Compensation for shared governance officers varies widely across healthcare organizations. Here is practical advice from the Forum’s Advisory Board on budgeting and FTE allocation.

Advice From the Forum

How do organizations provide time and compensation for shared governance officers?

Members of the Forum for Shared Governance Advisory Board and the community at large respond:

We budget on the average 0.2 FTE per unit (more or less depending on number of total FTEs) for staff to do shared governance work.

• In general, any activity related to shared governance, such as education, participation, or awareness, is compensated hours. It’s considered to be working hours, and we have it in our budget.
• This varies widely. I have been at institutions that expect chairs and presidents to do everything on their own time to places that provide eight hours/month for extra work.
• As chair (president) of Nursing Shared Governance at my hospital, I am allotted 32 hours of shared governance time per month. Shared Governance has its own budget system. I am paid the hourly rate as when I work in the OR, my practice area. We use the Kronos system for tracking all of our hours. I identify my SG hours in Kronos, by logging them in an acception book we have in the OR. The chair-elect is given 16 hours per month. The process is the same for this position as well.
• I was the shared governance president as a staff nurse at a large academic medical with more than 1,200 staff nurses from 1989-90. I started with four days a week as the president because we were preparing for a Joint Commission site visit, and this was the first time the shared governance councils had to report off on quality, standards, and continuing education work; it was a big deal to prepare the council leadership for that. However, about three months into my presidency I had to cut back to three days a week due to budget (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as the president; Monday evening and Friday night shift in the NICU), and it was enough to make all the meetings and get the work done. I worked at least 10 hrs/day to get it all in. However, we were not as automated with e-mail and such then as we are now, and communication had to be more face-to-face. Also, I had been the Treasurer for two years and the president waiting-in-the-wings for a year so I knew the system and all the players well. Support for my salary (the three to four days a week while I was the president) was supposed to come from a central fund that paid my salary, but it had not been set up correctly and my unit supported my salary the entire year. I have to say my unit manager was not happy and why no one could not fix that was always beyond me. I thought it should have been a pretty simple cost center fix, and my work supported the entire hospital, not just my unit. Since then I heard the organization had gone down to two to three days a week, but at big organizations shared governance officers need time to organize everything they have to do and all the committees.
• My experience as a chief nursing officer at one hospital was that we budgeted 0.5 FTE for the president for the year. At another organization, I budgeted similarly, but the position was called chair to match the academic chair title, rather than president. Both were paid out of central shared governance budget, and it matched the staff RN salary.
• We allocate a 0.2 FTE for our president, which recognizes time to chair the Outcomes Council once a month, conduct monthly rounds, chair the quarterly unit council forums, and co-facilitate the nursing forums with me, as well as to attend and represent nursing at key leadership meetings. It comes out to about a 0.2, which is paid at the president’s salary from a non-productive education account. If you would have experience or expertise concerning this topic, you can email your comments.