Salary Survery Results-How do your salary, benefits stack up against your peers'?
Whatever we do for a living, we all want to know what our colleagues around the country are making so we can gauge just how fairly we're being compensated for our efforts. Hospital Peer Review's annual salary survey was mailed to readers along with the June 2000 issue. Questionnaires, response forms, and postage-paid envelopes were inserted into that newsletter. The responses contained no names unless readers wished to include them along with special comments. The surveys were compiled and analyzed by American Health Consultants in Atlanta, publisher of HPR.
We had a solid response — our thanks to all the readers who participated. We've tabulated some results here that we think are of the most interest. What you learn may cause you to take a second look at your situation, but bear in mind that each position is different, and pay scales depend enormously upon geographical location, facility size, your experience level, and other specifics.
Most HPR readers report annual earnings of somewhere between $45,000 and $70,000. (See "Annual Income," p. 4.) Most work between 41 and 50 hours per week. If they received a salary increase over the past 12 months, it was between 1% and 6%.
The greatest percentage of respondents, about a fifth, have been working in the quality field for between 13 and 15 years, though a significant number have been in the profession for fewer than seven years. The most common titles are quality improvement manager and quality improvement director. Other titles represented include quality assurance director, case management director, utilization review manager, and vice president.
Most (62.7%) have been working in some facet of the health care industry for upward of 22 years.
About 97% of our quality professional reader respondents are women. Forty-eight percent are in their 40s, but there is a good number in their 30s (12%) and 50s (29.3%) as well. About 31% have attained master's degrees, and a quarter have bachelor's.
As far as job benefits go, 401K or other savings plan ranks highest among respondents' concerns (68% consider it "extremely important") — with medical coverage coming second at 65%. (See "Importance of Benefits," p. 3.) About 61% rated pension plans as extremely important. Next was the less tangible benefit of enjoying the freedom to choose one's own schedule; 47% said that was "extremely important." Nearly half our respondents said their contribution to the cost of medical benefits had increased over the past year. A little more than a third saw no change, and only about 5% had their contributions decrease.
Almost a third of HPR's readers come from the Northern Central states running from Ohio on the East to the breadbasket states on the West, while an equal number hail from the Southern United States. About a third come from hospitals in what they describe as medium-size communities. About 27% come from urban settings, 15% come from suburban settings, and 22% are from rural areas. Most of respondents, 62.2%, work in nonprofit institutions; 16.2% work in for-profit organizations. About 15% work for state or county government facilities, and only 6.8% work in either federal facilities or academic institutions.
A high percentage of our respondents, 23.6%, work in hospitals between 101 and 200 beds. The next largest group, about 19%, work in hospitals with between 201 and 300 beds. Another 18% work in hospitals with fewer than 100 beds, and 15% work in hospitals with 500 beds or more. About 7% of respondents don't work in a hospital setting.
In answer to a question regarding hiring new employees or turnover in facilities, 26.7% had seen an increase in the number of employees, 29.3% saw a decrease, 44% saw no change over the past 12 months.
Do you know how to play the hiring game?
Job loyalty is not what it used to be. There was a time, once, when people stayed in their jobs for 20 years and longer. People expected to grow old and retire with a company. Those days are long forgotten for most of America's work force, and even those who haven't forgotten aren't playing by those rules anymore.
With unemployment at record lows, just about anyone who wants a job can get one. What's the downside? It's harder to keep good employees when more lucrative positions are frequently in the offering. So just how do you get employees to stay with your company, even in an industry with notoriously long hours and low pay?
It sounds obvious, but the best way to get an employee to stay and grow with your facility is to hire the right person for the job. It makes no sense to hire someone who has ambitions other than home care administration if that's all you have to offer.
The trick, of course, is making sure the person you are hiring and the job you are trying to fill are a good match.
Sue Romero, owner of Englewood, CO-based Susan Romero Consulting, advises would-be hirers to sit down with their staff and take stock of a position and the skills needed to succeed in it. Together, the "hiring team" should formulate a list of minimum skills that a successful applicant must have.
It's the "will" skills that are harder to determine, notes Romero. "Will the person do the job? Does he or she have the right attitude for the job? These are the questions you need to be considering. You want to determine the success criteria of someone who already is successful in that job. What are the soft skills [an employee has that makes him or her successful]?"
Romero points to attributes such as a positive attitude, demonstrated initiative, and the ability to cope with on-the-job stress as "will" skills. Good indicators of whether a person will fit into the home care field are whether the applicant can handle unruly patients and whether the applicant will show initiative to take on work outside the immediate job description.
It's important to determine the "will" skills in advance of an interview. "Remember that past behavior is an indicator for future performance," Romero says. "The interviewer will want to identify questions in advance that will elicit how the applicant reacted to certain situations in the previous job."
Romero uses an angry patient as an example. An ineffective method of determining whether a person will be able to cope with an irritated patient is to ask, "What would you do if your patient got angry with you?" Most people know enough to give at least a textbook answer. A better, more effective tool is to ask the applicant to describe how she handled an angry patient in a previous job.
"You are looking for situational success stories," says Romero. "You want to ask open-ended questions. You want [applicants] to tell you about a situation, to explain something. And get them to elaborate on why they responded as they did. It's so important to interview people toward the success criteria that you and your team decided on — the ones that you decided were important for your organization."
Romero cautions that the quantity of success criteria isn't the issue; rather, quality is. "You don't need a lot — maybe just three or four — but you want them to match the office and job culture."
Asking questions in today's litigious society can be intimidating for interviewers. How do you get the information you want and need without crossing any boundaries?
Henry Wolford, owner of Wolford & Associates, a management consultant firm in Irvine, CA, suggests targeting the questions to specifics of the job. "You're OK as long as you stay with job-focused questions. For example, 'Where you're working now, if you were in charge, what would you change?' You want to elicit from them the things they'd like to change and see if it fits in with your agency."
He also notes that it's important to ask skill-specific questions. If you are looking for someone who gets the greatest satisfaction from a job well done, ask the potential hire how she would like to be rewarded if she were to win a competition.
"If the person wants two weeks in Tahiti and a brass band escorting him to the airport, he's over the top," he says. "You want someone who gets recognition out of doing the job and would rather that recognition be private than public. This is a person who is close to self-actualization with respect to the job."
Wolford, like Romero, says hirers should start with the attitudinal skills and go from there, within reason. "The other things can always be developed," he notes.
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