Action Verbs for Position Descriptions

The Hay Guide Chart Method of Job Evaluation

The SLA Image Task Force

Pushing the Pay Envelope: Y2K Compensation Strategies

by Stephen Abram

Are you happy with the perception of the value of special librarians in today's marketplace?

Why do so many librarians feel underpaid and undervalued? Where is the cash payoff in this, the knowledge-based economy? Of course, what we feel about this is not enough in today's business environment.

What are the specific perceptions decision-makers have about special librarians that affect us directly in the paycheck? What do you need to know about pay and compensation systems to be fully armed? What specifically can you do to increase your compensation package--as individuals and as a profession?

In 1988, the late SLA President Joe Ann Clifton, set up a SLA Inter-Association Presidential Task Force on the Image of the Information Professional. Its purpose was to study whether librarians should be fighting a "buns and sensible shoes" image or attacking very specific erroneous perceptions about librarians in the minds of decision-makers. Published in 1990, the data collected and analyzed by the Image Task Force showed us that our traditional approach to dealing with our perceived image problems had failed. I feel strongly that this is a key issue for our profession. Have we made any progress in the last decade? The answer is yes, we've made progress.

The Task Force discovered that, clearly, librarians should not be worrying about "buns and sensible shoes" cartoons or "Conan the Librarian". An avalanche of shocked and appalled letters to editors complaining about every perceived slight to special librarians serves only to position us as whiners. I believe that by acknowledging this sort of negative image we reinforce the image in the way saying "Don't think about green hippopotamuses" immediately makes you think about green hippos. We must begin to accept that this type of superficial image problem is not our top priority issue. We need to deal directly with those issues and attitudes that have an impact on our pay packets.

Let's Get Our Own House in Order!

Results of the Task Force surveys of librarians (all segments of the profession were surveyed) showed that we had significant attitude issues in our own profession. Anecdotal information collected over the years since the survey suggests to me that we still have lots of work to do.

Over fifty percent of librarians perceived that we (our profession and our colleagues) lack confidence.

Only just over thirty percent of us "sought" promotion, especially at the lower pay levels. It's a truism that you don't get what you don't ask for.

Over eighty percent thought the

profession is task-oriented, in direct contradiction to our decision-makers' perception of us as people/service-oriented. In reality we're process-oriented which, in our society, accrues higher pay levels and defines the usual image of a "professional".

Sixty-eight percent thought our salaries were appropriate, which is sadly in line with the result that many of us think we're not highly enough regarded by our employers. Pay is the most tangible measure of the regard in which your employer holds you.

In addition, between fifty and seventy percent of librarians earning between $30,000 and $80,000 per year were satisfied with their perquisites and benefits. Since perquisites and benefits represent up to twenty-five percent additional remuneration on top of base pay and with so many benefits calculated as a result of base pay and organization rank , may be a detrimental position to take as an individual or for our profession.

It bears repeating that we must value ourselves before others will value us.

Career Progressions

A draft of this article was reviewed by a senior compensation professional, a retired partner from a major global HR consulting firm. His comments were very interesting and I quote, in part:

"In virtually all large private organizations professional career developments follow a progression up a technical ladder. This typically applies to engineers, scientists, lawyers, computer specialists, and even sales persons. What this obviously does is open up salary opportunities over time as professional skills and accountabilities increase. The problem librarians have is that they are often perceived to be in a job with limited scope for growth. The library walls become your prison and the HR specialist your jailer. Maybe your association should explore gaining acceptance for technical ladders plus career-pathing opportunities within information-based services. There is a vast difference between a recent graduate librarian and someone with experience who can understand the needs of the organization, participate in complex projects, build bridges internally and externally, and design services. You suggest that maybe the title "librarian" is a problem. I agree. As an example of what I'm talking about, I worked on a job-matching project that included a job description for a nurse and a technical ladder for health specialists. The trap word was "nurse". Nurse = job, Health Specialist = a choice between four levels depending on the complexity and breadth of service offered. I think the solution might be found in bring the information professional "librarian" into the mainstream of what the company is trying to accomplish (in both the minds of management and the librarian). It has something to do with entering into a dialog with an organization about, "What is the highest value-added that information professionals can offer to the organization?" It is a two-way dialog."

What Specifically Can We Do To Address These Problems?

There are three areas that must be dealt with in our profession and through our professional associations would seem to be a good strategy. First, on the individual level, we must each learn and understand the factors within our organizations that feed and support the salary administration system. These areas include job descriptions, job evaluation systems, job titling, and salary surveys. Second, on the political level, my personal belief is that we must demand laws that protect the rights of women, and ensure compliance with pay and employment equity legislation. We must support moves toward strengthening these laws and narrowing the gender gap in salaries and removing the "glass ceilings" which keep far too many professionals from achieving all of that which they are capable.

Lastly, the drastic changes that have taken place in organizations in recent years and the constant changes occurring in jobs have discouraged many organizations from maintaining well-written descriptions and expert evaluation panels. Within these organizations brief accountability statements combined with a lot of verbal input into whatever the process is, represents the path you have to follow. In this context the process of crafting a personal position description is still useful to focus your "conversations" with management.

Outlined below are some basic things you can do to communicate your position more effectively.

Job Descriptions

I have had the opportunity to review a number of colleagues' library job descriptions over a great variety of industries and positions. Without a doubt, we need a lot of work in this area. You need a job description that accurately conveys the nature, scope, and value of our jobs in terms that management will understand and reward. And, since we often write our own position descriptions, it can be a self-inflicted wound. Just a few of the problems evident are:

We not only don't use enough action verbs, we often seem to go out of our way to avoid them. Go to www.informationoutlook. com to see a list of action words. Professional jobs are action and process-oriented. Avoid focusing in tasks and minutiae. It is amazing how many information professionals feel the need to inventory the clerical aspects of their jobs. Many erroneously think this proves their 'busy-ness' and worth. If a job looks too busy to think, it will appear more clerical. Even CEO's have clerical tasks they must do to be effective--the CEO doesn't highlight it to his board! Why do we highlight ours to our senior managers?

We don't just occasionally slip into library jargon, we positively wallow in it. If we accept the proposition that the position description document can be a useful tool to communicate to management the nature and value of the work we do, then we cannot expect them to learn and understand our peculiar lingo. We also must acknowledge that it is unlikely they will admit they don't understand the lingo or ask for clarification. For example, don't say "reference interview", when non-librarians will better understand that you "negotiate research project limits and criteria". You don't "catalog books" when they'll better understand that you "organize materials to professional standards for maximum access". The same rule applies to other jargon like "online searching", "ILL's", "Intranet bookmark URL verification and maintenance", etc. You get the idea--have a non-librarian read your position description and point out all jargon with a highlighter. We're so immersed in library culture that we often don't recognize it anymore.

Use management words and terminology. While this sounds similar to the recommendation above, every organization has its own culture and style of management. You should, for example, make sure that your document doesn't sound too academic in a company whose culture is not academic. If you're in a business, "profit" is usually not a dirty word but in a non-profit environment maybe "surplus" is more acceptable. Find and use the terminology your organization uses to discuss results and success.

Focus your job description on end-results. Then focus these end-results on your value to the organization's mission. Don't focus on tasks. Focusing on tasks will emphasize the irrelevant clerical aspects of any job. Always ask yourself "why" does this job exist and what key end-results must I accomplish to achieve that end. Focusing on end-results will force you to make the connection to the organization's ultimate needs and the role you play in achieving these. When you make this connection--make it explicit. Being explicit doesn't mean adding a long descriptive paragraph, but it means that your role and impact can be expressed as a sound bite. Don't expect the reader to make the leap to your position's real purpose and role.

Emphasize your contribution to the enterprise's primary mission. Have a clear plan for yourself and a polished mission for your information center and know the mission and business of your organization. Mold every activity of your function to support the mission, goals, and objectives of your organization.

Prioritize those activities that deliver the most value, not necessarily those that take the most time. Don't feel the need to have twenty-five to thirty items on your list of job responsibilities. Many position description formats now limit how many primary responsibilities you can have-- choose carefully. Resist the temptation to describe your activities too broadly in order to encompass everything--you'll just look unfocused. Extremely detailed position descriptions can also create an impression of a job that needs tight control and has little room for flexibility and freedom to act. Your professional training gives you the competencies to be trusted to make decisions in the context of your role--don't belabor the point by being too detailed.

Emphasize your human relations skills and how important they are to accomplishing the end-results required of you. It is important to realize that most library jobs require influencing skills in the management of staff, dealing sensitively with users, reference interviewing, and negotiating contracts with suppliers. The old stereotype of the librarian who needed simple courtesy and reactive skills in dealing with others is not true and this stereotype must be explicitly attacked in your job descriptions.

Always include your professional activities such as reading the professional literature, attending conferences and meetings, publishing and serving on SLA chapter or division committees or executives. This will serve to underline the professional nature of the incumbent.

Use confident language (e.g., "the incumbent will" not "the incumbent should"). Most library position descriptions I've read have this subtle land mine in them. Action-oriented descriptions convey higher value. It also subtly attacks that pathetically dated but still powerful librarian stereotype.

Use the present tense. Important jobs do things (not will do or did). You lose a sense of urgency in accomplishing the position's goals through simple poor use of tense. It's subtle but, in the end, gives power to your writing.

Don't allow the printed position description document to represent you. A job description is a surrogate for you. Create opportunities to build understanding of your job and role by having conversations with key people who can have an impact on your success. Identify leaders, decision-makers, unit heads, strategists, members of the job evaluation committee and build relationships with them through personal contact. Talk to the leader--whether your organization calls them president, dean, deputy minister, whatever. It's easier to get influence to flow down than to push it up the organization.

Job Evaluation Systems

There are a number of varieties of job evaluation systems. Most large organizations have adopted at least one system to appraise the value and relationship of a position (not person) to their organization in relation to other jobs in the same organization. In fact, in a number of jurisdictions, companies are required to do this by law to meet pay equity and employment equity legislation.

There are two primary types of job evaluation systems: qualitative and quantitative. Examples of qualitative systems are "classification" or "ranking" systems. Examples of quantitative systems are those that use either the factor comparison method or the point-factor method. They may have names like the Hay Plan or Hay System, the Paterson method, the Decision Band Method, the SUNY plan, the Phoenix plan, the Aiken plan, or many, many more. These systems range from being very simple to understand and administer to being very complicated with any number of sophisticated options and benefits. The company HR department generally administers these, often, but not always, in consultation with a consulting firm. The consulting firm provides advice, training, independent salary surveys, compensation audits and correlation of the jobs to industry norms, and other compensation or salary administration-related services, often among other consulting or actuarial services.

In general, it is important to understand the method by which your company assigns a point value to your job. It's important to remember a somewhat difficult distinction--the points assigned to your position, while abstractly defining the position's worth to the organization, are NOT supposed to be based on the current incumbent's value or performance. Although very difficult, I recommend you make a real effort to divorce yourself from taking any personal sense of worth from this process or measurement. The evaluation is supposed to focus on the value of the position to the organization. It may be that what is valued is merely a well-organized collection of materials devoid of reference services and this can be a clear organizational choice. Then again, it can happen through sheer neglect, incremental changes over time, or lack of assertive or proactive communication that the library positions have clearly outgrown their rankings/ratings.

Each job evaluation system attempts to remove as much emotion and subjective evaluation as possible and to encourage as many objective measures as practical. Most enlightened organizations spend a great deal of time and money communicating to their employees the fairness and reasonableness of their system. This may not be the case in your organization.

Job Titles

It is undeniable that your job title can set the tone of many, even most, of your internal, organizational relationships, and often the perception of the community at large as to your value to society. While the it is intriguing to try to choose the best library job titles, it is important to realize that many salary administration systems are designed to avoid the influence of job titles. It is perhaps a generally accepted cynicism that anyone can get a fancy title but getting the pay to go with it is quite another story.

Many of the library titles in the corporate world seem to have been pulled from the academic or public library setting (head librarian; reference librarian; head, technical services; etc.). This is not the optimum strategy. Your job title should match your corporate or organizational culture in order to serve the strongest internal communication function. It may be more appropriate to use a title like "manager, library" in a corporate setting or "information research officer" in a banking environment. However, the debate over a single, best title or the word librarian is distracting and truly counter-productive. The ultimate, important task of a job title is to communicate your role within your organization in the context of its unique culture and style. Think carefully about your title and review whether it reflects your status within your enterprise or just to your professional colleagues. It matters not that your co-workers and peers call you "librarian". Most lawyers are called lawyers, and most doctors are called doctors and nurses are called nurses. They certainly don't let that stop them from beings called partner, chief of surgery, or professor of obstetrical nursing

Librarians often have difficulty separating our profession from our jobs. Librarianship has a long and honorable history and a bright future. The job title "librarian" is insufficient to describe the breadth of opportunity opening up in today's world. Even though the word "librarian" does describe several jobs that are wonderful, valid, and available to us with our education and training, librarianship can be practiced in a wide variety of roles and environments. CPA's practice their profession in a colorful multitude of positions from bookkeeper to financial analyst through consultant and CEO without insisting (or having their colleagues insist) that they should call all their positions "accountant".

Salary Surveys and Other Tools

Since the Image Task Force, much progress has been made by SLA to provide us with the tools to discuss our pay. It's important to remind ourselves of this and acknowledge that the association is making progress on our behalf. However, it's up to us to use the tools.

SLA's formerly triennial salary survey is now annual (since 1997). In the 1999 edition, salary and earnings are considered with the following breakdowns: bonus amounts, library size, benefit coverage, union status, new responsibilities, and more to gauge total monetary compensation. The 1999 surveys were sent out in spring 1999. It is important we learn to read and analyze our own salary surveys and make comparisons outside of our profession. We must stop being inward-looking on this issue and focus on the whole picture encompassing total pay concepts and include benefits, bonuses, profit-sharing, perks, etc. in our reviews.

The much lauded SLA competencies document, Competencies for Information Professionals in the 21st Century has developed "legs" beyond our wildest dreams. It is having an impact on, to name just a few, communicating our role in society, improving graduate education for special librarians, targeting SLA continuing education and conference programming, and even discussing our profession amongst ourselves.

Barbara Spiegelman's 1998 publication based on the "Competencies" document describes the attitudes and skills necessary for successful management and delivery of excellent information services. Additionally, this publication provides the context behind the development of the report, as well as valuable chapters on using the report as a compensation tool.

Position Descriptions for Special Libraries (3rd ed. 1996) covers all sorts of new jobs. This book is complemented by Ellis Mount's, Expanding Technologies--Expanding Careers: Librarianship in Transition, which contains personal essays from twenty-one contributors whose success reflects the expanding opportunities available for alternative careers in librarianship. You can expand this with SLA's 1997 volume, The Future for Librarians: Positioning Yourself for Success.

The Ernst & Young report for SLA, Unlocking the Door to Higher Compensation: Your Key to the Salary Maze, discusses trends in compensation and benefits. It contains cost-of-living data in the U.S. and Canada with regional breakdowns, offers strategies for comparing data from SLA salary survey with other sources, and includes sample worksheets for calculating the value of a compensation package.

All of the above publications are either available for free on the SLA web site or through the SLA Virtual Bookstore. We can safely say that SLA has made the effort to develop and provide the tools to its members to arm them for success. It's up to us to seek these out and use them. Maybe your chapter or division or local library school has a collection of these tools to borrow.

Marketing Communications

On our association level, we must now be prepared to build on our nascent public relations program in this area and design a program to target the group of people who influence our pay and stress the true nature of our work, emphasizing the perception weaknesses from the surveys:

• Librarians are PROACTIVE
  
• Librarians are adaptable and innovative
  
• Librarians are strong, assertive individuals
  
• Librarians are essential to twenty-first century teams
  
• Librarianship is a desirable career
  
• Librarians are technological experts in our field
  
• Librarians are content experts
  
• Librarians manage large budgets and assets well

Marketing special librarians and information professionals as key players in the knowledge economy and catalysts for success in our enterprises is a critical long term play that we must start now.

And lastly, on the personal communications side--despite all the tools, documents, and reports discussed above--nothing replaces a conversation and a personal relationship with your decision-makers. Use the tools, like your position description, the SLA Salary Survey, or the title on your business cards, to initiate a conversation with your senior managers about your position, your role in the enterprise, and the future of your services. You have everything to gain from better understanding and everything to lose through organizational ignorance and an ill-informed management.

Stephen Abrams, M.L.S., is vice president of Micromedia Limtited, an IHS Group Company. He also served on SLA's Board of Directors. In a previous position he was director, administration, Information and Marketing Resources at the Hay Group in Canada and chaired their internal job evaluation committee. You can contact him at sabram@micromedia.on.ca.

Io.Links
www.informationoutlook.com

• Action Verbs for Position Descriptions
  
• The Hay Guide Chart
  
• Method of Job Evaluation
  
• The SLA Image Task Force