To want to pay less at work Christmas drinks?

[Rainallnight]

Agh, I just wrote a long post and it got lost!

the short version is - it’s my work’s tradition that SMT members split the bill for drinks at our Christmas lunch. I am the least well paid member of SMT by some distance and have begun to feel this is unfair.

I’d rather we make a contribution that’s proportionate to our salaries.

AIBU?

Could you talk discreetly to some others who earn about the same as you, and see if they feel the same? It would be easier to raise with bosses and sort out if you weren’t on your own.

I can’t see how it could easily be done according to salary, though. The best solution might be for everyone on SMT to pay a set reasonable amount, and the standout highly paid one(s) pay the remaining part.

Who do you expect to run the charity?! 50-100k is what it takes to get management experience. Would you rather have a load of volunteers who don't know how to run an organisation in charge of your donations?

I agree with you, it's also an uncomfortable one to raise. Make sure you sort it out long before the night though, don't spring it when the bill arrives.

How about having a quiet word with another manager 1-2-1 and gauge how it goes down?
Why not agree a contribution from managers this year rather than footing the full bill, and you can chip in proportionally. My manager used to put £50 behind the bar and we'd pay the rest (this was few year's ago, I reckon it would be more now with cost of living..).

I can assure you the vast majority of civil servants in Whitehall have the same experience as you and have never stepped foot in the HoC canteen. I think you're thinking more of MPs staff not civil servants.

It's the same argument people use when they complain chief execs of local authorities and NHS trusts get paid similar amounts. They are a bargain compared to their private sector equivalents who are often on million pound contracts! Surely we need to attract the best type of person to run charities and the public sector?

Either individuals pay for what they drink if there are big differences in consumption or if everyones drinking roughly the same amount, everyone splits the bill and pays the same.

There's absolutely no reason why higher earners should be expected to pay more just because they're higher earners.

It’s not a company, it’s a charity. Paying for staff drinks would be inappropriate use of donations.

Have you seen the frothing on this thread? Can you imagine how much worse it would be if the charity were paying?!

How dare the OP earn 50k in the charity sector - she should be doing the job out of the goodness of her heart and she certainly doesn't deserve a free lunch paid for out of donations from hard working folk. She should go home and eat gruel for lunch and be grateful for it...

You’d hate where I used to work. At points during the year someone would come round to hassle us for $$ for the nurses Xmas party. Basically, we fully financed it. Every year. Can’t really begrudge them so we just stuck hands in pockets.

Where I am now (non-government, retired from frontline health), we have a company Xmas party/lunch that is funded. It really only covers the 2/3 hours of drinks over the lunch though. So, senior management for each department put together for continuation of a piss up post lunch. That lasts another couple of hours. Once that money is gone, people then have to buy their own if they are still standing.

Why the nurses? They're on very good money compared to the often minimum wage admin staff.

Op have you in the past been to the Xmas party not as senior management and hence had your drinks paid for? If you’ve previously benefited from this arrangement it will not go down well you wanting to change things now you’re one of the ones paying.

I think I’d raise it now at management meeting and say can we look Xmas meal. Traditionally smt have split bar bill as a gesture of goodwill. You don’t feel bar split is appropriate in 2024.
It’s not inclusive - some smt may not drink alcohol for cultural or religious reasons and may not want to spent money on it. It may be stopping candidates applying either due to concerns re cost or fact they don’t want to participate. It also doesn’t reward staff equally as some don’t drink. So one person gets £30, one £5 as a thank you.
Local govt here and as bottom tier manager is on exactly same wage as staff below so makes no sense to force manager to pay bar bill. We pay own lunch. I think managers bought wine on table and a few crackers as decorations last year.

OP, the details are probably key here. If the bill is only £100 or so, I think you should just pay it and think of it as a Christmas gift to the non-SMT employees to help with team bonding. If it’s much more than that, then (as others have suggested) you could suggest that the SMT just put a set amount behind the bar instead.

I probably wouldn’t bother asking for a ‘pro rata’ devision between the SMT. You may come across a bit stingy (even though you’re not). It may also be the case that the 100k person is contributing behind the scenes. For instance, I found out the CEO at my previous job often restocked the tea and biscuits throughout the year when our funds were low, and often bought stationery without claiming it back in expenses. She did that for years without telling anyone.

To give some context to those that are wondering why people in a charity earn 50 or 100k, the 100k earner is probably a CEO with many years of experience, and they could be earning > 5x that amount in a non-charity.

The 50K OP is possibly something like a ‘head’ role (head of legal, head of marcomms, head of HR, etc) so, again, will have a huge level of responsibility for a relatively low pay compared to what they would get in an equivalent job in the private sector.

Their salaries are probably already benchmarked against other charities and have been set at the minimum amount possible to attract high-calibre people to the role. These sort of salaries often have to be approved by the trustees (board) or a remcom subcommittee so every tiny raise is heavily scrutinised and capped, as the trustees have a duty to make sure charitable funds are used properly. Generally, this means that people working for charities are massively underpaid when considering the level and type of work they do.

but it shouldn't be around what you can afford to pay or based on your salary but on what you consume. If you don't feel that you can speak out about it then don't go.

It's difficult to comment without a ballpark figure of what the OP expects the total spend to be, and among how many SMT the total will be split.

Spot on

Of the 15 people, how many are SMT?
How big is the total bill usually, and how big your share if split equally?

It isn’t OK for SMT to just not go: this is the occasion when SMT treat the non SMT staff.

How well do you know your SMT colleagues? If the bill is substantial, can you say to one of them that the bill is a struggle and could it be split a different way?

But unless the bill is huge, it is one of the ‘privileges’ of senior management that you buy your staff a drink or whatever.

Is the issue for you primarily affordability, or fairness?

Because a newspaper would run a story about how the charity/govt department/bbc had spent x amount of donations/taxes/license fee payers money on a knees up and people would be upset as they don’t want the money spent on that so it would be bad publicity or a bit of a scandal depending on the amount spent/event.

OP I think it depends on how many SMT there are. If only two of you then you could suggest a proportionate split, but if there are more only option I can see here is to explain it is getting too costly for you and suggest that you each put in what you want to/can afford and that goes towards the drinks bill/behind the bar.

You possibly split the bill based on salary. Firstly it's none of your business what people earn, secondly it's not their job to pay for your drinks. If you feel you are over paying for what you consume then you need to either not go, suck it up, or simply explain you are paying for your own drinks because splitting the bill is just too expensive for you. No drama, just be clear. It may not be the done thing now, but that can change.

This is totally missing the point though. It’s not about splitting a bill between everyone on a night out, it’s about SMT covering drinks for lesser paid staff as a gesture at Christmas. OP doesn’t want to just pay for her own drinks, she wants a fairer way of making the Christmas gesture.

The whole staff is 15 people, not an SMT of 15

I have a fairly senior role but no way would I be forced into subsidising other people’s drinking just because they earn less than me, that’s ridiculous!

If you’re all drinking roughly the same amount then the bill should be split, otherwise people should pay for their own.

xmas is a ballache for so many reasons and unnecessary actions

@Jellybeanz456 No, ‘most’ donations do not go on management.

I was the CEO of a charity, and before I retired a couple of years ago my salary reached the dizzy heights of £50k, with minimum legal employers pension contributions made only at the point it was compulsory. So I am on little more than basic state pension. Couldn’t afford much in the way of contributions on low salary before my CEO years.

Most of my career I was on very low or low salary.

I managed about 20 staff plus freelancers needed huge legal and financial knowledge, had to create big project design based on years of niche experience, and our organisation had to manage significant health and safety and safeguarding risks. We worked anti social hours, too.

Independent impact audit assessed that we saved the taxpayer millions in diverting a particular set of problems. Actually. Our staff bill was quite a big % of turnover because it was staff that did the face to face work, we didn’t ‘hand out stuff’ .

In the private sector I would have been paid more. My sector is struggling now because younger people, with their increased housing costs, simply cannot take valuable cross transferable skills into low paid charity roles as I did.

People donating to charities do so with generosity and trust and that needs to be honoured. That’s why the OP’s charity does not have a budget for the staff party. But it is unrealistic to expect charity staff to live their whole lives donating to charity in working for significant underpayment.

When admin staff learn to save lives, they can be paid more.