You will be able to compare offers on the full package and spot the items you can negotiate.
Hafiz now has two offers. The healthcare group offers S$7,200 a month. A logistics technology firm offers S$7,600. His instinct says the second is better by S$400 a month, and he's already composing a polite no to the first.
Before he sends it, he should look at everything else in each letter. Base salary is the number everyone compares, and it's often not the number that decides which offer is worth more. All figures in this lesson are examples.
Start with the money that arrives in your bank account, and put each item on its own line.
Base salary is the monthly figure. Then check for a fixed annual payment, often called a 13th month or an annual wage supplement, which some employers pay as an extra month's salary each year. Whether you get one depends on your contract, so read the letter closely: some offers include it, and some don't. Then look at the variable bonus, which depends on your performance or the company's, and is usually described as a target that may or may not be paid. Finally, add any allowances, such as transport, phone or meals.
Hafiz's two offers, laid side by side:
The healthcare group pays S$7,200 a month, includes a 13th month, and states a target variable bonus of 10% of annual base salary. The base and 13th month come to S$93,600 a year. The target bonus is 10% of S$86,400, which is S$8,640. Total expected cash: S$102,240.
The logistics firm pays S$7,600 a month, with no 13th month, and a variable bonus it describes as usually around half a month's pay. That's S$91,200 in base plus S$3,800 in bonus. Total expected cash: S$95,000.
The offer with the lower base is worth about S$7,240 more a year in expected cash. Hafiz nearly turned down the better one because he compared a single line. Two cautions apply. Both bonus figures are targets, so he labels them as expected amounts. And a 13th month written into the contract is more certain than either bonus.
Then list the rest of the package. These items don't show up in a monthly salary, but they change how good a job is to live with:
Annual leave, and whether it rises with years of service Medical cover, dental cover and insurance, and whether they extend to family members Flexible or hybrid working, and how many days in the office A training or learning budget, and whether certifications are paid for The start date, and the date of the first pay review Title, which affects your next move as well as this one
Hafiz finds that the healthcare group gives three more days of leave and covers his spouse under its medical plan. The logistics firm offers more remote days, which saves him commuting. He writes these into a simple two-column comparison, one row per item.
If you're a Singapore citizen or permanent resident, your employer also pays CPF contributions on top of your salary. Those contributions go into your CPF accounts, not your bank account, but they're part of what the job pays you.
The rates and the wage ceilings, the monthly and annual limits on how much of your pay attracts CPF, are set by the CPF Board and change from time to time, so check the current rules on the CPF Board website before comparing offers closely. If you'd like a refresher on how CPF and your payslip work, the course Your first job: the money playbook covers it.
For most comparisons between two offers, you don't need exact CPF figures. What matters is that both employers contribute under the same rules, so CPF mostly rises and falls with the wages you've already counted.
The whole package matters in the negotiation itself as well as in the comparison. Raising your base salary costs the employer every month for as long as you stay, and it often lifts what they have to pay others at your level. Many other items cost them much less.
A one-off sign-on bonus costs them once. An earlier pay review costs nothing until it happens. A better title, a few more days of leave, an extra remote day or a training budget may cost little and matter a lot to you. These are the trading currency of a job offer, in the sense of lesson 3.2, List the issues and decide what you can trade.
So when Hafiz looks at the healthcare offer, he marks the items he'd try to improve: an earlier first review, two more remote days and a training budget for a certification. If the base is fixed, these are where he'll negotiate. Lesson 7.4 shows how.
The activity asks you to put two offers, real or sample, side by side, item by item, and mark which items you'd try to negotiate.
Put two real or sample offers side by side in a table covering every package item, and mark which items you would try to negotiate.
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