by Simon Wright

Created on: January 26, 2009

With the world-wide recession starting to hit home, a lot of people are just focusing on keeping their current job rather than pursuing loftier ambitions such as moving to a better job with another company. However, we have also seen price rises for things such as fuel, food and public transport so there are many people who are keen to find a way to bolster their monthly take-home pay. Let's consider, then, whether there are any ways that you can earn extra money whilst staying in your current job.

- Ask for a pay rise:

The best solution may be to ask for a pay rise. However, there is no guarantee, of course, that your request will be successful and companies will be especially determined to resist wage inflation during a period of economic recession. Your chances of securing a pay rise may therefore depend on how strong a case you can make to justify the increase that you are looking for. One useful approach is to identify whether there are other people in the company, doing a similar job, who are getting paid a significant amount more than you. Getting your pay increase may be a real test of your negotiation skills and you will need to assess how far you can push your request. Another factor that will influence your ability to get a pay increase is how indispensable you are? A worker who has skills and experience that would be very difficult to replace stands a much better chance of getting their way than an employee whose skill sets are easily obtained.

- Standard overtime:

Other than securing a pay rise, the most obvious alternative route is to volunteer to work overtime. If you're prepared to come in a little earlier or stay a little later each night, then this may be very helpful for your employer and good for your bank balance. It will be dependant, however, on there being enough work to justify overtime.

- Non standard overtime covering anti social hours, weekends and bank holidays:

Often, the best opportunities to earn good overtime money comes from offering to work anti social hours, or weekends or bank holidays. For example, I work in a bank and banks often look to implement IT changes in the very early hours of the weekend. The rationale for this is that if anything goes wrong, they can back out the changes without affecting branch staff or unduly inconveniencing customers. When the changes are being implemented, they usually require members of staff to be on hand (sometimes via audio) to test that the changes have worked correctly. You will always

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