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.

I started a very similar thread to this a couple of years back. I posted a job description and asked people to guess the salary. It was a facilities management job for a large office building, including responsibility for all the health and safety, security and arranging maintenance. Most people guessed around £35 to £40k. The salary on offer was £17k.

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

I know a lovely Band 2 administrator. Yes she does work unsociable hours because she works on a ward, loads of admin staff are working over Christmas

It's admin. 😳 I saw a marketing manager role advertised recently, needing 4 yrs post grad experience, to write and manage strategy including global responsibility, only 4 wks holiday. For 25k. Having a fucking giraffe.

But also, job specs always make the tasks sound higher profile and fluffier than they really are. 'Diary management' for example. 😂🤦

Never You are really laughing at diary management? Have you even bothered to read what posters have said it can often be like?

Bloody hell.

I guess not complex in the sense of some of the other roles on here, but it does require a certain skill set. Not degree level or even graduate calibre, many of the best PAs I have come across are not degree educated. Personally I don’t want to be a PA and have the qualifications to do other things which I will, but I am also not the best PA almost as a result. Luckily I have a role/boss where my role can and does encompass a whole heap of stuff someone else in my role might not want to/be able to do.

I accept NHS is possibly different though possibly with less room for creativity. I could be totally wrong about that.

Well PAs do ‘manage a diary’ so not sure that’s fluffy. It is what we do. An inbox too quite often. So I decide what is read and when. Organising a diary would just be moving things around, managing requires decisions and planning around.

What I mean is, it isn't rocket science.

Whilst good admin are the backbone of the NHS our teams 2 administrators are never going to get paid much more than the junior clinical staff. Newly qualified staff in my specialism are on 31k but wth years of rigerous and competitive post grad training....

Have you even bothered to read what posters have said it can often be like? confused. Bloody hell.

Yup. I haven't seen any saying it is excessively hard.

If it’s an NHS post, then bear in mind that the overall package includes access to the NHS pension scheme. Even in the newer Career Average Scheme with 54ths accrual, the benefits are still far more valuable than the typical private sector auto-enrolment pension scheme...

I was a PA for years and respect the role.

But diary management IS basic and this job spec doesn't sound onerous or demanding for a PA. To say otherwise is just silly.

I worked for years as a PA to some senior and very demanding people with huge workloads. Yes, diary management is a basic task if you are organising an occasional 1:1 with Bob in Accounts but not if you are organising big important meetings with lots of people based in different locations who were equally as busy and important as the person I worked for. Have about ten to fifteen of those on the go, diaries that are back to back, plus pulling together all the paperwork, reports, agendas, minutes, reports together with tight deadlines and complex information, chasing people over and over again for information, monitoring inboxes and answering on behalf of your boss and you have a recipe for a very stressful job. It's a bit like being a chef and trying to cook fifty dishes simultaneously because you are constantly multi-tasking.

All the people on here who say admin is easy have probably never done an admin or PA job with any real responsibility. No, people's lives aren't at risk but in my time I saw some massive fuck ups by inexperienced PAs. Knowing how much some of these big bosses earn I laugh at some of the salaries advertised these days. I stay in touch with a couple of old bosses and one in particular has had terrible luck with PAs. He has turned up late, been to the wrong address with the wrong paperwork, missed deadlines and generally looked like a tit. I blame it on his penchant for a pretty face!

Fast forward to now.... I retrained and now work in a Band 6 NHS clinical role. I earn similar to what I did as a PA but my job is far less stressful and I have less responsibility than I ever did as a PA. I actively discourage women to go down the PA route as it is probably the least understood role you could do as this thread has shown.

The point is I can tell you for s fact there is a huge skills shortage in the uk which is going to get a lot worse, so if you are half decent at your job there’s never been a better time to ask for a pay rise or get in touch with your favourite recruitment consultant.... the worm has turned so please stop accepting shit wages

The Administrators/PAs in my company are paid 24-26k a year. I think that's about right for what they do. Very stressful work managing lots of calendars for very highly paid people and teams working on very complicated projects. Quite a lot of the work goes into project support/planner territory. (Source - I'm an admin turned planner and the work definitely crosses over)

A point of interest. The admin team has one male member. The women have job titles of "Administrator" and "Personal Assistant". The chaps job title is "Business Support Coordinator". He does exactly the same job as the rest of the team.

Seems reasonable. I’m a PA/admin and earn 30k but because I work for a small business I also have finance and payroll duties too.

@naughtybutniceandaspice
I think the problem is that junior doctors and nurses (even junior sister/charge nurses)
who carry out clinical work following years of degree and post graduate training sometimes earn around 27-30k whilst also working long hours unpaid overtime plus expected to keep up with mandatory training

I’m a band 3 “project co-ordinator” for the NHS (silly job title)

As people have left and not been replaced, my job description has got bigger and bigger. If I don’t do my job properly you don’t get surgery! Last week I was writing up and planning our units emergency preparedness plan. At band 3.

I do everything from managing project admin, booking surgery, reception, appointments, dictations, supply ordering, RTT management and a million other jobs. At BAND 3!

Also, there is an office full of medical secretaries off our corridor. A few of them are often there when I leave at the end of the day. Most are Band 3 possibly Band 4. The assumption that NHS PAs and Admins knock off at 5pm is inaccurate.

I do think that jobs largely seen as “women’s roles” are generally lower paid.
Nurses physios etc have seen salaries rise since more men have joined the profession.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious.

Why are people muddying the waters when a clear job spec has been provided?

You may have experience of a PA managing part of a £2m+ director's workload... But that's not an assistant to. That's e.g. Assistant Director.

So is managing HR, training, disciplinary for 160 people.

You aren't a PA at that point and your beef is with the inaccurate job title/Contract signed... Don't use those examples to argue that PAs as a group do "complex" tasks.

Some of these posters honestly make me think of one particular relative who wouldn't know a stressful or professional job if it walked up an smacked her in the face who moved from one (public sector) secretary job to another (public sector) job and complained at how rushed off her feet and it was a step up... Only to manage to get her 16 year old daughter on an interview shortlist for the exact same department by coaching her through the application.. this is a kid who got awful exam results not through stupidity, but because it wasn't fun/interesting enough for her to bother about.

it's not rocket science

I used to think that but I've come to realise it's the type of skill you don't appreciate is a skill until you experience people doing it badly. Such as scheduling meetings when the person due to chair the meeting isn't free, despite having access to their diary to check their availability...

What it boils down to is whether or not someone will work for that?

Plenty of companies advertise for digital marketing manager roles at £22k - do you think they actually get anyone applying? Course not. Skilled individuals know what they are worth because often their skills aren't widely available, and they can usually add ££ value to the organisation depending on how good they are. They're specialist and they're therefore worth more.

What people mean by 'only admin' is that it IS lower skilled technically, there are more people available and therefore employers don't pay as much as they do for skilled roles.

My first job was in admin. I got paid 4,500 a year and I was 18. ( I'm 40 now) .. puts it in perspective a little, because the cost of living hasn't increased 500% in the last 22 years

Of course it is a skill, but not a rare one

I was on £15000 doing a similar role, admin. I then completed a postgraduate in science and was on 17000 a year so that seems like a pretty good deal to me.
I was in London too.