To never want to work in a job with fixed payscales

[Middlelanehogger]

I read threads on here about (mostly government/civil service/adjacent) jobs with fixed payscales, like teachers, nurses, NHS admins, civil service etc.

I work in the private sector where you get paid depending on what you personally do in your role. (And yes, a bit based on what you personally asked your boss for in the negotiations, but at least it's marginally in your control.)

I just can't comprehend how people can deal with it. Just read a post about how Band Whatever senior teachers only get £10k more than juniors, why, "because that's the banding". So you either suck it up or quit, there's no "ask for a £10k pay rise" or however much would make it worth it to you?! This isn't how you get to market clearing rates!

I’ve always worked in jobs with pay bands. It is a good thing to reduce pay disparities based on sex, race etc. the transparency is a huge benefit.

I’ve mostly been in the public sector and although it does have its advantages, it’s still massively frustrating.

Also it means people go for promotions when they’re not ready in order to get a pay rise. If they were able to get a decent pay rise at the lower level, they’d stay and do a great job - rather than working slightly beyond their capabilities at the level above.

I worked in a very large private multinational and there were paybands

I agree with @Lcb123 that the transparency is good.

Also, the employer pension contributions are 27% with the civil service which is a huge bonus

True I suppose mine does as well.

But the bands are fairly wide, and they're not tenure-based. If you get promoted to a more senior role which has a higher budget then fair enough. But that's based on skills and responsibilities not tenure

same as others - I've always worked in public sector so normal to me

benefit is transparency and being able to plan ahead - e.g. you know what you'll be earning in 5 years (give/take any payrises, usually a fairly paltry 1%)

drawbacks are like you say it offers little incentive to work hard as there's no financial reward - person a who does fuck all can get paid significantly more than person b doing the same job because b is new and a has been there a few years so is at the top of their banding. Also once you reach the top of the banding it's either accept you'll never get another payrise or time to look around for a new job - meaning people often leave just as they get experienced enough to be really useful.

I am pro paybands. There should be some room within a band for higher and lower pay within a role based on performance, but a system where pay is based on 'ask for a 10k pay rise' and how much your boss is willing to agree to it for you just leads on unfairness and discrimination.

I’m pro paybands too. You know more or less where everyone stands.

I now work in the private sector without publicised paybands. It’s impossible to know if I’m fairly paid. I have come to the conclusion that I am probably extremely underpaid and should be on £15-30k more than I’m currently paid.

I don’t really see the financial incentive to work hard in no paybands. Because there’s no guarantee at all that working harder will get you a raise at any point.

What gets you pay increases - in sectors with and without published pay scales, is being willing and able to change job regularly enough to keep increasing your salary.

Also, the employer pension contributions are 27% with the civil service which is a huge bonus

Agree it’s a great bonus but not sure how it’s relevant here. You get it regardless of how hard you work.

Ditto

True, however this is what attracted me to working somewhere with fixed pay scales. If the pension contribution wasn’t so high I’d consider working in the private sector

@IncomingTraffic
What gets you pay increases - in sectors with and without published pay scales, is being willing and able to change job regularly enough to keep increasing your salary.

Agree but not sure how teachers/nurses are supposed to do this, I suppose they just go into the private sector where they can actually get paid a market rate

Whatever you think of the unfairness of having to do pay negotiations, that's how the "market rate" gets discovered, and can quickly adjust to changing economic circumstances as it is "live" data getting updated each time someone new walks through the door instead of every 3 or 5 years or however often the payscales get adjusted

I’ve only worked in the public sector, so I don’t know any different, but recently with COL it’s started to feel
a bit unfair….there are two of us of my band in my team and it’s quite obvious that I do a lot more than my colleague, to the point where I mentioned it recently and my manager acknowledged it’s true. There’s no monetary incentive to work harder so a fair few people coast (not everyone - lots of people work extremely hard, but some really don’t).

My colleague is at the top of their pay band because they are much older than me, so they’re earning as much as £15k more, whereas thanks to austerity the bands are now frozen, so I don’t move up it each year like they did…I joined at the bottom and I stay at the bottom forever more. They also get a top up of “marked time” from some hangover of previously working in a higher paying department or something. Plus London allowance (fair enough, I don’t disagree it costs more to live there, but on the days we’re both sitting in our respective houses WFH with me doing the bulk of the work it grates).

We don’t get bonuses either because it’s taxpayer’s money. The only way to increase my pay is to try to get a promotion…which is fiercely competitive, since it’s the only way anyone can increase their pay. I’m genuinely considering moving to the private sector because I feel like my hard work goes completely unrewarded, despite actually loving the work and being good at it. No wonder lots of the public sector are striking!

I work in a specific part of the public sector where we don’t even have bands. There’s just a fixed pay rate for each grade, and not very many grades. It’s massively frustrating and means there is no way to incentivise staff financially to (a) do a great job and (b) stay in the role once they are more experienced.

When I joined the adverts were really misleading and advertised a £10k band, when in fact that wasn’t possible.

I agree Gemstar. The civil service advertises roles with a salary range but it is very difficult to start from outside at anything but the bottom of the advertised scale. Then once you're in, you realise that it isn't a scale at all, and it's impossible to get paid more without going for promotion. Some of us just want to do a bloody good job and be fairly rewarded for our experience, not have to completely change jobs to be paid a little more. I took a cut to join the CS not realising this, and I am stuck on a salary less than I was on 10 years ago. Yes, the pension contributions are generous, but you have to do 30+ years to get the really good pension. Not really doable in your 50s.

It's as if the public and private sector are different?! That's how people deal with it. You obviously think pay bands are a shit part of the public sector but there's loads of other stuff which is shit about the private sector, like you say in your op being paid on your personality. So I suppose people deal with it by deciding on their priorities.

Just FYI I work freelance so I'm not really coming from either side. I just get a bit annoyed with all this faux lack of understanding of others choices. It's tiresome.

The no incremental progression within the pay scale thing is appalling. Especially as they try to force all new joiners on to the bottom increment. So there is not actual pay scale any more. Just a single figure at the bottom of it, regardless how good you are or whether you’re overqualified.

It’s not the paybands thing that is the problem in the civil service. It’s the ridiculous way they’ve structured career progression. The only way to move up is to keep switching jobs. Start at bottom on pay scale. Switch job to another department so you get the required uplift. Repeat til you get to the top/are ready to try for the next grade up. Then repeat until retirement.

Given that the whole civil service careers and recruitment is supposed to be all fair and well thought through, it’s astoundingly poor in just about every single way.

I would say it's probably worse than that.
My middle aged friends are stuck in their teaching roles because they are "too expensive for another school who would be happier to hire NQT to teach drama.

The ‘market rate’ is an emergent property of large numbers of collective negotiations. It’s not really there in the individual negotiations. And there is incredibly clear evidence that produces overtly discriminatory outcomes.

The problem for teachers and nurses is probably that the pay is not good enough generally to reflect the workloads, responsibility or to reward years of experience.

There’s no perfect system, but it really isn’t that great in the private sector. Despite the problems in the public sector.

yes. That’s ridiculous. The way school
budgets work to disadvantage experienced staff is not helpful in the least.

The most noticeable paybands I encountered were in the private sector.

The going rate and the women's rate.

Always the woman who needed the job to support a child on her own that was blamed for not insisting upon more, too. And refused raises because they knew she needed the job.

Difference with public and private sector is that large private companies do often have paybands but give bonuses of varying amounts depending on how you have worked, it's of course cheaper for a company to give a bonus rather than a pay rise so we would often get a small percentage payrise and a bonus, some people would never seem to get up the payband because of this. This happened in the large multinational and a medium size companies I worked for. DS works in a small private company, about 20 or 30 people and I don't think there are paybands there though .

There are pros and cons each way but overall i think pay bands are better. I've been working at a law firm which had no pay bands and recently was acquired by a bigger firm with detailed pay bands and criteria for each. The old way meant you saw people who were teacher's pet getting promotions and pay rises way above their capability or given promotions because they'd been around for x years (regardless of merit) and others who were really good but not pushy or pally with the bosses got overlooked and ended up leaving. The new way means you are entitled to a pay increase within the band if you've exceeded target and you can apply for a promotion to the next band if you have developed your skills set enough to meet the criteria. I've only had one public sector job years ago so I can't comment on how it works in the public sector.

I prefer it! I started my job on 23k and 6 years later I'm on 36k
I'd never have managed to negotiate two 6 and a half k raises.
When I was in the private sector and I asked for a raise I was told I was worth what they were willing to pay me,. I only ever got a raise by leaving. So exhausting. At least there's a feeling of fairness where I am now.