Tag Archives: UKRSA

Getting a pay rise in academia

Posted on by
Reply

How long has it been since your last pay rise? For almost half of current respondents to a recent Naturejobs poll, the answer is more than two years – and with ever-increasing inflation, that’s effectively a year-on-year pay cut. So is there anything you can do to improve your salary prospects, particularly in academia, where there is often a lack of flexibility in pay?

Know your opportunities

Setting your starting salary

At universities in the UK, where research positions are appointed at a particular grade, there is often a window of opportunity to negotiate the precise point within the grade after you have been offered the job. “That depends on your level of experience and what you’re earning already,” says Rob Hardwick, co-chair of the UK Research Staff Association (UKRSA) and a postdoc at the University of Leicester. It’s likely you will be able to match your current salary, and you may be able to move up one additional point. If you find yourself applying for a position at a lower grade due to the current economic climate, propose that you are appointed at the top of that grade’s scale. In Germany, where positions in public universities are also appointed at a set grade within each district, with defined increments every two years, there are fewer options to discuss the fine details. “The public wage agreements leave no space for negotiation,” says Ute Heckel, project leader for Kisswin, a career development and information platform for young researchers in Germany. “Scientists have fixed contracts, and the contracts have fixed wages.”

In the United States, PhD students can earn a few extra thousand dollars a year by becoming teaching assistants, but there is little else you can do to improve your pay at that stage. The starting salary for postdocs in academia depends on whether your university follows the National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines of a minimum stipend of just over $38,000 per year. If it does, there is not much negotiation to be had, says Zoe Fonseca-Kelly, chair of the US National Postdoc Association (NPA). “For the most part, to negotiate a higher salary you’re looking at a promotion,” she says.

Securing higher pay

Pay at UK universities usually increases by a small increment each year until you reach the top of your grade. If you’ve hit the ceiling, make the case to the university that you should be promoted up to the next grade — you’ll need a letter of support from your supervisor for this. Also ensure you double-check your contract — one of Hardwick’s fellow researchers was automatically promoted up a level as they were appointed at the top of a grade, but their contract still said they were entitled to annual increments.

In the US, if you’re getting paid less than the NIH minimum guideline, Fonseca-Kelly recommends that you try to secure your own funding: “A postdoc’s best way to make sure they get at least the NIH minimum is to apply for their own training grants and get their own money.” If you are able to secure funding that can also benefit your career in general by demonstrating early independence. Scientists in Germany searching for funding at a more senior level to develop their career should apply for several grants or prizes at the same time, says Heckel. “You will be more successful if you hand in more applications. That’s perfectly all right.” She also cautions against having a single narrow research focus. “We advise people to have at least two specialisations that they follow in order to increase their chances of getting funded.”

Gather evidence of your value

Whichever opportunity for a pay rise you pursue, you’ll need to justify why you should get more money. “Frame the request in terms of the value you bring to your employer,” says Deb Koen, president and chief executive of Career Development Services in Rochester, New York (see ‘Salary boost’ for more of Koen’s advice).

If there’s an appraisal system in place at your institute, make sure you use it. “People don’t really do that enough,” says Hardwick. He also recommends using self-help tools such as Vitae’s Researcher Developer Framework to self-assess and quantify your full range of skills. “The research things go without saying,” he says. “Aside from that, there are many [other skills] you can use to your advantage.”

The US NPA provides a similar resource called the Postdoctoral Core Competencies Toolkit. Fonseca-Kelly suggests using the toolkit to set a two- or five-year plan either by yourself or with the help of a mentor. “That gives you bargaining ground and a results-orientated output you can use as a negotiating tool to get a promotion,” she says. “The people that I’ve seen successfully get a promotion in academia have had a very good plan of what they want to do and have been able to market themselves to their PI. It takes a lot of planning and communication skills.”

As well as identifying your full range of skills, remember that your publication record is still one of the main ways your value is judged. “That’s always been the most important thing,” says Hardwick.

Do you have any other advice to add? Have you recently secured a pay rise or a promotion? Share your thoughts below.

Are long working hours inevitable for postdocs?

Posted on by
Reply

More than half of postdocs surveyed work at least 50 hours per week and one quarter work at least 60 hours per week.

By comparison, an employee in the United Kingdom works around 37 hours per week on average, while in France this figure is 38 hours (ref). In the United States the average working week of a private, non-farm employee is just over 34 hours long (ref).

Just 2.5% of postdocs work part-time, compared with around a quarter of employees in the United Kingdom and a sixth of employees in the United States (ref).

While the poll of visitors to naturejobs.com is not the most rigorous of measures, it highlights the long-hours culture that many postdocs are faced with. So are long hours inevitable, and what can you do if struggling with your workload?

Liliya Bondareva, a board member of Eurodoc, an organization that supports PhD students, postdocs and junior researchers throughout Europe and is based in Brussels, is not surprised by our poll results. “A postdoc position implies longer hours for a number of reasons,” she says. Complex research combined with limited funding, tight timescales and a need to publish regularly all pile on the pressure. “Working hours often include doing research, teaching, supervision and increasingly administration,” she adds.

Rob Hardwick, co-chair of the UK Research Staff Association (UKRSA) and a postdoc at the University of Leicester, agrees work outside the lab can take up a significant amount of time and deserves more formal recognition. “It is easy to see how the hours put in by the average postdoc soon stack up,” he says.

Sometimes it’s the nature of the work in the lab that means anti-social hours are unavoidable — Bondareva cites an example of a UK postdoc who typically remains in the lab until past midnight when monitoring the behaviour of cells.

A lack of employment rights exacerbates the issue in some countries, a situation that support organisations are campaigning to change. In France, the CJC (Young Researchers Confederation) is pushing to relabel postdocs as temporary research workers to highlight their contractual plights, according to spokesman François Briatte: “Private companies treat [postdocs] as ‘late-stage students’ and consequently offer wages and positions that would correspond to much lower levels of qualification.”

Contracts and union representation can offer some degree of protection. In August 2010, postdocs at the University of California formed a union and agreed a contract with the university hierarchy. While the deal says work schedules must be reasonable, there is no upper limit set on hours. “We want postdocs to be flexible about their work schedule,” says union president Xiaoqing Cao, adding that postdocs facing an unreasonable workload can file a grievance since the contract was put in place.

However, Cao says that postdocs should expect to work longer-than-average hours: “I was told to be prepared to work at least 50 hours per week when I became a postdoc. If we want to move forward with our careers, we have to work hard.” Hardwick agrees, saying long working weeks are inevitable for ambitious postdocs: “We put in the hours we do because it is highly competitive out there.”

Hardwick advises postdocs struggling with their workload to tell their supervisors or mentors and get the issue discussed at departmental committees and meetings so senior staff are aware there is a problem. “When you get to department-head level you don’t always remember what it was like to be a postdoc,” he says.

Another tactic to mitigate problems with long working hours is to try to prevent them arising in the first place. Bondareva advises postdocs applying for a position to investigate the set-up of the project, such as checking whether other institutes allow more time for similar projects and whether staff in administrative positions are also doing research, which could be a sign of overworked researchers. She also suggests checking the blogs and social media outputs of those already in similar postdoc positions: “Do they seem to have a healthy work-life balance? Do they blog a lot about their work? Is it only about work?”

Failing that, Bondareva advises postdocs under pressure to take strength from their initial motivation for becoming a researcher: “Think about the reason you are doing it, and if the reason is compelling enough, remind yourself about [it] every day.”

Have your say

Should postdocs expect to work longer-than-average hours? Can you share any tips on coping with a heavy workload? Have you been successful in improving your work-life balance as a postdoc? Share your thoughts and experiences below.