Renegotiating my salary

Question

I'm a general manager and head chef at a good-quality country inn. I'm currently renegotiating my salary because this job only became avaliable to me after the previous general manager was sacked for poor perfomance. He was earning £25,000.

Since I've taken over, we have beaten our targets and improved the service we offer by quite a lot and the company is very happy with my perfomance.

When I was just the head chef I was earning £22,000 plus bonuses. What sort of salary and bonuses should I be aiming for? (The company in question is not known for being generous.)

What the expert says

Michael Moor, managing director, Chef Centre

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Although you don't say how long your previous manager was there, your employers were paying him £25,000 while he was under-performing. If youÁ¢Â€Â™re happy with these things, look at how the company can value you. An increase to Á‚£25,000 as your basic salary would seem a reasonable starting point, perhaps with an initial bonus for improvements made since taking over, seeing as any new targets will be set on your current levels rather than the poor ones in place before you were promoted. You are confident of all-round improvement so you should look for bonuses based on profitability (a fixed sum for each percent or half-percent achieved above an agreed gross profit figure), sales (based on number of covers served or turnover) and payroll (keeping below an overall percentage of turnover). This should enable you to regularly add a sizeable chunk to your earnings, while steadily increasing the bottom-line figures to your employers.