Ok I am in the UK -
I am the office manager of a small architectural firm. there are 7 employees altogther including me.
I do all the administration work here, from the filing (which is a huge job and if left for a week will take a full day to complete) to answering the telephones.
I also do all the accounting work, which includes ensuring the fees issued, received and outstanding is up to date at all times, lodging all cheques etc. completing all vat returns and yearly accounts. i also have to update all petty cash, cheque ledgers etc.
I am also PA to the director, and the majority of my day is spent typing his correspondence, and i get very little time to do anything else that i need done.
my working hours are 8:45 to 5:30 however very rarely do i leave before 5:50 in fact i was here until after 6 two nights ago.
I feel i am so overworked and underpaid for the amount of work i do. My boss runs 3 companies from this office and i am working for all of them. I earn 拢16,000.00 a year and have seen receptionists who earn as much as me. I have tried mentioning that i would like a payrise but he either laughs or walks away from me.
He was even told by another employee that i was thinking of leaving and i told him this was why, that was two months ago and he still wont listen to my request for a payrise.
i am obviously going about this all wrong. please help me how can i do this and get through to him.
i dont want to lose my job and dont really want to start all over again in a new job, i quite like it here only that i feel i am underpaid. most people doing my job earn from 18-25k per year i am only earning 16 so i am not even on the scale If you need more money and feel underpaid, you should seriously look for another job. In the meantime, ask him for a few hours off because you have a job interview. It might scare him into thinking you are serious.
Working in an environment where you feel underpaid, is not a good thing. You will eventually feel resentful and not want to work as hard as if you were well compensated. Schedule a meeting with your boss and have your information at hand. Make the meeting about facts and figures. Leave out any emotion.
1. Plan how you will present the request for a pay raise to your boss.
2. You may consider asking what you need to do to qualify for the possible raises and bonuses in the future, if you cannot justify a higher salary now.
3. Make a list of the goals you have accomplished for the company. Determine how their accomplishment has helped the company.
4. Make a list of any additional responsibilities you have added to your job.
5. Set a pay increase goal, in your mind, that appears to reward the contributions and additional responsibilities you have documented.
Once presented with logical information, it is difficult for anyone to say no. If he does, well, it may just be time to look for another job where your contribution will be appreciated.
Good luck. My boss treated our office administrator in a similar way to this. She was on 拢18.5k, but we're in central London.
To cut a long story short, even though she really deserved a payrise and her arguments for getting one were strong, it was clear that she wasn't going to get one so she eventually had to leave. Firstly this was because my boss was stingy and tried to get away with paying everyone as little as possible, and secondly it was because her work was undervalued - the boss thought that admin work was an unskilled job and anyone could do it. I used to be an administrator and I know that this isn't the case, and my boss knows it now since the replacement we got is thick as hell, but this was his view at the time.
So, just leave. Our administrator went from 拢18.5k here to 拢33k in her new job, which is interesting because even if she had stayed and been successful in asking for a payrise there's no way she would have got that much of an increase.
If you want to try asking again before you decide to leave, then I would make sure you outline all of your achievements and make sure that he is aware of exactly what your day-to-day duties entail. Leave out the part about working overtime - you are complaining about working 20 minutes extra per day which is almost nothing - you'll find very few jobs where you're not expected to put in some overtime, and I think you'd have grounds for complaint if you were working an hour late per day or more, but not 20 minutes. You can start searching for another job and once he would be getting all the calls asking for reference for you, he would see you are serious about it. It worked for me. just let it be. show waht you can do. impress. |
