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For many years I produced the UK Freelance Ready Reckoner, designed to provide in tabular form comparable freelance day rates for equivalent annual gross salaries for employees in the range £20,000-£60,000. It is based on a detailed comparison of the costs for employers of using staff journalists (employees). I am delighted to announce that the National Union of Journalists is now working in partnership with me, to ensure that future editions of the Ready Reckoner can be produced. The 2019-2020 edition was published in March 2019. A PDF version is also available. Although designed for journalists, the Ready Reckoner may also be adapted for use by other freelance and self-employed workers in the UK The Freelance Ready Reckoner 2019-2020 © Andrew Bibby and NUJ 2019.
This Ready Reckoner is intended for use by freelance
journalists working from their own premises. It is based on a detailed
comparison of the costs for employers of using staff journalists
(employees). How to use this Ready
Reckoner: - Look in column 1: what equivalent annual salary would
you expect to get, given your age, qualifications and experience, and
bearing in mind comparable staff journalist salary levels? - Look in column 3. This is the estimated actual daily
cost to the employer of employing a staff journalist (employee). See below
for details of the methodology used in reaching this figure. - Look in column 4. This is the recommended daily income
you would need to receive as a freelance for comparability with a staff
journalist. It is based on the assumption that 3/5th of work time
is directly productive. See below for more details.
Frequently asked questions:
A:
Many freelances fail to adequately appreciate when pricing their work that
they are responsible for a range of costs which, were they working as an
employee, would be covered by their employer. These include office equipment
costs, premises costs, sick pay, pensions, holiday pay, insurance and
various other costs. When pricing their services, it is useful for
freelances to take into account what the comparable cost would be for
employers if they used their own employees instead. Q: What add-on costs have
you taken into account when calculating the total real cost to an employer
of a staff journalist? A:
The following items have been included: employer’s national insurance
contributions; office premises costs; pension costs; average cost of staff
training; average annualised cost of staff recruitment; cost of staff
sickness; employer’s liability insurance; (for higher paid workers only)
cost of additional employee benefits. The detailed explanation of the methodology used is given
below. Q: What is the cost of
employer’s national insurance contributions? A:
For standard non-contracted out employees, employers currently pay national
insurance contributions of 13.8% of gross pay on all pay above the NI
threshold (£8,424 a year). A:
A number of independent organisations attempt to calculate the typical cost
to employers of providing accommodation for employees. These costs include the direct premises costs (typically
rent/rates, lighting/heating, maintenance, office security/cleaning etc),
the cost of property insurance, the cost of supplying office furniture
(including computer workstations) and property overheads (telephones,
catering, reception, post room, management, photocopiers etc). The Total
Office Cost Survey (TOCS), carried out each year by Actium Consult, analyses
these costs to produce an average cost per workstation for offices located
in different parts of the country. The 2017 TOCS found that this cost varied from £18,142
[2015: £17,486] in London’s West End to £4,840 [2015: £4,339] for a
twenty-year old office in Preston. It reported an annual increase in average
net effective rents for older offices of 8.1%, with increases varying from
+38% (West End) to -4% (Cardiff, Swindon). For new offices, the change in
total office costs varied between +18% and -1%. The Freelance Ready Reckoner, by using a single figure for
property costs, considerably underestimates costs for employers in many
parts of London but conversely may overestimate employers’ costs in
secondary business areas. The figure used for the 2015-16 Ready Reckoner was
£8330. This has been increased to £8715 for this year’s edition. A:
Data this year have been taken from Employee Outlook: Focus on Employee
Attitudes to Pay and Pensions (published Winter 2016-17), produced by the
Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). This reported that
the average employer contribution to a defined contribution pension scheme
was 5% of pay; for the sadly diminishing number of defined benefit schemes
it was 8%. Pension schemes vary hugely between employers, of course. The
2013-14 version of the Ready Reckoner was based on the average employer
pension contribution being 6.25% of pay. This year we have veered on the
side of caution and have reduced this to 5%. This underestimates pension
costs for those employers who continue to operate final salary or other
defined benefit schemes, of course. A:
The main source here is the 2017 edition of the survey on recruitment known
as Resourcing and Talent Planning, published by CIPD each year. This survey, based this year on 1068 respondent companies,
found that the median cost of recruitment of employees (excluding senior
managers and directors) for private sector companies (which would include
media companies) was£2000 [£2000 in 2015]. The CIPD report also suggested
that median labour turnover was 16.5%. (Put another way, on average 16.5% of
the labour force leaves in any one year). The Ready Reckoner combines these
figures to assume an annual cost per employee to the employer of £2000 x
16.5%, or £330 [2015: £272]. A:
The CIPD survey Learning and Development for 2015 (no further surveys
available) found that the median annual learning and development budget per
employee was in the range £201-£250. For the purposes of the Ready Reckoner
it has been assumed that annual training costs per employee are £225 [2015:
£225]. A:
The cost of employers’ liability insurance (which is compulsory) was widely
discussed in 2002-3, at a time when premiums were increasing dramatically. A
survey at that time by analysts Greenstreet Berman found that the cost of
employers’ liability premiums had increased as a proportion of the UK’s
total payroll from 0.19% in 1996 to 0.25% in 2001. The Greenstreet Berman study is quoted in the Department
of Work and Pensions Report of Employers’ Liability Compulsory Insurance:
first stage report, which also adds “It is worth remembering that these
trends represent the position before 2002, the year in which the most
significant premium increases took place”. It has proved impossible to find more up-to-date data in
this area. Early editions of the Ready Reckoner added a notional 0.4% of
payroll costs per individual, but this was revised downwards to a more
conservative 0.3% for the 2009-10 edition. This has been maintained this
year. In practice, the sums of money involved are proportionately small. A:
Higher-paid workers are often eligible for other benefits (company car,
health insurance, gym membership etc). The Ready Reckoner assumes that staff
with annual pay up to £35,000 receive no additional bonuses; for staff
earning £35,000-£43,000 a figure of £1000 has been included. For staff
earning above £43,000, an assumed annual cost of £1500 has been included. A:
The Ready Reckoner assumes that staff are given 25 days’ annual leave (plus
public holidays and weekends). The assumption therefore is that staff are
contracted to work 228 days a year. Q: How have you
calculated staff sickness costs? A:
According to the latest CIPD Health and Well-Being at Work report (published
May 2018), the average number of days lost through absence per worker has
increased from 6.3 days per employee to 6.6 days in 2018. The Ready Reckoner, therefore, assumes that on average
employees are actually working 221.4 days a year (228 less 6.6) [2013:
221.8]. The second column in the Ready Reckoner above shows the
total annual costs to an employer met in employing a member of staff, using
the methodology and data outlined above. The third column divides these
figures by 221.4, to produce the same figure per working day. Q: Why does the Ready
Reckoner not take into account the different tax system applying to
freelances?
A: The Ready Reckoner’s methodology is to look solely at
the actual costs to employers of employing staff journalists, and from this
to offer a comparable day rate which freelances may wish to use. It is not
concerned with staff take-home pay or their actual standard of living.
Equally, it does not examine the typical costs for freelances of running a
freelance business. Freelances may have business overheads which, when
compared to those of their client media companies, are lower (for example,
lower property costs because of location away from expensive business
centres) or higher (for example, because of inability to benefit from
economies of scale). Freelances may also be able to set more expenses
against tax than employees. However, since the Ready Reckoner is concerned
with the actual costs faced by employers, not by freelances, these do not
affect the calculations. Q: Are there other costs
of using employees which do not show up in the Ready Reckoner? A:
The figures in column 3 in the Ready Reckoner effectively underestimate the
real cost to employers of using employees, in two respects. Firstly, staff journalists are able to undertake their
work in part because their employer employs other people to perform
necessary administrative and operational tasks. These include everything
from processing tax and pension contributions to offering IT support. Some of these add-on costs (reception and switchboard
staff, cleaners, etc) have already been taken into account in the property
overhead calculations but others are not. Secondly, and more significantly, employers take the risk
when employing staff that work may not be there in the future for them to
do. Because workload typically fluctuates, there will be periods when staff
are idle, underemployed or working in unproductive ways. For example, ‘water
cooler time’ is unproductive, but paid for. Because of this, freelances are advised that, were they to
use the figures in column 3 in the Ready Reckoner for comparability
purposes, they would be likely to be charging for their services at rates
which undercut their staff colleagues. The Ready Reckoner’s approach is to
make allowance for these factors by assuming, in the calculation of the
Recommended freelance daily rate(column 4), that 3/5th of employees’ working
time is directly productive. Another way of approaching this would be to ask what
uplift freelances would need to add to their daily rate to allow for the
fact that their clients normally pay just for their directly productive
work. Freelances should recall that, even if it were possible to regulate
the flow of work to such an extent that there was paid work offered for
every single working day of the year, they would still be unable to take
advantage of this: time also has to be spent on a wide range of
administrative and non-paying work. The assumption of a ratio of 3:2
productive/unproductive work in this context seems not unrealistic. Q: How can the Ready
Reckoner be used by freelance photographers? A:
Photographers and other freelances who use their own specialist equipment
cannot use the Ready Reckoner as it currently stands but may be able to
adapt it for their own uses. It is possible to do this as follows: Add to the figures in column 2 the total annual estimated
equivalent cost to an employer of providing photographic equipment to a
staff photographer. This is not the actual cost of capital purchase but
either the depreciation figure or the total equivalent leasing cost, plus
the full cost of disposable items such as photographic paper etc. Motoring
costs may also need to be added. (Divide the revised figures in column 2 by
222.5 to produce figures for column 3 and divide again by 3/5, to produce
figures for column 4.)
Standard PC equipment, desk equipment, etc, is already
allowed for in the Ready Reckoner and should not be added again. Q: Can be the Ready
Reckoner be used by freelances undertaking casual shifts etc? A:
Following the production of earlier versions of the Ready Reckoners, a
number of requests were received for a similar table to be produced which
adequately covers the situation where freelances (for example, casuals
working shifts) work in clients’ premises, using clients’ equipment. The
table below uses the main ready Reckoner but removes property costs; for a
number of reasons it is less robust methodologically than the Freelance
Ready Reckoner, but may be used to give a broad indication of what
comparable freelance day shifts rates ideally should be. Ready Reckoner,
freelances working casual shifts etc
Q: What differences are
there between the 2019-2020 Ready Reckoner and previous versions? A:
In headline terms, this year’s Ready Reckoner shows a very marginal increase
in the estimated total cost for employers of employing staff, and therefore
in the recommended freelance day rate. This year’s table reflects savings for employers due to
the rise in the National Insurance threshold and decline on estimated spend
on pensions, whilst recruitment has increased, and training remained the
same. There has also been
a decrease because of the reduced average figure for absence and sickness.
On the other hand, this year property costs are higher than they were when
the last edition of the Ready Reckoner was produced two years ago.
Freelances using the Ready Reckoner may like to remember that as a result of
cost of living wage rises, pay increments or promotion, staff are likely to
have progressed up the table by at least one position during the past twelve
months.
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