The real way to get a pay rise by Angela Casey, managing director of CM Porter Novelli, Edinburgh

Recent advice offered on PRmoment about getting a pay rise focused on the strategy for the meeting with your boss, if you could actually get it in the diary. However, the real way to get a pay rise is not to have a strop, but to do a good job and make sure the people around you know it. So, for what it’s worth, here are the horse’s mouth views on the real way to get a pay rise.

1. Be visible – ensure if there is a job to be done that you volunteer for it. And if it is a job working with people at a senior level or doing PR for your own firm, that will get you visibility from the top down, then go for it. Bosses love a volunteer.

2. Be valuable – if you bring in business to the company, no one will want to let you go, so get out there, network, find business and become indispensable.

3. Be hungry – ensure you are demonstrating your desire to move upwards in the organisation. Look at people above you and copy their behaviour (assuming they are behaving well!). Be like them and be serious about your purpose.

4. Be vocal – ensure your boss knows you are ambitious but, importantly, be clear in demonstrating the value you bring to the business. At your appraisal bring clear examples of your achievements and make sure you ask about the next steps to promotion and don’t just demand things, but explain and demonstrate why you deserve them. Underpin everything with demonstration of your results.

5. Be professional – the frustration that comes with not being recognised, rewarded or promoted, brings out the child in all of us and sometimes we just want to throw a strop! But it would be so much better to channel that stroppiness into doing a good job and using your energies in being fabulous.

6. Be helpful – making your boss’s life easier is always a good idea! How many times have you heard the phrase “don’t bring problems, bring solutions”, but it rings true. If you are the one who always has the answers and outcomes ready, rather than the one who always brings problems to the table, then you will be valuable to the business and, most particularly, to your boss. So think things through and take time to understand what you are doing and what can be achieved, so you can present clear strategic thinking in meetings.

7. Be normal – speak in a language those above you speak in so they are comfortable in your company. My colleagues would probably say I mean by this that you should behave like an oldie! I believe strongly in personality profiling as a new business and team working tool, but mainly as a route to understanding how and why others behave in the way they do and what is the best way to communicate with them. So ask for the training and use it to communicate better with the people around you.

8. Be natural – we all know that personality is a large part of winning a job, so be comfortable and confident that your boss employed you because they thought you would fit into the team well. So be yourself and be natural about your abilities, choices and approach.

9. Enjoy yourself – no one works well in a job they do not enjoy and we all thrive in an atmosphere in which we are comfortable. So enjoy what you are doing. If you wake up every day dreading going to work and it makes you stressed and unhappy, it is possibly not because you are undervalued, but because you are in the wrong job. Worth thinking about.

10. Do NOT threaten to leave – it is a total misconception that threatening to leave engineers a pay rise and brings you the respect you were thinking was missing. In my experience, people who say they are leaving will leave. The sweetener of a pay rise may keep them for another few months, but in the end, they will still leave. So it doesn’t work.

So, getting a pay rise is more than just getting cross and demanding it. It is about making sure you do a good job and that you demonstrate what you are doing to those around you, while ensuring you enjoy yourself. And enjoying yourself is probably key to the whole thing!