Employees do not want to talk about their salary with managers, according to a Jobs.lu report out this week. Photo credit: Tim Gouw/Unsplash

Employees do not want to talk about their salary with managers, according to a Jobs.lu report out this week. Photo credit: Tim Gouw/Unsplash

The “vast majority of employees do not feel comfortable asking for a pay rise,” an employment listings site has concluded.

A survey by Jobs.lu has found that 62% of Luxembourg workers are reluctant to approach their employers about a salary increase.

More than a third of employees (38%) said “they have never asked for a pay rise,” while 1 in 10 staff angled for a salary increase “once every two years.”

On the other hand, 1 in 4 workers “ask for a pay rise every year” and “4% of employees ask for a pay rise twice a year.”

“We found that 43% of employees surveyed as a part of our study feared that taking such a step would negatively impact their good working relationship with their employer,” Arthur Meulman, CEO of Jobs.lu, in a press release issued on 5 April. “While 28% stated that they did not like asking for a pay rise, 30% said they found it hard to assess their own worth and 24% alluded to a lack of self-confidence.”

Yet proactively bringing up a rise may be effective, according to the Jobs.lu report. 40% of survey-takers said they had “received a pay rise in the last months” and “the study found that 29% of them said that it was a direct result of asking their manager, while nearly one out of three said that their pay rise was a result of good work performance.”

Meulman stated: “A fair wage, determined by a well-defined pay policy, is always key in ensuring employee satisfaction.”

Jobs.lu said it polled a “representative sample” of 1,241 Luxembourg-based employees in February and March. Surveys were fielded in English and French.