Salary Story: Burnout Is Coming, But I’m Used To My £50k Salary
In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions and job loss, with the hope it will give young women more insight into how to advocate for themselves — and maybe take a few risks along the way.
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Age: 24 Location: London Current industry and job title: Social worker, local authority Current salary: £50,000 Number of years employed since school or university: Five
Starting salary: £18,000 in 2018 Biggest salary jump: £33,112 to £50,000 Biggest salary drop: £18,000 to £11p/h
Biggest negotiation regret: Accepting the first offer they made rather than going back to negotiate further, as I was happy to be given the job opportunity. This is a mistake, as you see other companies offering their employees a lot more for the same job.
Best salary advice: Don’t accept the first offer or job just because you’re happy to be employed — usually there is something much better out there.
I managed to get this job with no experience, but knew it would give me what I needed to apply for my master’s. I wasn’t too upset regarding the salary and knew if I budgeted correctly I could afford to do one-off nice things. I was not able to negotiate the salary but I got all benefits including 25 days annual leave, so it didn’t seem too bad at the time.I could no longer work full time while studying full time. I accepted a zero hour contract (hours were always guaranteed despite the contract). I would take home £500 per month with basic shifts, but could always do more shifts. However, it just came to a point where I did not value the work I was doing and I started looking for jobs. I used a lot of my savings during this time as I had to fund my master’s and live off a small salary.I found this job by chance while looking online — it was a support service for victims of crimes. I loved it (despite having to commute during a pandemic) and it gave me so much experience while I was in my final year of my master’s degree. I was due to get a pay rise to £24,500, however I was offered my postgraduate job and left before this happened.As I qualified as a social worker, I managed to secure this job with a local authority before I finished my degree.
With this job I was able to save a lot as my previous earnings meant I knew how to keep my expenses very low. Previously earning £18,000 made me budget savvy. I didn’t have to commute either, and was told a pay rise was on the horizon. I was unable to negotiate initially, as I was an entry level social worker.
I didn’t negotiate this as I was happy with the increase from my previous salary.
It is a very stressful job and there is no cap to the amount of social cases you have, so if you don’t clear it in time it can really build up. At the moment, I feel like I only have 12 months left before I burn out, so in the next six months I will be looking for a new role — but the salary has to match or be similar to my current role.
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