URMIA 2022 Compensation Survey Insights

It’s survey time! The 2022 compensation survey required Senior Risk Manager input so join host Jenny Whittington to hear about the development and changes since the last URMIA salary survey. She’s joined by volunteers Christine Eick and Julie Groves who were instrumental in getting it launched with member feedback and timely updates and who share some of the perks of answering the anonymous survey now. The survey is open until April 13 with results available in June 2022. 

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Transcript

SHOW NOTES
URMIA Career Center

2018 survey results [member log-in required]

TRANSCRIPT

Jenny Whittington: Hello everyone. This is Jenny Whittington or me as executive director. And welcome to another edition of URMIA matters today. I have two wonderful, people with me. First step I have Christine Eick. She is a retired member of URMIA long-term members. I was actually thinking about this this morning, when I invited you to be on the podcast Christine, you were one of the very first URMIAns I ever met because we had a board meeting. It was you and me and a couple other people in a car and we drove to dinner. And I just knew when I met you guys in the car that night, that you guys were my people and that we've been lifelong friends, I think since that time and I'm so happy that you have stayed involved with URMIA. 
 
So welcome to the podcast.

Christine Eick: Thank you, Jenny. 

Jenny Whittington: And then my other wonderful co-partner in the podcast land is Julie Groves from Wake Forest. She's the president-elect of URMIA. She's my incoming boss. Like in the fall, I'm going to start reporting to Julie. I'm counting the days, you know, until we can, we can have weekly one-on-ones, that'll be so fun.

So welcome back, Julie, to the podcast.

Julie Groves: Thank you. Glad to be here. Good to see you. Good to see you, Christine. 

Christine Eick: Good to see you. 

Jenny Whittington: so I love to kick things off with, our, special new guests to the podcast, telling us a little bit about their involvement with URMIA. I know you were, um, with Auburn for a long time and that you retired a few years back. So Christine tell the podcast listeners all about yourself.

Christine Eick: Well, I have over 20 years of higher ed risk management experience. I worked both at Auburn University and Georgia State University after retiring as you well know, Jenny, I worded to you and was the education manager for URMIA for about two years. And I just can't get enough of URMIA so I keep coming back for more. 

Jenny Whittington: that's so awesome. So, um, we are talking today about our compensation survey previously known. Salary survey, but it is a full compensation survey and URMIA members, um, should have received an email, yesterday or sometime recently, asking them to take the survey. And this is not our first rodeo. I think this is maybe the third or fourth, maybe even fifth, um, salary or compensation server that I've done in my 17 years with URMIA. And I know Christine you've been involved in the last, at least three iterations of it. is that right? Is that right, was my memory right? 

Christine Eick: Yeah, I think this is my fourth. My first one that I, Larry Stevens did one in the late nineties. 

Jenny Whittington: Wow.

Christine Eick: And then I've done the surveys ever since. 

Jenny Whittington: Awesome. Yeah, I do remember there was one, we outsourced it in my early years, maybe 2006, 2007. And, I remember that was, we learned a lot of lessons from that. And then I think we decided we would rather do it in-house because risk management is such a unique discipline and the way it is in higher education. I think it was hard or hard for outside consulting firms to get their arms around. 
 
So we are so lucky to have you Christine, uh, to help us with this project and tell us about the people that you work with on the compensation project. Those two gentlemen.

Christine Eick: Sure. I roped my friend, Professor Lee Colquitt from Auburn University asked if he would help me, I think in 2014. And he said, you know, my buddy Dave it's really, really good with numbers I, over at St. Mary's. 

And now I count Dave. as Dave Sumner, as a friend as well. So, they've said yes, every time I have asked for them to join, an, I think they enjoy it and they definitely bring a lot of talent especially when it comes to running the statistics, particularly David, cause he does it all the time. He can do it so much, quicker than I can, so I really appreciate it.

Jenny Whittington: Statisticians, you know, they're so good at what they do. And it's not a skillset that I have. So I have the utmost respect for the, for those folks. math was not my strong suit, so I'm so happy there are people like David out there. So Jule, I'm going to turn to you now. Um, I know back in, I believe it was in October at the board meeting in Seattle and the board kind of came together and said, now's the time! We need to seize the moment.

And Work on a compensation project and, and you jumped on the task force. And tell us about the process that the task force has gone through. 

Julie Groves: Well, yeah, Jenny you're right back in October at our board meeting, following the annual conference in Seattle, we were just talking about things that we wanted to look towards accomplishing for the next couple of years. And one of them that we felt really needed to be done was the compensation survey. We heard very clearly from a number of people that it would be incredibly helpful if we could update that. Um, and so we assembled a group of folks and what we did was, I mean, and I, I'm just going to be honest, I'm gonna say this very clearly. We could not have done anything if it weren't for Christine Eick, because she did everything.

I mean, we had it, we had a committee, but Christine. Did everything. So we really, really appreciate your help, Christine. Basically what we did is we went back and looked at the previous survey. We kind of worked through that to find out what types of things we needed. We needed to update what things were still important.

We also took a look at the recently released RIMS compensation survey. Some of you who are RIMS member members may be able to get a copy of that for yourself. I participated in the survey, so, I was able. The survey for a pretty low cost. I think if you're a RIMS member, but you didn't participate, there's a different cost. And then if you're not a RIMS member at all, I think it's you know, there's a, there's another cost for that, but it does have some really good information in it. And so our task force looked also at the RIMS survey, we incorporated a couple of questions that they asked that we thought would be helpful, for our members. 

And, you know, we did a couple of test drives. Christine and her friends put everything together for us. And we did, you know, a couple of, test taking events to make sure that the, the surveys made sense that they worked, like they were supposed to, that there weren't any questions we needed to have, you know, extra information on or that we wanted to add.

And so really, like I said, Christine did the lion share of the work here and, it, so the survey just came out this week for folks to take. So we really encourage everybody to be sure to click on that link and take the survey. It doesn't take very long to do. 

I will say, Jenny, one of the questions we added and, and Christine can maybe add to this as well as we thought it would be interesting just with everything that's changed because of COVID there's been a lot of transition in people's work. They've gone from one place to the other, and we thought it would be interesting. you know, to see how long people think they're going to stay in the position they're currently in. And are they thinking about moving to another position somewhere else? Or are they thinking about retirement? Because we keep hearing about all these people who are going to be retiring in the next few years. And then there are people like me who are just happy, where we are and glad to have a job and we're going to stay there. So, you know, I think we try to add questions that, you know were more, they weren't just compensation focused, but they were also questions that would help us understand the risk management workforce as well.

Do you have any, I mean, do you agree with that? Christine, anything else to add to that? 

Christine Eick: We found from previous surveys, the things that were significant in relation to salary. So, for example, the size staff that you supervised, whether you were a research university or not, universities, with hospitals, and we found different factors, that influence salary, and some have been consistent survey over survey. But it will be interesting to see if there are any changing trends. One of the trends that I have seen change dramatically since I entered higher education risk management in the nineties is the number of women. When I first started attending URMIA and also, RIMA and PRIMA. I was very much in the minority as a woman and very much in the minority as a twenty-something year old when I first started attending the meetings.

So that is something that's also interesting. And, when you're taking the survey and you may wonder why some of the questions are being asked, there's a reason behind everything.

Jenny Whittington: Absolutely. And I love that trend. I mean, in the, in the URMIA compendium. That we updated for the annual conference in Boston. I mean just our, demographic, having more women, more people of color. I mean, we've come a long way. I mean, from those early, early pictures pre when you started Christine, but when URMIA had got kicked off, you know, it was a, certainly a very male dominated. white male dominated industry. So yeah, I look forward to seeing, you know, what the results are, and I want to emphasize to everybody listening that we, really want to have great results this year. Can you speak Christine to who is supposed to take the survey? I know, cause that's a little bit complicated.

Can you can you speak to that? 

Christine Eick: The person who should complete the survey should be the lead risk management professional for the institution. And it's very important for our data that that is the person. who responds to the survey. It could mess up, the data of somebody says, well, I want to be in on it, but they're not the lead person then the data could be skewed. None of, us want that. We want a realistic. picture. 
 
And I have had, I've want to address why we're not asking for everybody to complete this and not doing a survey that encompasses each and every position. And the answer is simple, that it would be really, really complex to develop the instrument. I did try a few years ago and I did not get good data from it and ended up having to throw out a bunch of responses because it was incorrectly completed. I mean, that's something that our mayor may want to look. I can't speak for URMIA. I'm just volunteer. 

And it's something that URMIA may want to look to in the future, but it would take, we take some time and this survey is free.  It doesn't cost URMIA anything. Because I love URMIA.

Jenny Whittington: Well, we were so thankful for you. 

Julie Groves: And so Christine is one of the reasons that the the main person responsible for risk management needs to fill this out, because there are a lot of, or there are questions about their specific risk management duties. So if the voting member of URMIA for a particular institution is maybe someone who is just the finance VP, but may not have specific risk management duties, then they wouldn't be able to answer some of the questions the way that they're the person who works for them, who is the risk manager or the person in charge

of risk would be able to answer them.  Isn't that correct? 

Christine Eick: that is correct. And also back to why we have the lead person complete it is we’re asking institutional information. So we don't want five people from the same institution. answer that survey that's gets into the complexity of how would we develop something that would collect that institutional information and, also many positions with the same college or university. 

Jenny Whittington: And I know, um, when we, when we were talking about this back in October and when the task force started working on it, we did, talk about possibly reaching out to CUPA-HR, because we know in higher education, they do a lot of compensation analysis. And we're continuing that conversation. They're in the midst of doing their own work right now. So we might have a phase two that might include some, some other CUPA specific information. They have a, they have a really large pool of data. So there might be, there might be more coming out in that in the fall. We'll probably announce that at the, at the fall, I know, conference at our business meeting. So look for that to happen later. 

Julie Groves: So one quick question. So if everybody rushes out now and in the, or in the next few days and fills out their survey, when can the membership expect to get the results of our survey.

Christine Eick: We are looking at June.

It takes a little while to do the analysis, and write it up, and then URMIA formats the report. and, good looking really nice. So June. And that's dictated by the academic calendar schedule of my colleagues who are giving exams in May. And they told me that they'd be glad to help be that it would be May before they could start on it.

Julie Groves: Oh, and that's fine. We, we just really appreciate all their help and your help as well. 

Jenny Whittington: Yeah. So to reiterate that, that, we just posted, we sent the invitation to take the survey to all of the voting members of URMIA the institutional side and the deadline we put on it was April 13th because we're fully aware that it's spring break season. everybody, you know, across the country is taking some time off.

Some of our schools are closed for the week, so we've given you a long window to take it and we will send several reminders to folks. And we, we really encourage everybody to take it. We did offer a sponsorship opportunity this year. So if any affiliate members are interested in, supporting and sponsoring the salary, I'm sorry, the compensation survey, please reach out to the national office.

I'd be happy to tell you about that. It is included in our annual conference sponsorship guide. It’s kind of an add on. So we think the organizations who have already sponsored it, it's Marsh and Gallagher are, have signed up to sponsor it so far. We are taking up to six sponsors, so we have some slots left and we will, we will definitely give you lots of publicity.

We anticipate this is going to be a huge member benefit. So again, we just encourage people to take it. And, any closing comments from, from you first, Julie? And then we'll go to Christine.

Julie Groves: No. I mean, again, I just can't reiterate our, thanks enough to Christine And her friends. I mean, this really is not something we, well, I like Jenny. I'm not good at math and I don't know how to do any of this stuff and I would not be able to do it And I don't want to speak for my other URMIA colleagues, but I really feel like we couldn't be doing this if it weren't for Christine's efforts. 

Jenny Whittington: Absolutely. I mean, Christine is a treasure. We are, we're so fortunate to have her and lots of other retiree members, who give back to the organization, but you are a star Christine for sure.

Christine Eick: Okay, well, thank you. I would encourage everybody to find an opportunity to volunteer with URMIA. I had a fabulous higher ed risk management career, and I think it was because of URMIA. and that is why I'm going to be a lifelong URMIA of volunteer is I'm having a very comfortable retirement. thanks to URMIA. 
 
And I want to encourage people to take the time to complete the survey. There's a list of information that if you gather it before you start the survey, it'll only take about 10 minutes to complete the survey. 

And it means a lot to other people, even if you think, well, it doesn't matter to me, cause I'm going to be retiring soon or my school never gives out raises or whatever the reasons are. I've even had people tell me, oh, my salary is low, so I don't want to have my data throw. And please everybody complete the survey. 

I appreciate it. 

Jenny Whittington: yeah, we need the whole, picture. I mean, yeah. All those for all those reasons and many more, please, please take the survey and if you have any questions about it, I'm happy to try to answer them or I will reach out to Christine and her team of statisticians. if you have anything specific. And then if you're curious, any URMIA members, the last compensation survey is in the library. There's a link in the frequent searches that you can look at the data from 2018. It's it's really pretty interesting. 

Then I would encourage everybody to look at that. in the email that we sent out this week, inviting people to take this we offered kind of an early results for people who participate. So if you participate, you will get the results about 30 days before the rest of the membership. 

So keep that in mind, another small incentive to, to take the time to fill it out because your data is super valuable to us and we really appreciate it.

Julie Groves: Next time we do the salary, sir, or compensation survey. I really want us to add, put a question on there and say which risk managers actually get spring break off. Cause I sure don't we don't even close for spring break, so.

Jenny Whittington: We need to talk to your president, Julie. 

Well, thank you so much to you both for being my guests on such short notice today, and I, that will be a wrap of URMIA Matters.