What salary to ask for?

[theguiltymother1]

I have been offered (if all goes to plan) a permanent part time role from the end of this year for a very interesting company.

As it stands I charge £250 per day to the company currently to provide freelance marketing work for them. I work 1-2 days a week for them. My normal day rate is £330 but they could not accommodate that and I chose to take the work at a lower rate due to it leading to bigger things (which it has). It has also been very easy work so can't complain.

I now need to go back to my boss and ask for a specific salary, I am intending to work 30hrs a week in the permanent role and based on my day rate that would equate to approx £85k. I am pretty sure he won't be able to accommodate that. The role is quite senior (Head Of Dept level) and i will have a team of 4 to manage and a lot of responsibility but I will have flexibility to work from home and around my kids a bit which is why I am taking it. I am thinking of asking for 60k pro rata but wondering if I am underselling myself. Does anyone know where I can find info on salaries etc?

I know I won't be able to work all the hours in the world due to my kids and feel like that is really restricting how high a salary I feel I can ask for. I feel a bit stuck!

Thanks

When you take into account all of the benefits you will receive from being employed, rather than freelance (pension contribution, sick pay, annual leave to name a few), £60k will probably give you a "package" that equates to around £85k. It might be worth calculating the cost of the benefits you'll receive to help you make your decision.

I am not sure how you get to £85 k

You work for £250 a day- how many hours is that? lets say 7.5 which would be 37.5 a week.

So at 30 hours that is equal to 4 days or £1000 a week at your contract rate. But as a contractor you don't get paid for holidays or any bank holidays. So say between 28- 35 days depending on company. lets say 30 days which is 6 weeks

So your income would be 46 x £1000 which is £46,000 but contractors earn more due to uncertainty, needing insurance, no sick pay etc etc. They will have additional NI and pension costs (say 20%) once you become an employee. You cant compare your take home as a contractor to that as an employee as it is not like for like. The fact that as a contractor you probably don't pay any NI and may not have a pension isn't really their consideration. So I would say based on your daily rate for 30 hours that would be £35- 40k for 30 hours a week.

Is the new role a more responsible one that justifies a higher salary than your contracting role? If so your rate as a contractor is probably not relevant.

I'm not sure how you are arriving at £85k either.

£250 x 5 days per week x 52 weeks a year = £65k. And that's not taking into account that freelancers expect a higher daily rate because, as has already been said, you get no sick pay, holiday pay and other benefits that come with a permanent position.

Taking into account that your £250 per day rate is supposed to accommodate sickness/leave, I'd calculate it more like £250 x 5 x 40 weeks per year = £50k

Look at the market rate in similar companies for that kind of role.

I agree with Alberta Dewdrop's assessment of what the equivalent salary would probably be. Once you add on paid holiday, pension, NI contributions and other on-costs for them, and more job security for you, that would probably be right.

But what the going rate is for the job is more relevant.

OP is basing the £85k on her normal £330 a day not £250.

So at the moment they pay the equivalent of 250x 5x 52 = £65k for you, pro rata. But that's a freelance rate, which they would be expect to be higher than an employee rate for all the reasons above. Are they aware you have discounted your rate for them?

I think you are going to struggle to justify anything above the £65k to be honest unless there are zero benefits.

Oh bugger. Flipping app. Sorry!

PS ;-). I work 3 days a week for roughly 70k: I could earn more but in this role I work a lot from home, have very flexible employers, flexible holiday, and can be here for my kids pretty much every morning and afternoon, and the work is very interesting. Those things are very valuable to me, and it sounds as if this role would give them to you. They are definitely worth sacrificing a fair amount of extra salary for, for me.

"OP is basing the £85k on her normal £330 a day not £250."

Even leaving aside the fact that her 'normal' rate is irrelevant, that still doesn't stack up. £330x5x52=£85,800 but the OP says it would be £85k for 30 hours. So either not full days or fewer days a week.

£85,800 for 30 hours rather than 37.5 is £68,640 even before the whole NI/pension/paid holiday/other benefits are taken into account.

But going rate is more important than all that anyway.

Sorry for the radio silence! Yes I was basing the 85k on my normal day rate (£330) but you're right Flowery, I hadn't mentioned that this would then be Pro-Rata for the 30hrs. I freelance for others at this rate currently and the person offering me the permanent role knows I did them a discount. They have also agreed to up me at my normal rate of £330 as of this month because my role has become more senior / more responsibility. And yes the new role would be significantly more senior (going from Manager to a Head of a team of 5).

I have done some research and I think that approx 65k is about right for the role and as Patricia says i think the advantages of flex working / seeing my kids will always massively outweigh the money side for me. I also need to check what the benefits would add up to and then can always move down a bit if I think it's worth it. I am a bit out of touch on company benefits as have been working through my own LTD for the last 5 years so this all feels a bit strange!

Out of interest PatriciaHolm, what do you mean by 'flexible holiday'? My new boss seems very open to making this role work for me and I really don't know how to approach the 'holiday' chat. Personally I would rather earn less and be able to take more holiday (ideally around 8 weeks) to be there for my kids but I'm not sure if this would ever be possible. Do you take extra unpaid leave or something? Someone did mention to me there's something called unpaid parental leave that I could be entitled to (with younger kids). Does anyone know what this is? Does anyone use it?