To think this job spec is asking the world for very little money?

[naughtybutniceandaspice]

I can't quite believe it.

NHS, I know. But even still. I'm shocked. £20-23k to do all of this?

What do you think?

AIBU?

I have been working in private sector and would get paid over £30k (outside of London), for that.

Our practitioners withing with highly dangerous and complex offenders, in a number of capacities eg psychotherapeutic and cognitive behavioural work, case/risk management start on a salary just under 23k so no I don't think this is underpaid and I don't think organising someone else's diary and workload is not complex than the work our frontline officers carry out

I am from 🇨🇦 and your wages seem incredibly low!!! When I finished a basic 4-6 month receptionist course 20 odd hrs ago I started my first job at at I believe $12 an hour. I had no where near the responsibilities required of this job. The yearly income would have been around $24,900 give or take for holidays, vacation pay etc. The work place was very generous for bonus’s overtime etc.

The current minimum wage here is just over $11 and will be $12.70 by June 2019.

I cannot believe what people are saying re” it’s just admin”. Did they read the responsibilities? And you can be crap at admin and screw the whole running of things up!!! I have seen this happen, more then once actually🤔. No good admin and things do not run smoothly.

I am gobsmacked at how little your Jr. Drs and others are paid! It’s ridiculous! The police officer is paid less then $30 k a year😳 Our national police force is paid almost triple that and talks are being had due to them supposed to be in the top three paid police forces in Canada and are not even in the top 10. Then again, it’s hard to recruit good, honest, hard working people when you can get paid 20-30 k more with the local force who hasn’t better gear and moral then the national force🚓

And now it appears that nobody is called a clerk typist or a secretary any more, and everybody is a PA or an administrator. So the hierarchy has become somewhat blurred.

Read the job spec. This PA would be supporting people higher up.

Also, one step down from this role would be a Band 3 position. They are Medical Secretary's

Who has better gear and moral! Not hasn’t. Ignore all the typos. Sorry:(

It's low compared to PA starting salaries in my sector and I'm in Scotland. Stay in the private sector would be my advice

Just shows how little people think of pa’s
Just a big of admin, answering the phones

Well actually I do. I worked in admin including the NHS for many years until I retrained. And why did I retrain? Because it’s a very boring, routine job which requires few skills, doesn’t have much responsibility and isn’t mentally taxing. I does have pluses like not having to work late or carry a big mental load home.

I know admin is important and it’s what keeps the NHS ticking over, but the fact remains it is a job that many people are capable of doing. We can’t all be brain surgeons.

And diary management, even complex ones, are basic admin. It’s pretty easy because the computer system does most of the work for you.

Diary management = knowing and understanding priorities that are not your own and taking the appropriate scheduling decision to maximise time efficiency to consider not just free time that could translate to meetings, but time which needs to be free to ensure prep time for meetings etc. It means to’ing and fro’ing possibly all day/a week with other parties at times where more than one party is involved and phone won’t work. It means consistently ensuring that those meetings which you have tried to arrange but haven’t fallen into place yet haven’t fallen by the wayside. It means when one meeting has to move or be put into a day that is already too busy that everything that day has change, every single meeting.

I haven’t looked at this job spec but have seen from the comments that it’s NHS and my own assistant role is in the private sector in London so that is a salary I don’t recognise to be honest. But the example I have given is ONE example of how long and complex it one task can be.

Also worth noting I think that whilst the salaries may be similar to some other junior professional roles, there will be a glass ceiling on an administrative role. Most London private sector PAs/EAs are not going to earn more than £45-47k. That’s it, so whilst I might for example have earnt the same as a trainee management consultant for example in two years they will earn double and as an assistant I will never do that.

Apologies for using non-NHS etc but can only illustrate from the world I know.

Admin and secretarial work is very low paid in most parts of the country now. I'm surprised anyone wants to do it. That seems like a good salary to me.

It’s not complex though really, is it mercedes? It’s a pain in the arse and a tedious job, but it’s not truly complex. It’s just a matter of communication.

I did some PA work years ago, and money couldn't pay me enough to do it again. I found it an incredibly frustrating role. Trying to organise meetings with people who keep cancelling, or worse, just don't turn up even though they said they would. Getting spoken to like you're mud on someone's shoe. It's a fairly thankless task.

Dairy management isn’t exactly skilled work. I can understand why the private sector might choose to pay more (obviously if you miss meetings etc in the private sector it can cost you a lot of money). But I can’t inagine that it’s a particularly important role in that he NHS

I am in a scientific private sector and would expect admin to be 18 to 20 K. So that seems fine.

What qualifications do you need to become a PA?

I agree that doctors and nurses are underpaid, and maybe NHS admin is a doddle? I wouldn't know. But in the private sector the level of responsibility varies massively and in my area I have seen "PA" jobs advertised from min-wage to £50k+. If someone is working alongside a £2m pa director, taking on a lot of their workload, they are probably doing a hell of a lot more than "just basic admin".

In my last PA role I was senior to managers and nurses and also had to manage an admin team. I was second only to the directors because they relied on me to manage everyone else (160 staff) while they made top level decisions (policies, expansion, budgets, etc). I worked 10-12 hour days and was called at home, at weekends and on holiday. I was on £30k in the S.E. not London and glad to get it - but to imply it is a low skilled job anyone can do is frankly ridiculous.

While you don't need to have a degree to be a PA as most of the more difficult skills cannot be taught, I would expect most decent PAs to be graduate-calibre.

Oops, rant over

The apostrophe abuse in this thread (full of administrators) is horrific.

The role description made me tired reading it. Sounds like a high-pressure, stressful nightmare job. Not for the faint-hearted.

Just to say as a dr myself yes the banding increases your pay but only by doing oncall and unsociable hours which administrators do not do... btw I’m oncall now and it’s chrisrmas Eve for instance. I can assure you there are no PAs working now so pat is no comparison and should be lower for an admin role.

Secondly it’s about responsibility- drs are responsible for people’s lives so once again no comparison.

@Augusta2012 will show your post to our PA in january - she’ll becsmused. organising 4 senior people’s calendars and 2 teams travel, group meetings and all the other etc is anytging but basic. weirdly none ofvtgem are bored either. nobe of them are on £24000 either. false economy to save on your pas salary. if they screw up, everything is screwed up

For a start it’s an NHS job and they NHS is skint as I’m sure you’re aware.

It’s more than phlebs get, more than HCAs get and more than those working in most labs get.

I think it’s a perfectly reasonable amount and if you don’t there’s something really easy to do about it...Don’t apply

I live and work in London. Was a legal PA 25 years ago before having children. I earned more than that. I earn more than that now, and work for a charity. Many PA jobs I've seen ask for degree level education (I have a degree). I'm assuming it's because it's for the NHS.

YABU its a basic admin role. Staff at my work would get £16-18k for the same job.

This is just daft, I think you have illustrated the point that it is women's work!

In all honestly I do not know how someone could live on that amount in 2018. I earnt £26,000 plus car in the midlands in 2000 and was hardly rich. That role should be paying at least £40,000 now to have kept up with inflation

Bollocks- senior clinicians with a decade of experience or more earn £40k
Nhs jobs descriptions are usually utter shite anyway, they are contrived to give as high rewards as possible on the agenda for change system which means using keywords and phrases which usually have fuck all to do with the actual role but give a higher pay band.
We recently advertised for a low banded job and the job description was a pile of nonsense which bore little relation to the actual post.
Writing a specific post also requires assessment by the AfC board and lord k owe how long that can take.