to be offering £8 p/h for part-time work in my small company

[AgathaPinchBottom]

Hi folks, I run a small business (1 year old) and have a fairly new baby, and I am looking for part-time help at work. Someone recently wrote to me asking me for work and I replied saying I could offer them £8 an hour (to answer phone, take enquiries etc). They replied saying they wouldn't even consider it unless I doubled the figure. Can't really afford to pay someone this. AIBU to think £8 enough? (Also - it would start at £8 and go up to £10 in a few months as business improves). Opinions gratefully received.

if it is local and school hours then I would be very happy to take the job at £10 ph! I have been looking for admin jobs locally and that is about the going rate.
Don't know what kind of jobs your applicant had in mind!
Full-time, complex and with experience roles would be in the £16 ph bracket, in my view.
Whereabouts in London are you AgathaPinchBottom?

Im in the North and I get £6.50 p hour in a small company and I do alot more than answer the phone and take enquiries. Not had a payrise in 4 years and am disillusioned. Despite me putting forward my case and knowing everyone else has had pay rises... (one response I got was that I had two lots of maternity though - though strictly I only had one...)
So no, YANBU! £8 p hour starting wage with the possibility of a payrise in the not too distant sounds fair to me.

My sis works in North London doing admin/reception duties (unloading deliveries/cleaning the office/general dogsbody!) all for just over minimum wage. So I think £8/hour is fair for the position you describe.

As my private sector DH regularly points out to me, s job is 'worth'

a what you can pay

b what someone else is willing to do it for

So if you can get someone who can do the job well for that rate, then YANBU. If you can't, and hold out because you think it is what the job is worth, then YABU.

basingstoke, but it's also likely to be relative as to the market rate.

Your factors a and b shouldn't be viewed in isolation, because the over riding element of a job which is (shall we say) unskilled and relatively uninteresting (compared to say, being a vet, since lots of people like animals, or taking care of children, since lots of people love children) is the wage you're getting in return.

and people are unlikely to do it for less than a competitor pays. that's one of the strongest influences here.

lawnimp says that £8ph isn't great. but i wonder what she does for a job, what degree she has, what industry qualifications, and how many years she's been with her employer or in the sector? it's all relative, isn't it?

I think £8ph for an office admin job, which is essentially unskilled, with the potential for wage rises and a relatively flexible part time approach - surely that's a gem of a job for returning mums or folk without any specific skills/ established career path?

A friend of mine is a teacher and works in a London school (lives outside), I'm pretty sure she's not on £33k a year based on her comments wrt buying a house last year, although I'll admit to not knowing for definite.

er no i've done lots of office admin work in london and that was the norm in about 1998! and why is office work often looked on as 'unskilled' it certainly isn't!

Well yes, but that was covered by 'what someone is willing to do it for'. Lots of factors affect that of course.

Is the OP having trouble recruiting? Or is she just a bit gobsmacked at the gall of this one applicant? If she is, then perhaps she needs to look at the wage offfered again and compare with other small businesses. If not, then just file this one on the bin and interview the others!

We have someone do similar work for us (South Midlands) and pay £6.50 per hour plus a £15 per week bonus if certain targets (organisational in nature and quite soft) are met. We used peopleperhour to recruit and had a reasonable number of applicants for the work (although some did apply asking for much higher minimum). I think one factor which was crucial in getting a reaonable number of people interested however was the ability for the applicant to work remotely. Once you have to factor in costs of travelling to an emplloyer etc, £8 per hour is not so much if this is only for a few hours per day.

Activate - I'm with you on the employers NI but what do you mean by "employers tax which you'll have to pay as an employer". Do you simply mean the obligation to withhold or are you suggesting there is something else over and above the salary cost?

lawnimp because I'm looking at it relative to professional roles with degrees, industry qualifications, years in the sector.

Whilst you may need very important skills to do admin work, pretending you need as many skills to answer the phone and file paperwork as my old uni mate in London teaching GCSE English isn't going to wash with me. It really, really isn't. I've done my fair share of admin jobs in the past (worked for over 3 years as reception desk/admin girl just after maternity leave when I needed soemthing with regular hours), and you cannot compare a heap of professional graduate roles with unskilled (gasp!) admin work.

Everyone has value, but let's not pretend they require the same level of educational investment or level of skill.

"let's not pretend they require the same level of educational investment or level of skill"... hence one of the things which infulences the market rate. (Note I said one thing,... obviously other stuff like value to the company, revenue generation influences salaries too )

wow harsh!

I'll take the job!
YANBU.

I don't think it's really harsh, it's just true. The majority of people could answer phones, write notes, file etc without any trouble. Fewer people could, for example, teach. Fewer people still could perform surgery. Hence teaching is paid more, and being a surgeon is paid very well.

A job like cleaning, which again requires little specialist skill, is often paid more than admin. This is because a)some people think of it as dirty or 'below' them and b) the work is rarely full time and is nowhere near as secure as an admin role.

lawnimp not really. just honest

Let's remember that admin jobs come with some really great "benefits" - often it's not that stressful (at least where I worked), it's steady hours, none of that "stay until the job's done" stuff, and I also got treated pretty well i.e. it wasn't me that had to sell, or solve problems with customers, and stuff. I quite enjoyed my time after ML (and i did mostly admin stuff through uni too, but not as a proper employee, mostly temping).

We just advertised for a p/t receptionist where I work. Shit money (about 10p over minimum wage), shit hours - 25/week but spread over 5 days and in the afternoons so doesn't even fit in with school hours. We got over 50 applicants. This is in central London.

I think £8 ph is OK, but only based on the reality of how low pay in this country is generally.
I regularly see jobs that pay the same or less than the admin job I had in the media ten years ago (and that was badly paid then!).

Wages have not gone up, and I think Tax Credits have a lot to do with this.
The government wants everybody working, it seems, but still somewhat dependant on the state.

I would love to be completely independent of all benefits, but even though I am working, I am still reliant on Tax Credits.
If they didn't exist, thousands of people would be literally hungry and homeless, because lets face it:

It is just not possible to live, pay rent, pay bills, pay for childcare etc on £8 ph. Or £5.75 ph (which I believe is minimum wage).

It would be so much better for everyone if Tax Credits were abolished, but minimum wage increased to £12 per hour imo.

Sorry, hijacked your AIBU with a personal rant

hi -you could advertise in the jobs section on here - and the freelance section on here could give you are load of info about taking on an employee there is quite alot to it - and I believe the HMRC do a workshop on the tax and NI side

I run a small business and pay part time £6.50 ph.....this is outskirts of London and during school hours (also allowed to bring children to work in school holidays). Had over 50 applicants last time I advertised.
I think £8 is generous.......

£8 an hour for admin in london is perfectly reasonable.

Many companies (yes EVEN in london!) pay min wage or a bit above for this type of work.

The part-time rate for lecturing at my local university is £24 an hour. So for £16 an hour, I would expect the employee to at least have the law degree, if not the professional postgraduate qualification, training and PQE! But you don't really need someone with a degree and are offering flexible work and a way back into employment for someone who has perhaps not been working lately, so I think £8 an hour is fine. Perhaps advertise in different places though, eg to attract postgraduate students, returners to work, etc..

Remember that "in london" doesn't necessarily mean an expensive commute, and especially not for this type of work.

So if OP is in eg Tuffnell Park she will have an enormous pool of people who live round there biting her arm off for the job, who will be in walking distance / bus / couple of stops on the tube away.

The good thing about london is it's so mixed up - so most places where places work have stacks of people living within striking distance.

Obviously someone's not going to get on a commuter train for this - but a 20 min bus ride is easily doable.

It seems fairly typical in London for basic admin. Those kind of jobs on Reed get 100+ applicants in the first few hours, I know, I've been looking!