Salary Negotiation Guide

Managing to fit in your home life around a job can be tricky and many people fall in to the trap or working all the time without having any time to spend with loved ones. When this happens, relationships can often start to breakdown and although a person may be able to make a decent amount of money by working they can sometimes find they have little to go home to at the end of the day.

Of course we all have to pay our bills and this can mean that we often have to work more than we would like to but if this is the case, try and set aside one day a week or a at least a few hours that you can devote totally to your family or your friends. This will also help give you the break that you need to recoup before going back to work.

Shift work can be well paid but you should consider the hours you will be doing and how that will fit in with other aspects of your life. This can be especially true if you have young children that are at school as you may find that you leave to go to work before they are home and don’t finish until they are back.

If you own your own business then you will need to think carefully about your marketing. It is easy to let marketing get forgotten about especially if you have a lot of work coming in, but not doing any marketing could leave you high and dry with no work.

Marketing doesn’t have to cost the earth, although often you do get out of it what you put in. If you are willing to spend a bit of your own time on marketing then you could save money on paying someone else to do it, but I would only do this on the advice of an expert. Many marketing companies are happy and want you to get involved and provide information that they can use in their marketing strategy for you, but will need to be able to have some control over what gets distributed where. You could always start with a small budget and increase it as your work increases.

If you are out of work for a long period of time you may find it difficult to find an employer who is willing to take you on. Sometimes people have to be unemployed for a period of time, this may be due to illness, raising a family, looking after a loved one or other personal circumstances. If this is the case, you may find it difficult to return to work when you are competing against other people that have had steady jobs for a number of years.

Employers are always looking for members of staff that are going to show commitment and although you may have a huge amount of commitment to offer, your CV may not show the same.

If you have been out of employment for some time then make sure that you explain your reasons clearly to your potential employer and also offer some reassurance of your commitment.

 

 

If you are self-employed, then no one will tell you (apart from maybe an accountant) that you need to put your prices up. If you think about it, most things increase in price year upon year with inflation so there is no reason why your business shouldn’t be able to do the same. If your prices were set quite low when you set up in order to attract business and gain experience, the following year you should look to increase your prices to make sure that you are getting the right money for the work you are doing.

It can be hard to explain to customers that you have increased your prices, but make sure you do, rather than just try and sneak a price increase in to their monthly, annual fees. Explain why you have had to increase your prices, e.g. price increase from suppliers, or now offering the client a better service which costs more to provide.

 

 

Money is one of the major concerns for the majority of us and although we may already have a full time job, we still might not be getting enough to pay the bills. If you are in this situation you will probably think that you need to take on a second job. When taking on a second job you need to be aware of the tax implications. For example if you earn £15000 in your first job then any money you earn in your second job will be taxed as you will have used up your tax free allowance in the first job.

Often it is easier to extend your hours with your current company if possible so I would always suggest doing that first prior to searching for a new job.

Working two jobs can be a huge stress on your home life and your well being, so always make sure that you have adequate time off to recover and rest.

 

Sometimes within a job role you may have performance reviews. These are often carried out by a line manager or director and are set up to review your performance at work and see which areas you excel in and other areas that you may require additional training or experience in. Many people get nervous about performance review meetings, but as long as you have put the effort in to your job and done the best you can then there really is no need to get nervous about it.

If you do not have performance reviews or even if you do then why not carry out a self assessment on your work performance. You can make a list of task you think you are good at and ones that you struggle with, maybe that take you to long to do or that you do not feel you have the relevant equipment to complete it at the level it needs to be. Once you have this, ask for a quick meeting with your manager to run through your ideas to see if they can help offer advice or look for training for you.

 

Asking for a pay rise can be a daunting task, it is often similar to negotiating your initial salary when you were offered the job but you should be in a stronger place to ask for more money. Only ask for a pay rise if you think you have a valid reason to. If you have had a lot of unauthorised time off recently, have been falling behind with work or making a lot of mistakes, then you are probably not in a position to ask for an increase in your salary.

It may be that you have structured performance review meetings and if so, this is a great time to bring up the subject of a pay increase. If not then the end of a financial year or end of a quarter may be a good time as this is when many businesses look at how they have performed during that period and if you can show that you have contributed greatly to that success, then they are more likely to agree to an increase in your pay.