HR Paid for Strategic Thinking
Sure, the HR field can be a tough place to work sometimes. But perhaps HR professionals should be thankful this holiday season, suggest the results of the 2000 Human Resource Management Compensation Survey.
The survey, sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management and published by HR consultant William M. Mercer Inc., found that HR base salaries have been rising faster than overall U.S. salary increases in recent years. The findings, reported in HR Magazine in October, show that base pay rose 5.4% in 2000, 5.3% in 1999, and 4.3% in 1998. By comparison, the average annual increase for all U.S. jobs was 4.2% between 1998 and 2000.
What’s responsible for this trend? In part, it’s due to the fact that organizations are raising pay levels in order to hire and keep HR professionals with certain skill sets. Among the most important of these is the ability to be an excellent strategic thinker, according to Mercer. Such professionals have a solid understanding of the businesses in which they work, and they have increasingly sophisticated skills that help them do things such as manage alternative compensation schemes, handle mergers and acquisitions, and implement complex information systems.
To get people with the right sort of strategic business knowledge, some firms are recruiting operations executives into HR. Since many of these people are accustomed to higher pay levels than HR has traditionally received, they could be driving up overall HR base pay, suggests Mercer.
This may be part of an evolution that various HR organizations have pointed to in recent years. For example, a 1999 study from the Human Resource Planning Society found that HR professionals were spending much more of their time acting as strategic business partners than they had been five to seven years ago. And a 1998 HRI survey of HR professionals predicted that in five years the most important roles of HR professionals would include “strategic thinker” and “HR strategist/planner.”
Higher base pay and more challenging work: these are the types of trends that many HR professionals can be thankful for as they head toward the year 2001.
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To learn more about the 2000 Human Resource Management Compensation Survey, see the HR Magazine article at
http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/1000schaeffer.htm
A copy of the full study can be ordered at
http://www.imercer.com/dataandsystems/frame/index.html
The survey, sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management and published by HR consultant William M. Mercer Inc., found that HR base salaries have been rising faster than overall U.S. salary increases in recent years. The findings, reported in HR Magazine in October, show that base pay rose 5.4% in 2000, 5.3% in 1999, and 4.3% in 1998. By comparison, the average annual increase for all U.S. jobs was 4.2% between 1998 and 2000.
What’s responsible for this trend? In part, it’s due to the fact that organizations are raising pay levels in order to hire and keep HR professionals with certain skill sets. Among the most important of these is the ability to be an excellent strategic thinker, according to Mercer. Such professionals have a solid understanding of the businesses in which they work, and they have increasingly sophisticated skills that help them do things such as manage alternative compensation schemes, handle mergers and acquisitions, and implement complex information systems.
To get people with the right sort of strategic business knowledge, some firms are recruiting operations executives into HR. Since many of these people are accustomed to higher pay levels than HR has traditionally received, they could be driving up overall HR base pay, suggests Mercer.
This may be part of an evolution that various HR organizations have pointed to in recent years. For example, a 1999 study from the Human Resource Planning Society found that HR professionals were spending much more of their time acting as strategic business partners than they had been five to seven years ago. And a 1998 HRI survey of HR professionals predicted that in five years the most important roles of HR professionals would include “strategic thinker” and “HR strategist/planner.”
Higher base pay and more challenging work: these are the types of trends that many HR professionals can be thankful for as they head toward the year 2001.
====================================================
To learn more about the 2000 Human Resource Management Compensation Survey, see the HR Magazine article at
http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/1000schaeffer.htm
A copy of the full study can be ordered at
http://www.imercer.com/dataandsystems/frame/index.html