Remote Work & Compensation: Latest Survey Trends

Join host Julie Groves as she speaks to Jenny Whittington and Jim Mulholland about the latest trends in URMIA’s compensation survey. Jenny and Jim delve into what the results mean for compensation regarding remote and hybrid work, how URMIA’s compensation surveys have evolved over the years, and how the results of URMIA’s compensation survey can benefit you in your professional life.

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Transcript

Show Notes
-URMIA Member Directory [member login required]
-URMIA Salary Survey Report (2022, 2018, and 2015 included)
-Season 3, Episode 10: URMIA 2022 Compensation Survey Insights with Christine Eick
-CUPA-HR
-AC 22- COVID Risks That Are Here to Stay with Juan Azcarate, Tamarah Holm, & Sandy Mitchell [AC22 Community membership required]
-Jeff Chasen, JD- AVP for Employee Growth, Development, Accessibility, & Inclusion, University of Kansas

Guests
Jenny Whittington- Executive Director, URMIA

Jim Mulholland- Director of Compensation and Risk Management, Grinnell College

Host
Julie Groves- Director, Risk Services, Wake Forest University


Transcript
Julie Groves: Hi everyone. This is Julie Groves, director of Risk Services at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and I'm also the current URMIA president. I'm your host for today's episode of URMIA Matters, and we're coming to you for lovely Baltimore, Maryland where the National Office staff and the URMIA Executive Committee are meeting to discuss next year's priorities and to also preview next year's conference space. Today on the podcast, we'll be discussing a couple of URMIA's most recent member surveys and with me. It is Jenny Whittington, everyone's favorite, or executive director of URMIA. And we also have Jim Mulholland of Grinell College. So, welcome you all. Thank you for being on the podcast today.

Jim Mulholland: Thanks.

Julie Groves: So, Jenny, everyone knows you because you're famous. So, I'm gonna ask Jim to tell folks a little bit about himself. So, Jim, why don't you tell us about yourself?

Jim Mulholland: Jim Mulholland and uh, I work at Grinnell College and worked there for 34 years. I'm the director of Compensation and Risk Management, which is a very odd marriage, but, uh, it does work pretty well for me. And I'm also the treasurer of URMIA.

Julie Groves: Well great. We are glad to have you on the podcast today. Have you been on a podcast before?

Jim Mulholland: I never have.

Julie Groves: Well, welcome. We're so glad that you joined us today and we hope that your first podcast is a lovely experience. So, a few months ago, URMIA relaunched our compensation survey. We do this every few years. And so, Jenny, would you tell us a little bit about URMIA’s Compensation survey?

Jenny Whittington: Absolutely. And always a pleasure to be a, a guest on the podcast where Julie is the host-

 Julie Groves: Correct. Not guest host.

 Jenny Whittington: But she's amazing at this and I'm just so happy to be together with her and the rest of the staff and the executive committee here in Baltimore. We're gonna have a great time and everybody should look forward to coming to this beautiful spot.

 Julie Groves: It's lovely.

 Jenny Whittington: And it's, I mean, it's like 70 degrees November 1st. I mean, it's crazy. So, yes, the salary survey or what we called this last time, the compensation survey, I believe it was maybe 2006 or 2007, the first year, that URMIA embarked on a, kinda a, a formal salary survey as it was.

And before that had been doing them very informally by volunteers every so often. And that year the board decided that they wanted to invest, um, in a consultant. And, um, you know, we, we spent some money on it, and it was, it was comprehensive, but, um, we were kind of dissatisfied. The board was dissatisfied with the information they got. And Christine Eick at that point said, you know, I really, I enjoy doing surveys and I have some analytic friends that I can call upon. And she started doing our surveys for us, which was, was awesome because she really understood the higher education landscape. And she had these buddies who were doing statistics and analysis.

So, the most recent three are in the library. They're right under the resources. There, it's the salary survey. If you're logged into the URMIA site and you remember, you'll be able to get a direct link to it there, and it'll be in the show notes. But we, we did just do the 2022 compensation, um, study. And then the, the, there's also one from 2018 and 2015. So, the difference between the two is we added a few nuances to the 2022 compensation study, kind of based on some feedback and just trends that we were aware of. But the, the results that we got in 2022, quite honestly, we, we just didn't have a great number of people take the survey this time. So, it's good data, it's positive.

I mean, I know there was some, some interesting nuances that URMIA members got more bonuses than maybe they had in the past, or retention kinda thing. So, there was some interesting, um, metrics in there, but I would encourage people to look at the 2018, 2015 to kinda look at things over time. So yeah, we, we've been doing them for a long time. They, they are one of the most popular resources in the URMIA library. So, yeah. Thanks for bringing this up, Julie.

Julie Groves: Well, so, what types, those who haven't looked at the survey, what types of information does the survey typically ask for?

Jenny Whittington: Oh my gosh, it asks a lot. And going back to Christine Eick being in charge of this, you know, people, um, in the early years of URMIA, like my early years in 2005, 2006, it was really popular to ask where do you report to in the organization? So, there's a whole part of the, of the study that's about, you know, what percentage reports to the business officer, what, what percentage of our membership report to legal counsel. So that's kinda interesting and, and to see like what other responsibilities the, the risk management person might have. Those things are in there. We also asked about the male/female ratio, and there were several other pretty interesting things that you might like if you're trying to benchmark against another program, you know, to kinda see what other people are doing.

Julie Groves: And for those of you who are interested, we do have a podcast from earlier this year. We spoke to Christine Eick a little bit more in depth about this compensation survey. So, we recently sent out another smaller survey that focused specifically on um, those who are able to do hybrid work. Or who have to work from home. So, sort of what people's current work arrangements are. So why do we decide to do that survey?

Jenny Whittington: Yeah, I mean it's, it's interesting because I think, you know, that's been a question we've all been asked in the last year. Like, are, are you going back to work full time? Are you going back one day a week? Or you know, what is that? And um, and a member, Tracey Swift from Arizona State University. She actually asked us if we would consider doing, um, URMIA wide so she could get a larger kinda sample. And we had, you know, really great results. This was a quick survey. We sent it out a few times to the membership and without a sweet spot where our members like to respond to things on Friday afternoons. So, you might see a trend in our future survey, um, surveying the members, you know, where we, we try to find those gaps, those little pockets of time where our members might be available to take a few minutes to respond to a survey.

Julie Groves: Well, it was great because it was, you know, five questions, so it didn't take any time.

Jenny Whittington: Exactly. And people are pretty interested in this topic.

Julie Groves: Definitely, definitely. And I assume that we'll publish the results of the survey at some point?

Jenny Whittington: Yeah, definitely. I'm not exactly sure if we're gonna re-, if we're gonna post it again and try to get additional or, um, we'll definitely share the analysis in the coming months.

Julie Groves: So just talking more in general about these surveys. Jim, uh, how are these types of surveys used in general, by people out in the world, by people out in the URMIA listener land?

Jim Mulholland: So, compensation about compensation is to other institutions that are similar in size, similar in the type of programs that are run, um, help help us with determining where positions can be placed within a compensation structure. It also tells us as a compensation professional whether we are paying competitive wage and there are also other wage- other things that people are looking at and like this, this new survey that came out in regard to work scheduling and, um, whether people are working in a hybrid schedule or they're working fully remote, all of those things are important to the aspect of how colleges compete with each other for limited resources.

Um, risk management. Um, not only are we competing with other colleges, we're competing with the world to many corporations. You know, they have risk managers, and they have specialty positions. Um, and for, for us, we're trying to compare what we do and how we pay and, uh, comparing that to not only other colleges, but to the national market. So, it is very important. So, the more information we can get, the more valid the survey becomes, the better the data.

 Julie Groves: So how would someone like me use this, this survey information for my professional life?

Jim Mulholland: So, as an individual, most surveys are not out there nationally, so you can just look at them. This kinda survey though is, is provided through, um, your organization, URMIA, and, and because of that you have access to, to information that may not be fully available to people like myself, um, in compensation and, and it is good information to benchmark with other positions, other institutions, and, and it's, it's good for us to be able to say, geez, this is what the, the market is paying in higher education. Um, and I, and I think that that's really the important thing for professionals such as ourselves, that the work in risk management is to get an idea where should we pay.

Julie Groves: So, if, uh, our listeners have questions or they want to find more resources on the changing, ever changing, which it always has been, but especially now that the ever changing higher ed workplace. Do you have any suggestions where they might be able to find those resources?

Jenny Whittington: I, I definitely do. I mean, our good friends at CUPA-HR, this is definitely their space. Um, and I know Jim is very familiar with people, CUPA-HR and URMIA has worked with them, you know, numerous things over the years, have a lot of respect for their work, and they're constantly doing surveys. And actually, when we published our, our, uh, 2022 results, we included a couple references to, um, a couple management positions that that fell into the, into the CUPA study.

But most of the URMIA members are members of CUPA-HR. So, I mean, you can definitely tap into their resources, and they have a very progressive education team that is, is always serving their members. And the executive director of, um, CUPA, um, Andy Brantley, he reported at a meeting I was at in December, you know, the, the seriousness of the HR issues in higher education, which I think we're all, you know, very aware of. Um, and I think, you know, it's a risk management issue really, you know, and it's something that we should all consider for the future.

 Julie Groves: So, we will have some resources linked on the show notes. We had some presentations at the annual conference, I believe, and so we'll have some of that information in there. But as always, for anyone who listens to this and you know, if you're interested in getting more information or you're interested in looking at the compensation survey and the hybrid, uh, remote, remote, hybrid in person work survey, when that is finally published, we will provide you all with links for that as well. So, does anybody have any final suggestions or comments before we wrap up our episode today?

Jenny Whittington: I just wanted to Yeah, comment on a couple. We did have a great session that's recorded, um, from the Indianapolis conference. It was called Risks That Are Here to Stay. It was done by our good friend Sandy Mitchell at MIT, Juan Azcarate from Texas Wesleyan, Tamarah Holm from, um, Gallagher. Um, the session was really well attended at the conference, so I would encourage everybody who has accessing to. We also did a virtual community, I think it was a compliance community, um, session. It was called The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting. Um, it wasn't actually recorded, but it was a really robust discussion. Our friend Jeff Chasen at University of Kansas did that, and I'm sure Jeff would, would definitely, um, be a good, good resource to reach out to. How about you, Jim? Any closing thoughts?

Jim Mulholland: Yeah. Mainly that compensation surveys, like any other survey, um, is more valid when most of your, your, uh, survey group participates. And, and that's really the, the most important thing for us to look at is that we're all splintered between very large institutions, very small institutions. And in order for us to get good data for each of those groups, which we do ask questions about that, um, it, it's helpful to have a significant number of participants. Um, and, and so it, I I just encourage everyone, uh, to participate as much as. In these surveys so we can provide you with, uh, really good data that is useful in your jobs and useful in your education institutions.

Julie Groves: Great. Well, and as Jenny said, we'll be looking for opportunities through the coming months to send out perhaps a few other micro surveys on topics of interest. So, everyone be sure to be on the lookout for that because to Jim's point, the more people that participate, the more valuable the information is. So, I wanna thank you both for being on the podcast today. It's very helpful, and we'll look forward to the results of our latest mini survey. And, uh, this wraps another edition of URMIA Matters.