Digital Signature Licitness for Company Bonus Letter in Canada

How to eSign a document: digital signature licitness for Company Bonus Letter in Canada

foreign [Music] thanks for tuning in to the anesthesia and Pain Management success podcast with APM success we take a close look at important topics pertaining to business practice management personal finance and careers for anesthesiologists and Pain Management Physicians we work hard to take your critical questions straight to the experts thanks for listening [Music] hello everyone I'm back in the saddle today with a new episode thanks to all of our listeners who have been willing to take a stroll down memory lane in recent weeks with re-releases of Prior important conversations from APM success turns out that when you have a child during tax season life gets hectic enough that creating new podcast content sometimes can take a back seat but I'm excited to address you today with the first in a two-part series on job changes and how to optimize them today I'm going to talk about signing bonuses and the role of a signing bonus and uh building a career proactively that's going to earn you as much money as you're reasonably entitled to and next week I'm going to talk about why you should always get more than one job offer anytime you're looking for a job after that I've got exciting guests lined up in the coming weeks including Justin Knott founder of entropy Healthcare marketing who's going to talk about strategies he has used to help Physicians grow their practices and also Dr Tim dear a leader in the field of pain management who's been on the show a couple times he's going to be talking about the history of Aspen the American Society of pain and Neuroscience the organization he founded five years ago with Dr dowood said and they have their fifth annual meeting coming up this July which is an exciting milestone lots of great stuff in the coming days but today let's dig into this conversation about signing bonuses this is man the easiest money you're ever going to make in life is negotiating a signing bonus when it doesn't the offer for one doesn't already exist signing bonuses right now are very common in today's job market ing to a 2022 report from Merit Hawkins which is one of these Healthcare Consultants kind of like mgma or similar they shared that 90 of the job searches that they had conducted over the past year included a signing bonus and the average came in at about thirty one thousand dollars so if you're a new job recruit you look to the right and to the left the average of you and those two in terms of assigning bonus is 31 Grand so one of the biggest differentiators I've seen between Physicians that build wealth and those that don't is that Wealth Builders consistently push to increase their income in the way that their contract is structured they don't take a passive stance they're not content with the status quo they're actively looking for ways to improve their position the more money you make the easier it is to save some of that money and pushing for a signing bonus at each contract renewal either with your current employer and a renewal of that contract or with a new employer in a new role this is the most obvious and easy way frankly to to do this to take this proactive stance so today I'm going to discuss five key considerations including number four the biggest mistake that I see Physicians make when looking at signing bonuses so first signing bonus how do I get one what is the best way to get a signing bonus as part of an offer a signing bonus is a one-time payment made by an employer to a new newly hired employee as an incentive to join in the case of Physicians signing bonuses are really necessary in this market to attract and retain talented help it's my observation personally after you know I one of the things that I do is help my clients negotiate identify opportunities and optimize those opportunities before they sign on the dotted line and it's my observation that jobs not offering a signing bonus are often not dialed in to the market rates for compensation meaning of the you know 91 of job offers or 90 of job offers that have a signing bonus the other 10 those people probably aren't paying attention they don't understand that this is what it takes in this market to secure uh the kind of talent that you're looking for the kind of people that you want to have in your organization they're not paying attention in many cases uh and that can have implications for the other parts of the offer uh but so it's just something to keep in mind I always tell my clients always to ask for a signing bonus it's helpful to know yourself and to understand what is the best way to position your services in order to get the best chance of getting a signing bonus a couple things really help number one is know what you're worth by doing research in your Market um so getting multiple job offers like we're going to talk about next week and also looking at the benchmarking data mgma stuff that's available on student doctor um Medscape other like crowdsource literally anywhere that you can get data that can help you use objective criteria to sort of present with your ask so that's number one do your research number two uh have a plan B and communicate like you understand the big picture um whenever you have you know different options you're in the power seat in terms of this discussion and it can really help you when you're asking for signing bonus the second point in terms of securing a signing bonus why it's important to negotiate when you're negotiating your employment contract remember that the terms are not set in stone this is true for the biggest institution all the way down to the smallest and I've seen stuff in the last few months that you know up to this point in the last five or six years of looking especially at pain and anesthesia contracts it has never existed before the demand is so high the opportunity cost of you know these institutions not hiring this doctor if they don't replace if they don't hire you to do 1.0 FTE they're continuing to bleed out through hiring very expensive locums and so they're willing to play ball to an extent that has not been the case in recent memory if you're aware of this you can use this to your advantage depending on the circumstances I generally encourage clients of mine to think of this range between five and twenty percent of expected base pay for a signing bonus so as you're trying to think of the range like oh how much should I ask for 5 10 50 100 000 I have no idea you can as a starting point think between five and twenty percent and the five percent is going to be you know the the jobs that are um in a bigger metro area that have a bigger talent pool to draw from that have sort of all of the advantages geographically so you know if you expect to make 400 Grand in year one maybe you try to get a 20 000 signing bonus and you could I would commence asking between 20 and 30 and hope to land at 20. if you're moving to a place that has difficulty recruiting and you're expecting to make you know four to five hundred I'm gonna start the ask at eighty to a hundred thousand dollars of signing bonus and go from there this is particularly true if a job has been listed for a while and they're having trouble recruiting or retaining obviously you want to understand why that is if they've been having trouble retaining but this type of opportunity enables you to ask for a lot more in terms of signing bonus so you can use this as a rule of thumb um you should also consider asking questions during the interview like have you been offering signing bonuses lately in order to attract candidates for this role in addition to just giving you the information which is helpful to have either yes or no we have or haven't this also will distinguish you as someone who understands how the game is played who understands the value that you have the value that you're bringing and it's a really intelligent question to ask so certainly worth asking in the interview process if signing bonuses have been offered thank you um item number three in terms of wealth building what is the best thing to spend your signing bonus on this is a little bit of a flash point and obviously you can do whatever you want to with your money um I I want to share the Paradigm that I have for one-time influxes of cash um number one I always suggest celebrating celebrate that new job celebrate that big check in your checking account um that's something that you should splurge on and treat yourself and do it in a way that doesn't involve monthly payments so get the nicest bottle of whiskey that you've ever had take your spouse out to dinner do the weekend in the mountains or whatever and celebrate this new opportunity that you have capitalized upon and have that as a touch point for gratitude and reflection and that's awesome totally worth doing um the second thing to consider is use the remainder to the extent that this is important to you to the extent that this is part of your values invest in your freedom um so you know is the country club membership or the new car or some other purchase that you can't immediately pay off is that really making you more free are you really going to enjoy that with the part of your signing bonus that you didn't immediately spend um I suggest that you know you should push it towards either an investment or Debt Pay down or whenever you get this one-time big influx use it to advance your um Independence use it to decrease the need that you have to continue to earn an income to make money this is um again this is a little bit controversial so do whatever you want to with your money but if you invest it or pay off debt you're going to be happier in the long run but obviously when you get that agreement and the day that you do when you get that check celebrate celebrate in some meaningful way that's gonna bring you Joy the fourth item I want to discuss in terms of signing bonuses and looking at them from all angles is consider the taxes and this item is the one where I see people make the most mistakes uh this is true especially when you're going from training into attending Hood it's true with your salary and your signing bonus you don't realize how big of a bite Uncle Sam is going to take because when you're making 60 or 70 grand the bite is much smaller when you're making three to six hundred or more uh the bite is much bigger and so the gross number that you're promised on your signing bonus or on your contract and the net number that hits your checking account there's a much bigger Delta between those two uh and so this is also true with relocation bonuses so consider that as well but often in the context of a signing bonus with regards to taxes there is some period of time where you're agreeing to stay could be 12 24 months or longer and if you don't stay for the full duration you have to give back the bonus it's very important to have a lawyer parse this language for you to ensure that it is Equitable and as it relates to your signing bonus I always encourage clients of mine to structure their deal so that the bonus vests as you work meaning if you stay for one year but you would agree to save safer too if we use an example you get a fifty thousand dollar signing bonus two-year contract for me if I'm there for 12 months I want 25 of that to vest to me I don't want to if I leave after 13 months have to give back the whole 50 and you've got to negotiate that up front and put it in the contract this can be a really expensive mistake if you need to pay back the full thing and it's because of the Taxation and here's what people don't understand because you receive only a fraction of this promised amount in the example that I'm giving if you get 50 000 on day one when that hits your checking account it's only 31 000. so 19 went to Uncle Sam and if you leave after 13 months you pay back the 31 that's in your checking account which by the way you've probably already spent at this point plus you need to pay back the 19 that went to Uncle Sam so you've paid a ton of taxes on money that you don't even get to keep and this is why negotiating this up front is very very important in my example if you negotiate for the vesting and you leave after 13 months you get 29 000 in your checking account in month 13 you say I'm out of here and you give back the 25 that has not yet vested now if you got 29 in your checking account at the beginning and you're giving back 25 at least you're not in the red which would be really really annoying if uh you had to pay money just to get out of a job that you worked for a year and some change especially if you're leaving because of reasons that are you know it's a toxic place to be or you feel like there's misrepresentation Etc so negotiating this up front understanding the taxation of a signing bonus and make sure that it vests along the way very very very important uh finally other important considerations Point number five I just have a little bit of a grab bag here institutions that have salary bans so I'm looking primarily at academics but also some of the other big established players they say well you know we usually pay an associate professor step one or step two ranges from 340 to 365 000. um based on where you're coming in in terms of the salary for in this case an anesthesia position there's a rigidity around these guardrails it's difficult to say well I want a salary of 405. if you're coming in at that level of experience that's probably not going to happen but often these departments will have more flexibility in one-time compensation either through assigning or retention bonus or relocation allowance or something like that and that is the place to ask for a higher offer do academics pay signing bonuses yes they do always ask and be aware that when you're negotiating here these one-time asks are often accessing different funds in a department than the you know the stepwise compensation that is meted out to everyone at your level of experience so it can be a particularly useful tool the negotiation for the signing bonus in the context of academics um secondly another important consideration know yourself and if you're somebody who is going to freeze up and when the the moment comes they Slide the engagement letter across the table or you're on the phone you're gonna just take it as it is written uh then use email to your advantage if the idea of negotiating in person makes you want to throw up then you can write this out objectively and make your ask in text and then you know write out the email have your friend look at it shotgun your favorite beer and then send it along to that department chair the worst that can happen is they say sorry no bonus nice try but on the upside that email could be worth tens of thousands of dollars and I've had this happen to clients of mine where there's an initial offer and we could come back and say you know instead of 20 I want 40 and they come back and say well we're not going to give you 40 but here's 30. like holy cow that the seven minutes that we took to draft and send that email sure it was gut wrenching but we just made 10 grand how awesome is that so something you might consider doing I always recommend framing it using positive language consensus building language to restate the opportunity for example dear department chair I'm really excited about the prospect of working with your department I recognize this opportunity as truly unique after having vetted several other offers I enjoyed talking with Dr Smith and Dr Stevens and if employment happens on August 1st I'm ready to dive into that with both feet if you can add a signing bonus in line with the national average of 31 000 to the offer as stated then I'm ready to execute this contract as written and move forward right away I look forward to hearing back from you something like that you state how excited you are you state some of the data that you've gathered along the way you make the ask and then you say let me know what you think don't end it with a question mark end it with a period this is what I've had the most success with I've tried a lot of different ways and I've done a lot of research on this so something to think about if you um if you are gonna panic when asking in person just write an email it's like buying a lottery ticket it only costs you a dollar but you could hit the jackpot so that's it um next week's episode is on why you should always get multiple job offers whenever you're job shopping until then thank you for listening have a great week [Music] if you liked what you heard this week head on over to apmsuccess.com where you can find more content and free resources to help you build a successful career in anesthesia and Pain Management if you wanted to leave a review in iTunes I'd also really appreciate it thanks for using some of your valuable time to join me today on APM success foreign