Some companies in the Middle East have started to review their organization’s salary structures and status of their employees. It’s also the time for employees, expats and locals alike, to negotiate their salaries and ask for raises or promotions.
If you are someone who’s doing your best to improve your finances by living within or below your means, paying debts, building emergency funds, and investing, one thing that’s very important to keep your cash flow at the optimum is being able to get a salary raise.
What I observe about other nationalities like the Pakistanis, Indians, Egyptians, etc. is that they are very aggressive in haggling for a raise with their bosses as compared to their Filipino counterparts. Sometimes they even go straight to the higher ups just to convince them that they should be given a raise or get that long-been-asking for promotion.
This is the area where some Filipino professional workers in the Middle East are a little reserved. Only a few dare to speak and discuss intelligently with their superiors their concerns about their salaries and their roles in the organization. A lot of them are just too shy to say what they have to say. And then they rant and complain a lot with other Pinoys right after they were given a chance to speak to their bosses.
I think it’s that Filipino culture of being sobrang mahiyain in the wrong time and place that’s keeping some of us from growing in our respective careers overseas. I believe Filipinos have to level up their character more and be dignified in presenting their value in their respective places of work.
Filipinos are the best employees in the world, no doubt about that. But I also believe that we have to be the best people in the area of negotiations and closing deals as well. Mastering that skill will define how we can be great entrepreneurs when we decide to leave the corporate world in the future.
Here’s a video from CBS MoneyWatch about asking and negotiating for a salary raise. I hope you will learn a lot from this as much as I did.
I’m hoping and I’m praying that you’ll get your desired raise soon. You can do it!
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Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons