Webinar Series: Knowing Your Worth! – Women in Healthcare

Alison Vorsatz is the Senior Enterprise Director at Fairygodboss. She empowers companies to promote their commitment to gender diversity, to transform their culture, to attract top female talent, and to move the dial in their diversity initiatives.

Negotiating is an essential part of every individual’s career. When you don’t negotiate, you could be losing out on $750,000 throughout the course of your lifetime. 

What’s more, on average, white women make 80% of what men earn, or 80 cents for every dollar and the gap only widens for women of color with black women earning 61 cents and Latinas earning 53 cents to the dollar. The problem isn’t that women don’t ask for raises, as previous studies may have suggested. According to a 2018 report from Harvard Business Review, women ask for raises just as often as men, but are less successful in getting them. 

Some companies have made it a priority to close their internal pay gaps such as Salesforce which has committed to investing in annual pay gap audits until the pay gap among its employees closes. But even with companies taking action, it’s important for individuals to advocate for themselves and ask for what they deserve.

Negotiation conversations don’t only have to be about salary. One of the largest sources of gender inequality in the workplace is in promotions according to women in a 2017 Fairygodboss survey. Of course, most promotions will come with a salary increase, but you can also negotiate for more workplace flexibility, better benefits, or additional vacation time. 

So how do you approach the conversation?

The first step to negotiating is to consider the pros and cons of what you’re asking for. While there are certainly reasons that you should not ask for a higher salary, a promotion, or something else, such as poor job performance, it’s safe to say that a current employer is not going to fire you for asking, and a prospective employer won’t withdraw an offer unless you go about asking in an abrasive way.

Want to know what’s next? Register for the webinar that I’m hosting on November 7th to find out!