Suggest a few tactful ways to ask your boss for a raise?

Things I’d advise you to consider before asking:

1. Current economic conditions not only affect you and other employees, but also could greatly impact your employer. Is now really a good time to ask? For instance, I work for a manufacturer of chemicals. Our raw materials prices have sky rocketed and the lag time between the increases we get the ability to pass them along can be as great as 6 months. We are hurting for cash. Not a good time to ask.

2. Does doing a “decent” job entitle you to a pay increase? Were you not hired to do at least a decent job? Search and find reasons to ask for an increase. Did you do something extraordinary to save the company money? Did you create a new method of doing something to save employee time? Did you knock off the socks of a good customer with some special customer care? If not, I might think twice about asking.

3. How long has it been since you got your last raise? If it has been less than a year I don’t think I’d risk asking.

4. How long have you been with the company? I’ve been asked for raised from people who worked for me for less than 3 months, citing the same reason you listed above: “Wow, the economy stinks. I need some more money.”

5. I would re-think your line of reasoning: I am not the most active player, but I am not a procrastinator. If you came to me with that attitude I’d boot you out of my office.

Personally, I’ve never, ever, in 34 years of working asked for a raise. I’ve found no need to do so. I work hard and have been rewarded. At times when I was not rewarded I moved on. Then I discovered sales, a career in which you can get a raise everyday if you work at it!

Good luck. If you are deserving it will come your way.

Unless you can prove on paper how you bring the company more money now then you did a year ago, I would wait. Now might not be the right time to be thinking about a raise.

If you’re not the most active player in the company then what I would do is give that person a raise. You are telling us essentially that you could be doing a better job. There’s no way you’d get a raise with a work attitude like that.