Staffing remains a big issue for IRBs in 2016
Limited career ladder opportunities
The job market for experienced and credentialed IRB directors and staff remains high as 2016 begins, but IRB offices continue to cope with increasing workloads and understaffing, according to IRB professionals and the 2015 IRB Advisor Salary Survey.
“Not enough staff” and “keeping capable folks” are common issues raised by readers responding to the survey.
Readers’ experiences mirror what longtime IRB professionals have witnessed in the past year: “The universal question is, ‘How do you keep good people?’” says Susan Rose, PhD, executive director in the Office for the Protection of Research Subjects (OPRS) at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Rose is also a member of the IRB Advisor editorial advisory board.
When IRBs need to hire people with experience, they often will resort to searching nationally as well as looking within the local community, notes Nancy Moody, JD, MA, director of the Research Integrity Office at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Particularly when it comes to finding IRB directors or leaders, it takes a national search, notes Elizabeth E. Hill, PhD, RN, associate chief of staff, research at the VA Sierra Nevada Health Care System in Reno. Hill is also on the IRB Advisor editorial advisory board.
IRB Advisor’s 2015 Salary Survey suggests that salaries, raises, and aging leadership are continuing issues for IRBs.
The median age of respondents to the 2015 Salary Survey was 51-55 years, with no respondents in their 20s and the greatest numbers of respondents in their late 50s and early 60s.
This corresponds with anecdotal evidence that IRB leadership is aging nationwide, and within the next decade there will be a generation of human research protection experts retiring. This poses a particular challenge for IRBs that are unable to keep their most promising leaders on staff in the interim, waiting for that one big leadership job to open up, Rose notes.
“I think that it’s going to be a problem, filling director roles,” she says. “The IRB can’t hire someone with a huge salary to wait until I leave.”
One possibility is to elevate leaders-in-waiting to program leadership roles, Rose adds.
And IRBs in need of a new director can always go to national IRB conferences and meet with IRB directors who might be interested in moving up or somewhere else, Rose suggests.
Moody, who is 58, says that she plans to stay in her current role as director of a research integrity office until she retires, and she does wonder about succession planning.
“I just don’t know that we’re letting the next generation come up,” Moody says.
One solution is to look for employees or new job applicants with work ethics and leadership potential — even if they do not have the textbook human research protection career experience and credentials, she suggests.
“I’m very proud that in our office, the person who has no [prior] experience is such an asset to our office,” Moody says. “He’s very service-oriented, and I just don’t know if the requirement of having someone take the CIP exam and having people with so many years of experience has merit if you have an office with enough experienced people.”
IRB directors can always train good employees and even groom them for future leadership roles, so they probably shouldn’t be tied to checking the box on certain job application requirements, she adds.
The Salary Survey showed that most respondents have a graduate degree. About 30% had a bachelor’s degree or a bachelor’s and some graduate work, and about 15% had only an associate’s degree. Also, the median number of years respondents worked in their current field was 13-15 years.
Yet despite having both higher education and long experience, salaries were fairly low: Almost all reported having no change in salary or a salary increase of 1% to 3%.
And the median salary was $70,000 to $79,999. There was a fairly even distribution of annual gross income from $30,000 to $130,000-plus, with most people listing $60,000-$69,999 as their salary range.
For lower-level IRB staff, the problem often is retaining them at a job where there is little opportunity for growth, Hill adds. “There isn’t a lot of room for growth unless somebody leaves.”
The professional growth issue is problem, Rose says.
“When you have four people in your office and each are doing the same thing, how do you build a career ladder with four people?” she adds.
Even with these career growth limitations, many IRBs have fairly low staff turnover.
“Our turnover is primarily caused by people leaving town and accompanying a spouse to a new city,” Rose notes.
However, nearly 24% of respondents to the salary survey reported having lost staff in their department in the last year, and the vast majority of the others reported no change.
Although finding their replacements is difficult, IRBs can search for research coordinators who are eager to try something new. They also can attend PRIM&R and other meetings and talk with IRB directors, Rose suggests.
“That’s a natural place to find new staff,” Rose says.
A bigger issue that many IRB directors might relate to involves IRB office workloads, she says.
“We’re so short-staffed,” Rose says. “If someone is leaving, the time lag in hiring is a huge problem.”
The Salary Survey also found that workloads have become an issue: About 57% of respondents said they have seen an increase in their workload in the past year, while fewer than 10% saw a decrease. The rest — 33% — said it remained the same.
While the median number of hours worked was in the 31-40 hour range, more than 40% of respondents said they work more than 40 hours a week. Nearly 10% said they work 56-60 hours per week.
Since the publication last fall of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), some IRB leaders have suggested the new rules will affect workloads at IRBs. When the rules are made final, they might result in less work for some IRB offices because they appear to be designed to eliminate duplication and lessen the workload.
“The concept is to streamline and deliver ethical review, but not to duplicate,” Moody says. “In that sense, [the NPRM] would make less work.”
However, anytime there is a major regulatory change, IRBs must shoulder — at least in the short term — a heavy workload burden, Rose notes.
“IRBs will be redoing all policies and procedures, re-educating everybody, redoing all of their forms, dealing with all the issues with consent and all the issues now instituting limited IRB review,” Rose says. “Continuing review will be eliminated; there will be more exclusions/exceptions, and all of these changes require follow-up in a way that I believe will be [staffing] intense.”
What is your highest degree?
How many people work in your department (IRB administrative side)?
What is your annual gross income from your primary position?
In the last year, how has your salary changed?
How long have you worked in your present field?
How has your workload changed in the last year?
In the last year, has your department lost or gained staff?
The job market for experienced and credentialed IRB directors and staff remains high as 2016 begins, but IRB offices continue to cope with increasing workloads and understaffing.
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