By Jennifer Anne Hohman
Every day, I use the AAPA Salary Report to help my clients with contract negotiation, and I’ve seen its value in action time and time again. It allows us to get a current, detailed, and accurate look at every aspect of PA compensation, which is incredibly helpful in gauging the quality of a proposed salary and benefits package and make the case for negotiated changes.
The interactive digital AAPA Salary Report is the most detailed view of PA compensation and benefits information available anywhere, and studying it can help diagnose what might be ailing you, professionally. When you are trying to negotiate your way to a healthier career and better work-life balance, knowledge is power.
What makes the Salary Report so powerful is its unique combination of in-depth data and customizability. Nowhere else can you configure PA-specific compensation and benefit data, and personalize your search results by state, specialty, years of experience and additional factors. It’s pretty amazing!
Knowing the latest industry standard for every aspect of your compensation—from salary to a large array of fringe benefits—is the key to knowing what to ask for when negotiating. For PAs unhappy with their current compensation or work/life balance, or in the exciting process of negotiating terms for a new position, the Salary Report offers the means to name, address, and improve your agreement.
Negotiating an Improved Contract Using the Salary Report
Recently during a contract consultation with a new graduate client, I was concerned by what seemed a low amount of PTO in her contract; there was no provision at all for CME PTO and just five days for vacation. When we examined the medians for these benefits in the Salary Report, we found proof that our concerns had merit: The employer was proposing half the amount of vacation that PAs in her state and specialty were receiving.
Happily, after seeing evidence of this discrepancy, the employer was open to adjusting her contract to bring her paid vacation days into the median range and added PTO for CME. My client breathed a sigh of relief knowing that she was starting her practice with an important cushion of time away from the office to recharge and would be compensated for CME maintenance.
Did you know that the Salary Report includes research on additional forms of compensation in categories including student loan repayment, sign on bonuses, relocation expenses, and tuition reimbursement? Each of these categories can boost your compensation in valuable ways and offer negotiation options when an employer is resistant to changing a base salary. Fifteen minutes spent examining these additional compensation areas is time well spent!
AAPA’s Salary Report offers multiple ways of looking at PA salary, including by state, region, years of experience, and specialty. Several factors should determine your salary target (as well as your walk-away point). They include:
- Your years of experience (in a specialty and as a practicing PA)
- Specialty
- The state, and region where the position is offered
- Hours, including on call duties
- The financial and quality-of-life value of your fringe benefits package
- Additional value factors like gaining a foothold in a new specialty, fantastic collaborating physicians, an employer whose values and mission closely reflect your own, a livable schedule that supports your work/life balance, or moving to a part of the country you’ve always dreamed of
The 2022 Salary Report offers a Cost of Living Calculator that allows one to compare how far a specific base salary will go in a range of metro areas, to include comparisons of utilities, transportation, and essential household staples. This resource will help sharpen your negotiation acumen by arming you with up to date information on how far your hard earned dollar will go in communities across the United States.
In regions and markets that have a surplus of PAs, your negotiation scope may be more limited, while a strong demand for PAs would make employers more amenable to your demands. An exception may be hospital-based or academic institutions, which frequently offer a standardized compensation package with less ability to negotiate changes to an offer. On the upside, many larger-scale organizations offer a depth and range of benefit programs that smaller employers do not.
Fringe Benefits—Contract Elements Key to Quality of Life
Benefits are often the most negotiable part of many PA contracts. Benefits are an essential aspect of your compensation package and can have a huge impact on the quality of your professional and personal life. The Salary Report offers a highly detailed resource for assessing a benefit package and can even help you define new benefits to negotiate.
The 2022 Salary Report features a trove of PA benefit data in categories including insurance offered by employers (health, disability, professional liability, and more), retirement benefits, professional expenses paid by employers, PTO in several categories, and more. Wondering how many days of paid parental leave employers offer by state? You can find that information in the Salary Report.
Reading through all the benefit data—including the latest stats on student loan repayment, maternity and paternity leave, travel and current technology reimbursement, retirement plans and employer contributions, and types/amounts of paid days off—is well worth your time. Each of these charts has the potential to improve your overall compensation package and may suggest areas for negotiation that you might not have considered asking for.
Some employers may dispute the AAPA Salary Report findings, either out of misunderstanding about how the report is created or as a tactic to counter valid negotiation requests. In the Salary Report FAQ, you can find an explanation of the accuracy of its numbers.
The Many Career Benefits of Negotiation
Summoning the courage and the information to negotiate with your employer results in a better compensation package and overall employment relationship. As someone who has advocated for PAs amid many negotiations, I understand just how stressful and nerve-wracking it can be—but the process is worth the temporary discomfort. If you don’t ask, it’s guaranteed you won’t receive. You can also raise employer awareness about pay and benefits for PAs in your area and specialty through negotiation discussions, helping improve the compensation of future PA colleagues.
Additionally, the negotiation process is an important way to preview an employment relationship and explore whether you and a new employer agree about essential aspects of your role including its compensation, schedule, and benefits. It is an opportunity to see how willing they are to consider your perspective and concerns, and have a dialogue about finding a negotiated consensus. I’ve found that the tone and tenor of negotiation can reveal a good deal about the working environment after hiring. Pay attention to the degree of clarity, honesty, and fairness you receive when negotiating, and if discussions break down with acrimony from their side, you’ve avoided a problematic employer!
If you are unhappy with employment terms with your current employer, starting a conversation about renegotiating terms can end up preserving your job—much to the appreciation of your patients! Communication, the lifeblood of PAs’ clinical success, seems also to be key to keeping an employment relationship in good health.
One positive—and less stressful way of looking at negotiation—is that it helps both you and the practice team. By negotiating, you can create the terms for happier and more durable employment relationships. Setting standards, boundaries, and clarifying terms can strengthen the team and improve collaborative practice down the road.
Knowledge to Empower Career Choices
Crafting a truly rewarding PA career entails both solid compensation and factors such as passion for a specialty, an amazing collaborative team, or the ability to live and practice in a community that has personal meaning to you. These are all key assessment factors to be considered in conjunction with compensation data. What you seek in your PA career may change over time—so think about what is most important to you right now.
Success as a PA entails self-knowledge as well as reliable data to guide your unrivalled career and practice choices. AAPA’s Salary Report offers that data, and with it a resource for evaluating key aspects of any job offer. Whatever choices on your career journey you are considering, AAPA’s Salary Report is here to help you navigate the territory of an evolving and uniquely wide-ranging profession with confidence.
Jennifer Anne Hohman is founder of PA Career Coach, a service dedicated to helping PAs create healthy and sustainable careers. Send your PA questions and concerns at [email protected].