CIfA has a vital role to play in improving and maintaining standards of archaeological work, and in enhancing the status of archaeologists. We believe that inadequate pay and conditions undermines the work we do in these areas and we are keen to ensure that the issue of pay is proactively addressed by the whole sector.
CIfA policy statement on pay in archaeology
-
CIfA believes that the problem of low pay has the potential to critically impact professional standards and is one which the industry must take collective ownership of and accept collective responsibility for solving.
-
CIfA has a legitimate interest in ensuring that archaeological employers are able to recruit, retain, motivate and develop appropriately competent archaeological staff.
-
CIfA believes that remuneration is one of the factors that will assist employers to do so.
-
Other archaeological bodies have equally legitimate interests in improving pay and conditions, and should be encouraged to work with CIfA; some other bodies have more levers at their disposal to effect improvements in pay than CIfA does and should be encouraged and assisted by CIfA to fulfil their responsibilities.
Salary benchmarking survey
From 2024, CIfA will undertake regular salary benchmarking surveys to gather anonymised, aggregated salary data for a range of job roles in archaeology. Salary benchmarking is widely used to compare salaries for different roles within a profession, track how salaries have changed over time or in relation to inflation or other benchmarks and compare salaries for roles in one profession against similar roles in equivalent professions. Salary benchmarking provides
-
information for employees and prospective employees to help them judge how advertised roles compare to average salaries in the profession
-
information for employers when designing and advertising job roles to ensure that salaries can attract appropriately competent applicants
-
one of a number of tools used by trade unions in workplace negotiations where a union is recognised, or workplace agreements where there is no trade union recognition
-
an advocacy tool to champion better paid roles
CIfA's salary benchmarking work is being guided by a project advisory group which includes representatives from CIfA's Advisory Council and Early Careers Special Interest Group, Prospect and BAJR.
Interim report October 2024
The project advisory group has released an interim report on its work, bringing together salary data from archaeology and comparators. The final report is expected by early December 2024.
