Ask for a pay rise

The middle of a recession may not seem like great timing, but figures in the latest IDS Pay Report - based on 70 pay settlements covering about two million employees - indicate that the average (median) pay deal was 3.5 per cent in the three months to the end of November 2008. Furthermore, a third of all deals were for 4percent or more, many of these being in the manufacturing sector, in which the average was 4.2 per cent. At the other end of the scale, a quarter of pay agreements were for 3 per cent or less, many of which were in the public or retail sectors. But act quickly. Ken Mulkearn, Editor of IDS Pay Report, says: “Previous experience indicates that when the cost of living drops, in the context of an economic slowdown, pay deals fall on average but tend not to go below a floor of around 2 per cent.”

Take a long-term approach

If the economic climate is making you check your shares nervously every five minutes, researchers from the Kellogg School of Management in the United States have news for you: they have shown that regular trading to try to optimise returns does not pay in the long run. They calculate that if the cost of trading shares is 0.01 per cent of total wealth, the “optimal inattention period is almost eight months”. If it is 0.1 per cent of your wealth, you can ignore them for two years.

Brace yourself

The latest game enjoyed by pundits is: “Spot the next company to go bust.” According to the Sherlocks at Business Week (January 12), we can expect job cuts in car manufacturing, airlines and advertising. A survey of users by TipTopJobs.com suggests that redundancies so far have been clustered in transport and travel, construction, engineering and manufacturing; and IT and telecoms.

Launch your own business

Have you pondered whether the time is right to launch your own business? The advice from Noam Wasserman, a Harvard professor, is to go for it. In Harvard Business Review (January), he writes: “Waiting for the perfect time to make the jump is usually futile, for there's no moment that's truly perfect. So even if you're early in your corporate career, when a winning new-business idea comes along and sparks an entrepreneural passion in you, carpe diem.” In his research on founders of high-potential ventures that succeeded in raising capital from professional investors, 76 per cent had worked for 20 years or less before going it alone - they had made the leap before their early forties.

Get Army-fit

The Army found that a fifth of people are so strapped for cash that they plan to cancel their gym membership this year. So it has launced Army Fit - a web-based fitness and nutrition programme that “provides the chance to follow a 14-week official routine which the Army is confident will make you fit enough to join the Army as early as April irrelevant of your present fitness level”. It is at www.armyfit.mod.uk.

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