Rate Card

Why is there no universal rate card to copy?

Because a rate is the output of local conditions rather than an industry standard. What a role costs depends on the labour market in that location, the scarcity of the specific skill, what the engagement obliges the supplier to provide, statutory employer costs in that jurisdiction, the payment terms, and the volume committed. Two organisations with identical role titles can face genuinely different correct answers. Any figure circulating as the going rate for a role is describing someone else's inputs, and adopting it means importing assumptions you cannot see.

How should a buyer build a card from scratch?

From evidence it already holds. Historical assignment data shows what has actually been paid for each role and location, where fill was slow, and where exceptions clustered. That baseline, tested against what suppliers say they can fill at and against what the organisation pays its own employees for equivalent work, produces a defensible starting card. Building one from a published benchmark instead means the first months are spent discovering which cells were wrong.

What does a rate card look like from the supplier's side?

As a constraint on what can be offered to workers, not just as revenue. Once the bill rate is fixed, the supplier's room to attract a scarce candidate is limited to what remains after its own costs. A card set below what the local market will accept produces a predictable pattern: slow submissions, weaker profiles, and suppliers who quietly stop working that category while remaining nominally on the panel. Fill data by cell is the fastest way for a buyer to detect that before it is explained away as a supplier performance issue.

What is a rate card for?

It removes a negotiation from every requisition. Without one, each assignment is priced from scratch, which is slow, produces inconsistent outcomes across the same role, and rewards whichever manager negotiates hardest rather than whichever role is genuinely harder to fill. A card fixes the reference points so the conversation on a live requisition is about the person and the timing.

It is also a governance instrument. Once rates are agreed centrally, a programme can enforce them at the point of submission, spot exceptions, and report what is being paid for equivalent work across the organisation. That visibility is often the real reason a buyer wants a card, and it is worth being explicit about, because a supplier that thinks it is negotiating price when the buyer is buying consistency will misjudge the conversation.

What has to be defined before any number goes on the card?

Two things: the unit and the inclusions. The unit is what a rate buys, most commonly an hour but sometimes a day, and the definition of a standard day matters because parties disagree about it more often than they expect. The inclusions state what the rate covers and what is charged separately.

The inclusion list should address every category that produces month-end disputes: statutory employer costs, insurances, any paid leave or holiday entitlement the engagement carries, treatment of overtime and unsocial hours, whether travel time is billable, how expenses are handled, and whether equipment is supplied by the buyer or the supplier. A card whose rates look competitive because it silently excludes several of these is not comparable with one that includes them, and buyers who compare only the headline figures will pick the least transparent supplier.

How should a card be structured so it stays usable?

By the smallest set of dimensions that genuinely change the price. Role family and level almost always do. Location usually does, since labour markets differ. Some categories add a dimension for a required clearance, a certification, or a shift pattern. Each additional dimension multiplies the number of cells, and a card with hundreds of cells stops being consulted and starts being ignored.

The levels also need definitions, not just labels. If the card distinguishes a mid-level from a senior engineer, someone must be able to decide which a given person is without an argument. Writing a short, behavioural description of each level, agreed by both sides, is what stops level inflation from quietly repricing the card without anyone renegotiating it.

What happens when a role does not fit the card?

It will happen, and the card should say what to do rather than leave the parties to improvise. Scarce specialisms, urgent starts, unusual locations, and roles requiring something the card never contemplated all arrive eventually. A workable exception route names who can approve an off-card rate, what evidence is required, and whether the exception is one-off or sets a new reference point.

Exceptions also need to be counted. A card with a steady trickle of approved exceptions is doing its job. A card where most assignments are exceptions is no longer describing the market it was built for, and the honest response is to revise it rather than to keep approving departures from it. Tracking the exception rate by category is the cheapest early warning that a card has drifted out of date.

How are rate cards reviewed and adjusted?

Cards are normally fixed for a term and reviewed on a stated cycle. The review mechanism should be agreed at the start, because renegotiating the mechanism during a dispute is far harder than applying one that already exists. Common approaches are a scheduled review at a fixed interval, an adjustment linked to a published index, or a trigger that either party can pull when a defined condition is met.

Whichever is used, both sides need evidence to bring to the review. For the supplier that means fill rates, time to submit, and where it has been unable to attract people at card rates. For the buyer it means what it has been paying outside the card and what comparable work costs elsewhere in its own organisation. A review with no evidence becomes an argument about conviction, and the party with more patience wins rather than the party who is right.