Pay increases & perks.

[think positive]

[pietillidie]

David, if that's the case, one thing you can negotiate to be privy to or to get more involved in is revenues/expenditures/budgeting. This is not only good for your CV and very likely your role as it relates to content management and planning (plus, seeing the numbers gives creative people all kinds of new ideas), but the business needs to justify its expenditures.

Remember, people taking a pay cut for the good of the whole are the equivalent of investors or creditors, depending on which way you look at it. The former are always privy to financials, while the latter eventually gain legal access when they're not being paid.

Moreover, if you take the investor angle, you could use that to be granted shares under an employee share scheme:

https://www.ato.gov.au/general/employee-share-schemes/

Now, you might think all that admin isn't worth it, but that depends how far forward you're planning, and how serious you are about the success of the organisation. Everything from budgeting to government grants comes into this, and you may see many things that others are missing, even if they're honest and well-meaning.

And sometimes, even if it doesn't mean much more money, taking on these things and learning them positions you to make more when the chance arises. There are career progression opportunities in this that you won't think of until you start dabbling in that side of things.

To give you but one example, I trim budgets all the time in my areas of expertise because people are forever getting locked into dodgy IT expenditures when there is a cheaper and very often a cheaper and superior option. Let me give you an extremely simple example: a lot of companies pay for Adobe CC subscriptions when their employees can't for the life of them do anything more than what a free or in-built tool that is highly reputable and safe can do. Now multiply that solution after solution, expense after expense across a company.

Or take another example. When you have access to the data, you can spot all kinds of things about subscriptions and user behaviour in regard to subscriptions that lead to less revenue, and can then come up with all kinds of ways of optimising revenue. Ditto for the advertising that gets you the subscriptions, etc.

It's not that other people are bad, it's that in a small company people are not surrounded by others who know more than them, so they aren't exposed to the latest ideas and techniques in their job area, thereby inadvertently underperforming.

[stui magpie]

^

Pretty sure ESS don't apply in NFP's. There's no shares and no shareholders.

[pietillidie]

^Oh okay, didn't know it was a non-profit — despite now noticing David said that. They must still have an incentive or dividend structure within their parameters. Some of these orgs are huge.

Are we talking about a film journal? I might be years behind David's CV!

[stui magpie]

Fairly sure he's editor of a Film Journal, I'd treat it like an internship, get involved in as much as possible and learn as much as possible to prepare for the next step.

[pietillidie]

^If there's no other way of formally deferring value in the organisation, then that makes access to data even more important. I'd be fashioning my work as proper project management, which again might seem a pain for someone creative, but it's probably the best way to store value. That or introduce some in-demand specialist technical element.

David, fill us in on the legal structure and roughly how it operates.

[David]

Yep, it's an NFP educational organisation with seven on-site employees, so a very small operation. I'm the only one of those who works directly with the editing and production of the magazine (we also have a graphic designer based in NZ who works as a contractor, I believe, and of course we pay the contributing freelance writers). The contract I'm on, if you could call it one, is pretty basic.

There's a board, too, but I'm not sure what (if anything) they actually do.

As Stui says, I'm not sure it'd actually be possible to become a shareholder in the organisation, but these suggestions make for good outside-the-square thinking (which to be honest would probably never have occurred to me), and I appreciate them. My main reluctance in taking on a more hands-on role on any of this stuff is that I fear it would be robbing Peter to pay Paul (with the first category being work I'm actually good at and suited to, i.e. editing the magazine – I have so much to do already that I'd have to delegate some of that work if I were to take on any broader project management responsibilities, and there's no-one to delegate to!).

I can totally see why what you're suggesting would be a good idea, career-wise. But I guess my plans are a little more conservative: first, get what I can out of this job – which will hopefully be around for at least another year or two (I'm not optimistic enough about its outlook to be able to think of a future beyond that) – and then, with my experience and the industry cred I've built up over the past five years, transition into a different (probably more boring) editing job that presumably pays far more and is, if anything, a more streamlined role. Perhaps I can branch out from there, but that's the basic plan.

I'm also getting back into writing this year; it's not 100% confirmed yet, but I've been offered the opportunity to contribute a chapter to a film book that will be released by a major international publisher in early 2024, so hopefully that will be a step in the right direction for my long-held (but little-realised) dream to have a viable side-hustle as a film critic.

[stui magpie]

Good stuff, good luck with it all.

2 points.

1. Your contract would be a common law contract underpinned by a Modern Award. All your terms and conditions of employment would be in that Award including the minimum salary.

2. The Board basically runs the place. They are responsible for the overall governance, they make the decisions about strategic direction, hire the boss and ensure that the place runs according to plan.

[David]

Thanks Stui. Point 2 is definitely more theory than practice with this joint. I know that for a fact as my boss is stepping down next month (after 30+ years in the role) and basically conducted the interviews for his successor and made the final choice himself. Whatever the power struggles between him and the board – and I know there have been a few – it seems pretty clear that they take far more of a backseat role than is normal in organisations like this.

[stui magpie]

30+ years in one job.

I can't relate to that in any way, that must have been a serious passion project.

[Pies4shaw]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/jun/16/paul-pogba-hits-out-at-manchester-uniteds-300k-a-week-nothing-offer

[think positive]

[stui magpie]

Yeah, back in the old days people used to stay at one place for a lifetime, particularly in blue collar manufacturing jobs.

I did 20+ years at telecom/Telstra but had 10 different roles in that time and multiple workplaces. Going to the same place to do the same job every day for 30 years.................................

[think positive]

They worked their way up, hubby was an apprentice ended up maintenance manager for the whole joint. So did all if the apprentices I worked with. My dad was a fitter in the airforce working on air ships and ship motors, went to uni at night and got an engineering degree, he ended up running the whole show. We were on a paddle steamer in Echuca and it broke down, dad fixed it for them! He was a clever bugger if not very astute in other ways!

[think positive]

They worked their way up, hubby was an apprentice ended up maintenance manager for the whole joint. So did all if the apprentices I worked with. My dad was a fitter in the airforce working on air ships and ship motors, went to uni at night and got an engineering degree, he ended up running the whole show. We were on a paddle steamer in Echuca and it broke down, dad fixed it for them! He was a clever bugger if not very astute in other ways!