Negotiating Junior Rate

[timcooper]

Can anybody offer any advice on an issue I have?

I am in the process of negotiating a contract with a client. The rate for my time has been agreed and the work will be carried out in my offices. I employ a junior who helps out with some of the work that I do for clients and the client in question has asked that there is a reduced rate for any work carried out by the junior.

Do you think I should agree to the reduced rate? I would argue that the junior is only likely to be doing the simpler tasks on the project, therefore the quality of work will be the same regardless of whether the work is done by me or junior. Would this be unfair?

Also if I were to offer 2 separate rates would this look bad from an IR35 perspective? Would it look as if the client was paying for a particular persons time (rather than the consultancy's) if separate rates were listed for separate employees?

Thanks in advance.

[Integrity]

I remember once receiving a tarif from a law firm, that had the names of individual practitioners, and their respective rates. They even included the names of trainee solicitors. I guess that makes it normal practice.

Perhaps next time you will choose not to advertise the fact that you are giving work to junior members of staff, and advertise it as warrenting that you will only give work to suitably qualified employees. This way you fulfil your requirements still, even if the work you delegate is printing and binding of reports, and taking them to the post office.

[NickNick]

Couple of points from my experience. There is no problem at all for charging different rates for different people, I would have assumed that it was standard in fact.

Secondly, I thought that age discrimination laws meant that posts could no longer be called "junior" and "Senior" So you might want to steer clear of that just in case your "junior" employee sues you. ;o)

[beeker]

Couple of points from my experience. There is no problem at all for charging different rates for different people, I would have assumed that it was standard in fact.

Secondly, I thought that age discrimination laws meant that posts could no longer be called "junior" and "Senior" So you might want to steer clear of that just in case your "junior" employee sues you. ;o)

AKAIK the Junior/Senior can only represent skill level and not age, therefore it is quite appropriate in this instance to direct some 'simpler' tasks to a less experienced person. You are not naming names in the contract but roles, £X for role Y and £Z for role W.

So you would be invoicing for 10 hours @ rate X and 2 hours at rate Z. Nowhere in your invoice or contract woudl you specify who was in role Y or Z?

But thats just my personal, unqualified (junior) view on things!

[NotAllThere]

Of course it takes the junior 10 hours to do what you do in five, so charging him at 66% of your rate is a profit.

[timcooper]

I was always under the impression Junior / Senior was a skill related description. I worked for a company once who had a "Junior" developer who was in fact older than the "Senior" developer. He had less experience in that particular field.

[timcooper]

Of course it takes the junior 10 hours to do what you do in five, so charging him at 66% of your rate is a profit.

Thats a good way to look at it

[timcooper]

So you would be invoicing for 10 hours @ rate X and 2 hours at rate Z. Nowhere in your invoice or contract woudl you specify who was in role Y or Z?

Thats true. But if the company has just two employees, and one is obviously the more experienced. Surely that implies a specific rate for each person?

[beeker]

I guess so, but can that implication be negated by the right of substitution clause? Just becuase the contract says two rates, doesn't mean it has to be two specific people doing the work - you could cubcontract the junior or Senior stuff to MyCo-B?!

In every job I've had for the past 7 years i've been in a senior role and been at least 10-15 years younger than most other people round me so I've always seen the title in pure correlation with skillset/experience!