payrise or promotion?

[SluggishSnail]

If you were offered the choice of a 10% payrise OR a promotion with no salary change, which would you take?

payrise obviously

although the promotion could lead to a job elsewhere with a similar title and better pay....

The pay rise, unless I had the prospect of parlaying the promotion into a significantly better paying job elsewhere in a short time frame.

If your company has salary bandings, and you were close to the top of one, you might get a good pay rise now but then not get another one for years. So in that scenario, I’d probably go for promotion if I wanted the job as that would take me into the next pay band and increase future earning potential.

However, lots of companies will try to get away with offering you a promotion with some kind of “future pay increase” with no actual intention of paying it, they just want you to do more work.

What’s the company like usually?

Depends on the company and how much you need the extra money? For me a 10% increase wouldn't even compare to the additional skills and recognition and opportunity to learn more, which in turn looks good on the CV and enhances my chance of progressing even further if I decided to leave.

If the ‘promotion’ is to a role which would pay less than your current role would pay if you stayed in it, it’s not much of a promotion is it...?!

The way I see it a promotion with no pay rise is just a way for employers to take advantage of their staff by getting them to do more with no real intentions to pay them for doing more. I'd be careful if there is a risk of this happening. If you think you can use the promotion to leverage into a better paid role somewhere else do that otherwise, take the money.

Lots of very good comments here - thank you.

My company is small - about 60 employees and I am the only person at my grade, with no-one in the grade above, then lots of very senior folk. We don't have rigid grade boundaries. I had been 'sort of' promised a promotion if my performance was good in 2018. In the end, I got the top performance grading and a pay rise, but not a promotion.

Meanwhile, someone in my team has been offered a promotion but without a pay rise.....which led me to wonder which was the better or worse deal......

Unless the promotion positions you to get a similar job with more pay externally, the money is the better deal. A promotion with no payrise is just being screwed for more work. Any real we-genuinely-value-you promotion comes with the money too.

It would depend on how long I wanted to stay with the company.

If I wasn't planning on staying forever, and the promotion could give me greater earning potential on the job market and ability to get considered for a role at a higher level, the promotion.

Otherwise the pay rise.

But I can't imagine many jobs where a more senior role is paid less than a junior one, unless the pay rise is in respect of extra hours or something.