Raising the Question? 82% of Professionals Say They Deserve a Raise Next Year

A new research study from Ladders reveals that 82% of high-earning professionals surveyed believe they deserve a raise next year, but only 25% asked for one in the past year — which raises interesting questions about raises, promotions, and how professionals go about getting them.

With the Great Recession a decade in the rearview mirror, America’s top professionals are feeling more confident in their abilities, and their worthiness for additional compensation. But they still aren’t asking for it.

82% of respondents agreed that they deserved a raise next year, while only 25% had asked for a raise in the past 12 months. Nonetheless, approximately two-thirds of survey participants indicated that they had received a raise in the past year.

Almost half of respondents settled for a meager raise of 3% or less in the past year, while only 8% reported a 15% or greater increase from their employer.

Promotions are coming much faster in the modern era, with almost a quarter of respondents indicating they had been promoted with less than 12 months on the job. An additional 23% indicated it took them leaving their employer to get promoted.

Ladders professionals responded to the following:

“I deserve a raise next year”:

Strongly agree45%
Agree37%
Neutral18%
Disagree 0%
Strongly disagree 0%

“I asked for a raise in the past year”:

Yes 25%
No 75%

“I received a raise in the past year”:

Yes 65%
No 35%

“My most recent raise was”:

0%-3%49%
4%-6%20%
7%-9%7%
10%-15%12%
Greater than 15%8%
Other4%

“I deserve a promotion next year”:

Strongly agree25%
Agree25%
Neutral43%
Disagree4%
Strongly disagree3%

“For my most recent promotion, I was promoted after __ months on the job”:

Less than 12 months24%
13-24 months22%
25-36 months11%
37-48 months5%
4 years or longer15%
I changed companies to get my promotion23%

Methodology
Ladders, Inc. research study conducted October 20th to October 27th, 2019 among the members of the Ladders professional community. 1,233 responses were recorded. Gender distribution was 75% male, 25% female. Average annual compensation of respondents was $148,000.

Ladders Introduces #ReferHer to Improve Gender Balance in Corporate America

ReferHer hashtag

Ladders Introduces #ReferHer to Improve Gender Balance in Corporate America

New Initiative Accompanies Tech Innovation to Give Professional Women A Fair Chance At All Positions

NEW YORK – March 8, 2019 – Ladders, Inc., the leading career site for $100K+ professionals, today announced the launch of #ReferHer, an initiative designed to help empower women in the workplace, and change the ratio of women in corner offices across the US.

“On International Women’s Day, we are asking professionals to get involved with #ReferHer to help close the gender gap between the number of men and women who get referred for top jobs,” said Ladders Founder and CEO, Marc Cenedella. “Companies have found that referral programs lead to some of their best employees. At Ladders, we want to see more women rise through the executive ranks, with the ultimate goal of achieving parity between men and women in the senior ranks of the Fortune 500.”

To kick off the campaign, Ladders is urging professionals to refer qualified women in their networks for open positions at their companies, and encouraging people to share their stories of being referred with the hashtag #ReferHer.

Bridging the Gender Gap with Technology

In addition, Ladders is directly addressing the issue through its own platform with #ReferHer, an integrated candidate referral program.  #ReferHer, launching today, sends Ladders’ 10 million members the names of contacts they can refer to the open jobs at their own company, with the female professionals always sorted to the top of list.  By highlighting qualified professional women in their networks, Ladders’ new system makes it easy, effective, and fun for members to refer top women to top jobs.

“We want to do our part to address this issue directly using technology to increase awareness and positive action,” said Erica Kresch, a software engineer at Ladders who worked on #ReferHer. “We’ve turned our referral program into a powerful tool that puts qualified women at the forefront and makes it easier than ever for our members to help improve the gender balance in the upper levels of corporate America.”

Through #ReferHer, Ladders is raising the bar on gender equality in the corner office, and helping the nation’s top employers fill their ranks with qualified, experienced, vetted female professionals referred by their own employees. Ladders’ new program helps companies overcome the common complaint that there aren’t enough qualified women available in their pipeline, and provides an easy, effective means for hiring more female professionals.

Potential candidates and employers can learn more about #ReferHer and join Ladders by visiting theladders.com (for job seeker and members looking to network) and recruit.theladders.com (for corporate talent acquisition executives and recruiters).