How to boost your income as a radiographer

How do you give yourself a pay rise when you know you probably wouldn't be offered one?

By being intentional about what you get in exchange for the time you control.

Let me explain. As a radiographer, you are contracted to work X hours at £Y per hour. You are probably on a shift system, and chances are that you don’t always finish when your contract says you should finish.

In some hospitals, your extra hours might be paid at a bank rate (at a rate which you could probably get stacking shelves if we're being honest).

But what if you could take all those extra/bank rate hours, and double the hourly rate you get for them? So, instead of (say) £13 per hour working an additional long day shift, you get £26 per hour doing the same things that you would be doing for £13.

It's a no-brainer, but what's the catch?

Of course, your trust wouldn't hand you over an extra £13 just because you asked for it lol. However, other trusts are so short on staff that they would be happy to. Why not sell your extra available hours to the highest bidder?

Working as a locum radiographer helps you do this.

Doing the same things you're used to won’t move the needle in your earnings. You will need a significant change to shift the needle, and that change involves 3 major actions:

• identifying Trusts that desperately need your skills

• setting your hourly price for how much you will accept in exchange for your skills

• booking shifts quickly

To get these done, you could contact each Trust individually to find out where they have temporary locum radiographer vacancies. You will also need to check how much they are willing to pay per hour, before deciding whether or not to invest in passing compliance checks.

Or you could sign up to a newsletter like BandLocum’s and get locum vacancies from allUK agencies as they become available. If any catch your eye, all you will need to do is forward your compliance pack over to sign up for the position.

So, here's a mini action-plan you can get started on to increase your earnings as a radiographer right away:

1. Update your CV. Create an inventory of your skillset and be sure to include recent skills you’ve acquired in your current role. Are you an interventional radiographer? Have you worked in theatre? Do you do dental radiography? The first step in applying to any locum radiography role is sending your CV so make sure it’s ready. If you need help with creating a custom radiography CV for applying to locum positions, I can help.

2. Create a compliance folder. Before you start getting extra work through an agency, you will need to pass compliance - just like you had to when you started employment at your current job. This is a legal requirement for the health industry. The process can be quite tedious, especially if you have to hop around from agency to agency, repeating the whole process. Make life easier for yourself by creating a folder labelled "Compliance". Whenever your CV is accepted and you get asked to send your compliance documents over, just send the whole folder.

3. Decide how you want to get paid. One of the benefits of working through an agency is that rather than wait to get paid at the end of each month, you get paid weekly. For example, for all the work you carry out in the first week of August, you get paid at the end of the second week of August. You will still have to pay your taxes, but the choice of how you do so is up to you. You will need to choose whether you want to pay taxes yourself through a limited company (that you own) or if you want your taxes deducted at the source (umbrella company).

So that’s it. Boosting your income by becoming a locum radiographer isn’t as hard as you think. Even if you’re confused about where to start from, joining the BandLocum newsletter is a good starting point for aggregating job opportunities from various agencies under one roof.