expect a request for another well-earned pay rise.)