What do you think is the best way to successfully ask your boss for a pay raise?

What do you think is the best way to successfully ask your boss for a pay raise?

From Seiza, bow, be softspoken, be respectful, sound submissive and grateful for being a part of the team, request the raise...

and make sure your sword remains in its scabbard unless the pay raise is rejected.

Ask him casually after working hours or when you've been asked directly.

Get him good and drunk and then pay for his soapland?

I was in the union for many years. I found that helps, especially when management are giving themselves significant increases and suchlike.

Best time to get a pay raise is from changing jobs

This is true. The salary jump that can be achieved when switching jobs with a successful negotiating will almost always outweigh any salary increase you can get in a company.

As a business owner in Japan let me give some advice.

Do not talk about tenure. Your staying power is not an asset. I can hire a place holder off the street to replace you and pay them less as a new hire.

What skills did you have when hired and skills have you gained since. What skills will you be willing to learn.

Great you are at work 8-10 hours a day, how many of these are productive. How many "toilet" breaks and "smoke" breaks do you take? Do you trade these for your set breaks seeing as you have already had these "breaks". How much time are you on your phone texting and surfing the web? Late back from lunch regularly? Does your supervisor seem to find their way to my office about you? OK, so how will we improve this?

Are you an asset to the company? How? or Are you just getting by?

What are your plans for the next 5 years? If you are going to be in the same position then look for another job.

Be polite, listen to boss' input, and remember raises are for closers.

I agree with Reckless on this one. If you have employee which slack off perhaps you should try to check out your management.

Are the overtime properly paid ? Are the salary on match with the work requested ? Are the requirement the same for managing people and underline ? Is the manager objectivity and reliability properly checked ? ...

I hope in your company things are working properly but do not expect it to be the case everywhere else.

I think Bill's giving some good general advice here, not just from his perspective but what a large number of employers are looking for when their employees ask for a raise. If you're an employee, you need to provide value in some form such as boosting sales or reducing costs,, especially if you want more from your boss - nobody is entitled to a raise just for warming a chair.

Perhaps those of you criticising Bill put yourselves in an employer's shoes and think what you'd do - especially for a small business. Remember, businesses are not charities, and need to make a profit to keep employing people.

I think it really depends on the industry/line of work you're in (and probably country).

Things are pretty clear for BDM/product manager/ mkg or sales guys, strong sales results speak for themselves (yours vs others in your team, at national/international level etc).

If you really think -and have numbers on your side to back it up- that you're exceptional, near-indispensable etc be bold (can play with base salary and/or bonuses). Chances are if you're 'that good', your boss should/would already have brought it up (or will soon).

Don't even bother if you've had a crappy year.

What do you think is the best way to successfully ask your boss for a pay raise?

Asking a Japanese boss for a pay rise is like asking the taxation department to allow you to not pay any tax. As soon as you ask there will be a lot of teeth sucking and procrastinating followed by some crappy excuse about the company not making enough money to give you a pay rise. They can't give you a pay rise because there are too many parasite senior managers sucking a huge salary for doing nothing. If you really want a pay rise, leave Japan!

Get him good and drunk and then pay for his soapland?

Nah, he'll have totally forgotten all about it the next morning.

Do your job so well as to make it obvious you are worth a lot more than you're being paid, then let the person/people who control the purse strings know you are thinking of leaving for greener pastures.

Granted this way will take a lot of brains/effort.

Remember, businesses are not charities

And employee are not voluntary staff. Nor relief stress for crappy manager.

If the employee are not serious about their job, it is perhaps time to wonder if there is not something wrong in the management instead of just going for employee are bad people and then working out your way to find out justification that employee are just place holder and they have to improve without even bothering about the answer since after all pay raise are only for closer : the baseball ones ? the pick up ones ? the friend ones ? ... how is that even related to work ability ...

I think Bill's giving some good general advice here

Personnally, I do not see any advice in this. Except if you go for : just do the work you are paid for, do not bother asking for a raise because no matter what you do, the boss already decided that if you are not what he think is a "closer" you will not have one.

In this Japan's economy system, no way to ask to my boss raise my wage(s). Most of the bosses are in the same situation, enrich the company or it will be more debts to the banks. He will say "everybody in the same boat to survive"...

Get a job offer for more money than you're currently making, then see if your boss will match or exceed. If not, leave.