Hi Sisters. Wondering if anyone can help me. I've been un officially asked to help build a case for a pay rise for myself and colleagues. We are significantly underpaid for our profession (Registered nurses in private practice). I'm pretty good with words, and have furthered my study so the others have looked to me for help. While usually we would have support from the unions i am the only one joined (many were told we didn't need it anymore with this role). Their is a certain amount of "not wanting to rock the boat" as our job has historically been very flexible and is some of my colleagues views "an easy roll". Some feel if they say anything, they will take away our generous flexibility, for context we work from home doing telehealth, we use our own devices and internet.
I have left a few times and come back to this role as it works well with young children and the team is awesome. I can see the work load has doubled, and while it used to be allot easier, its in my view pretty full on now, this view is shared with the team hence wanting a pay rise. Some of the team have low morale and have lost confidence in themselves or feel like they are not worthy. We all have degrees and a huge amount of clinical knowledge, at the end of the day lives are still in our hands with the decisions we make. As I have never done anything like this before, can anyone tell me how to do this? How to lay it out? I have started to look at pay scales for other nurses, and I can use the point that our work load has increased over the lady 12-24mths with covid. I am wondering if there is a formal template of sorts to use? Should I seek some advice from somewhere? If so who?
Any ideas would be so welcomed.
5 Replies
Hi, registered nurse here too.
I don’t think a pay rise will solve your issue. At all. It would be nice, but won’t solve your workload.
You need to push for ratios. Because your in the private sector I would recommend contacting your union or the AMNF. They’ve got resources, but they come back down to the core issue. More pay won’t fix busy..
If your not in-line with the current state award, then push for that. RN8 in NSW stand at $46 per hour in the public sector + penalties, shoe and laundry allowance.
And by ratios I mean KPI flexibility.
For instance ACAT accessors reach a KPI depending on location of 1-2 assessments a day which is quite convenient
Contact your union to ask for advice on how to ask for a payrise, they will know the procedure and the best way to do it. They would want you to do it yourself before they involve themselves anyway so you shouldn't need to worry about them rocking the boat.
If this was me (and i am not in this field) I would look in seek and other employment sites to see what the going rate is for the job, see if you can get intelligence on how many calls each person is expected to take, out outs etc. Then put that into context of if you are being over worked or not. Secondly I would bench make your role based on another nursing scale using skills , time in role, education etc. Moral won't be fixed by money. Perhaps the role was too easy and every enjoyed dropping kids at school and flexing in and out, and now they have to work a bit more consistently and don't have the same freedom? perspective needs to be clear. How does thr team connect to build belonging? how is team recognised? understand why people want this job vs practice or hospital nursing? use that info to motivate. You will need to articulate what you are doing more of, and perhaps create output kpis, so if you have to talk to 9 people a day and that's the target but you are getting 20 , service is not going to be as good, liability increases, and it's not a safe working space for you or thr patients, then maybe it's less about money and more about needing more staff, if you get money the work won't go away and this will be the new normal . Good luck.
If this was me (and i am not in this field) I would look in seek and other employment sites to see what the going rate is for the job, see if you can get intelligence on how many calls each person is expected to take, out outs etc. Then put that into context of if you are being over worked or not. Secondly I would bench make your role based on another nursing scale using skills , time in role, education etc. Moral won't be fixed by money. Perhaps the role was too easy and every enjoyed dropping kids at school and flexing in and out, and now they have to work a bit more consistently and don't have the same freedom? perspective needs to be clear. How does thr team connect to build belonging? how is team recognised? understand why people want this job vs practice or hospital nursing? use that info to motivate. You will need to articulate what you are doing more of, and perhaps create output kpis, so if you have to talk to 9 people a day and that's the target but you are getting 20 , service is not going to be as good, liability increases, and it's not a safe working space for you or thr patients, then maybe it's less about money and more about needing more staff, if you get money the work won't go away and this will be the new normal . Good luck.