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:

On average, organizations budget about 0.2 FTE per unit (more or less depending on the 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, counts as compensated hours. It falls under working hours, and we include it in our budget.
• This varies widely. I have worked at institutions that expect chairs and presidents to handle everything on their own time, as well as places that provide eight hours per month for extra work.
• As chair (president) of Nursing Shared Governance at my hospital, I receive 32 hours of shared governance time per month. Shared Governance maintains its own budget system. The hospital pays me at the same hourly rate as when I work in the OR, my practice area. We use the Kronos system for tracking all hours. Specifically, I identify my SG hours in Kronos by logging them in an exception book in the OR. The chair-elect receives 16 hours per month, and the process works the same for that position as well.
• I served as the shared governance president as a staff nurse at a large academic medical center with more than 1,200 staff nurses from 1989–90. Initially, I worked four days a week as president because we were preparing for a Joint Commission site visit, and this marked the first time the shared governance councils had to report on quality, standards, and continuing education work. It took significant effort 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 president; Monday evening and Friday night shift in the NICU), and it proved sufficient for making all the meetings and getting the work done. I worked at least 10 hours per day to fit everything in. Of course, we lacked the automated email and communication tools available now, so communication had to be more face-to-face. In addition, I had served as Treasurer for two years and as president-in-waiting for a year, so I knew the system and all the players well. Support for my salary (the three to four days a week during my presidency) was supposed to come from a central fund, but it had not been set up correctly and my unit supported my salary the entire year. My unit manager understandably felt frustrated, and why no one could fix that always remained beyond me. I thought it should have been a simple cost center fix, especially since my work supported the entire hospital, not just my unit. Since then I heard the organization reduced the allocation to two to three days a week, but at large organizations shared governance officers need adequate time to organize everything they have to manage across all committees.
• My experience as a chief nursing officer at one hospital involved budgeting 0.5 FTE for the president for the year. At another organization, I budgeted similarly, though the position carried the title of chair to match the academic chair title rather than president. Both received pay from the central shared governance budget, matched to the staff RN salary.
• We allocate a 0.2 FTE for our president, which covers 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 attend and represent nursing at key leadership meetings. It comes out to about a 0.2, paid at the president’s salary from a non-productive education account. If you have experience or expertise concerning this topic, you can email your comments.