Do you work hard? Skip your lunch, work weekends and put in long hours at the office? How do you know if you’re being compensated fairly for the work that you do?

It is generally inappropriate to ask your co-workers what they are making. Most people won’t tell you or it will create an awkward situation if they do tell you because odds are one of you is making much more than the other.

Here are a few simple ways to determine if you are being paid fairly.

Do a job search for comparable positions online – Do a search on popular online job boards such as Monster.com or CareerBuilder.com for job postings that are comparable to your position. Some job posting will include a salary range or hourly wage that you can use to compare against your current pay to determine if you are under or over paid. If the job posting doesn’t offer a salary range or hourly wage it might be worth your while to call the hiring manager or recruiter directly and ask them what the typical salary range is for this particular position.

Use Glassdoor.com to find out what similar positions at different companies are paid - Glassdoor is a great resource for determining what other people in the same position are being paid at other companies. Simply search under “salaries” for your job position in the city that you work in. Even better, if you know a company with similar positions as yours search for that company directly.

For example, say my job title was a “Customer Service Representative” (CSR) with a major telecommunications company.  If I search “Telus” I can find salary/wage ranges for the position of Customer Service Representative to compare against my own salary or hourly wage.

As you can see from the screenshot below the salary range for a CSR at Telus is 22K to 50K per year with an average of $37K. If I was currently being paid less than 30K for this position I’d start to question why I was below the average.

Ask your boss - Definitely the riskier of the options, but hey its not as direct as asking for a raise outright. Approach your boss when he/she is in a good mood and pose the question “am I being paid inline with the market rate for my job?” If anything, it will be interesting to see you boss’s response and how he/she values your contributions.

So are you underpaid?