I want to ask for a pay rise and I do not know what to base it on

Asking for a pay rise: what do the exchanges show of my room to move?

Anchors, concessions, outside options — what is observable, and what is missing

Reconstructed case: the exchanges, dates and participants are fictional data, written to show the structure of the document. No real person, team or company is described here.

The record of facts

Period covered: 19/01/2026 to 27/06/2026 · 318 messages · 2 participants

Median response time, compared by subject — 26 hours (median)
Gap between a message from the report holder calling for an answer and the first message from the other party that answers it. Calculated separately on the 34 sequences concerning pay (median 26 hours) and on the 121 sequences concerning the other subjects (median 3 hours), over the same period and between the same two participants. Automatic replies and declared absences excluded.
Requests from the report holder left unanswered — 3 requests
Explicit requests from the report holder concerning the pay scale or the criteria, followed by no message from the other party for more than 72 working hours. Three requests retained: the one of 18 February (14 working days), the one of 22 May and the one of 9 June, both without an answer until the end of the period covered, that is 25 and 11 working days.
Decision dates announced in writing and how each is taken up — 4 dates announced
Count of the decision dates announced in writing by the other party, and identification of the message that moves each one. Four dates announced: 27 February (announced on 5 February), 31 March (announced on 2 March), 15 May (announced on 31 March) and 30 June (announced on 18 May). The first three are passed within the period covered; the fourth falls after the end of the export and could not be checked.
Adjournment wording repeated identically — 5 occurrences
Strings of more than six words taken up word for word at least three times by the same sender, polite formulas excluded. Only one string exceeds this threshold over the period: it appears on 5 February, 2 March, 21 April, 6 May and 12 June.
Distribution of message volume — 56 %
Share of the messages sent by each participant out of the 318 messages retained: O.D. 177 (56%), K.F. 141 (44%). System messages and read receipts excluded.
Dated break in the form of the answers concerning pay — 1 break
Identification of the date from which the length of the answers concerning pay changes durably, over a sliding window of ten messages: 58 words on average before 31 March, 12 words after. Only one break exceeds the threshold retained over the period. The answers concerning the other subjects show no comparable break.
Messages received outside the working hours retained — 9 messages
Count of the messages received whose timestamp falls outside the 08:30–18:30 range declared by the report holder, from 19 January to 26 June. Two of them fall on a Sunday. System messages excluded. Related to the 177 messages received over the period, this total represents 5% of what the other party sent.
Exits from a thread or channel, dated — not applicable to this material
Detection of a thread with several recipients where the report holder was present and then is no longer. The corpus provided contains only two participants and no thread with several recipients: the measure has no object here.
Share of messages addressed to a group — not applicable to this material
Ratio between the messages addressed to a channel with at least three recipients and those addressed directly. The 318 messages of the corpus are direct exchanges between two participants: no ratio can be calculated.
Back-to-back turns in a group channel — not applicable to this material
Share of the turns taken up by another participant in less than 40 seconds without taking up the object of the previous one, in a group channel. No group channel in the corpus provided: the measure has no object here.

This document is an automatically generated record of facts, based on the exchanges you provided. It is neither an expert assessment, nor legal advice, nor a legal characterisation. Workplace harassment, discrimination and similar characterisations are legal determinations that belong to the competent authorities. For any action, contact your labour inspectorate, occupational physician, staff representative or a lawyer. The measures shown here cover only the exchanges submitted: they do not reflect the full context of your situation.

The report

What is observed

The request is put in figures for the first time on 22 January at 9%; it is brought down to 6% on 12 March, then to 4% coupled with a review in September on 28 April.
The figure put forward in reply moves from 1.5% on 5 February to 2% on 6 May: a movement of 0.5 point over the period, against 5 points cumulated on the requesting side.
Four decision dates were announced in writing: 27 February, 31 March, 15 May and 30 June. The first three are passed within the period covered; the fourth falls after the end of the export.
The wording “we’ll see about that at the time of the arbitrations” recurs word for word 5 times between 5 February and 12 June.
Three written requests concerning the pay scale and the criteria retained were left without an answer for more than 72 working hours: the one of 18 February for 14 working days, the one of 22 May and the one of 9 June until the end of the period covered.
The median response time is 26 hours over the 34 sequences concerning pay and 3 hours over the 121 sequences concerning the other subjects, over the same period and between the same two participants.
9 messages were received outside the working hours declared over the five months covered, 2 of them on a Sunday.

What this indicates

Several sequences show an asymmetric movement of position: three written moves in figures on the requesting side for a single one on the answering side, over the same period.
The chronology indicates that the subject of pay is handled with a delay different from that of the other subjects exchanged between the same two participants: 26 hours against 3 hours in median.
Several sequences show that the criterion invoked to set the figure — an internal pay scale — is cited twice without ever being produced: no message in the corpus contains a value from it.
The chronology indicates that the three deferrals of the decision occurring within the period are contemporaneous with a calendar shift announced on 31 March and documented by a note sent on 2 April.

Leads to check

One lead to check would be the existence of an internal pay scale: it is mentioned twice in the exchanges, never sent, and none of its values appears there. In its absence, neither the initial 9% nor the 2% announced can be situated in relation to anything at all.
A second lead, to be checked with a third party, would be an arbitration made outside the channel: three messages refer to a meeting for which no minutes appear in the corpus. What that meeting decided, the exchanges provided do not say.
A third lead would be the existence of outside options: none appears in the exchanges. This absence does not say that there are none — it says that none was written down here, which is a common and legitimate choice.

Room that is missing from a report is not room that does not exist: it is missing from the material. See what your own exchanges make observable → Read my room to move