Preparing for new challenges

Welcome to our triennial salary survey of health facilities operations and construction professionals, conducted in cooperation with the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) and the Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE).

Sponsored this year by Eaton Corp., the survey gives us an opportunity to track compensation trends among many of our top reader groups such as facilities management/operations/engineering, environmental services/housekeeping and construction/projects as well as to gather data on smaller samples of other titles within our readership.

Beyond the raw pay and bonus data, the salary survey also provides a closer look at how broader industry trends — such as merger-and- acquisition activity, shifting management priorities and the aging workforce — are affecting our readers and their organizations.

As I noted in this space last month, consolidation and the resulting increase in job functions of salary survey respondents are having a profound effect on the workload of health facilities professionals.

More than 20 percent of our survey respondents, who are heavily weighted toward facilities management/operations/engineering professionals, report having secondary responsibilities for construction/projects, maintenance, grounds, safety, security, environmental services/housekeeping and/or laundry operations. Smaller percentages also report secondary responsibilities for areas like biomedical/clinical engineering, infection prevention, parking/valet services, patient transport and real estate portfolio management.

This proliferation of additional areas of authority becomes more evident when one realizes that the percentage for each of these secondary areas of responsibility has gone up since our last salary survey in 2012.

Fortunately, educational opportunities are being expanded to help members handle some of these new tasks, as you will find in this month’s survey story on Page 19. In fact, health facilities professionals would be wise to take advantage of programs provided by ASHE and AHE as well as appropriate offerings from such groups as the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation and the International Association for Healthcare Security & Safety.

Given the health care field’s increased consolidation, these additional responsibilities are unlikely to abate anytime soon.