MM salaries a sneer miss on rationality

Healthcare Purchasing News’ annual materials management salary survey made history this year but further illuminated a disturbing compensation trend that isn’t limited to healthcare or even the supply chain management segment.

HPN’s salary survey, the first and longest-running tabulation in the industry, garnered a record-shattering response rate for the 31-year-old magazine. In addition, the majority of respondents this year were women (51 percent to 49 percent), which is intriguing for a profession historically dominated by men.

But save for a slight uptick in pay hike percentages, those two elements represent the few positives the survey revealed in 2008. Unfortunately, salaries continue to slide, but that’s probably expected in an economy embroiled in turmoil during a presidential election year.

The egregious negative uncovered in this year’s salary survey is the compensation gap by gender.

Women’s salaries (in many, if not most industries) typically and unfairly trail that of men. Some justify that for arcane and illogical (but I’ll stop short of uttering sexism) reasons with little-to-no reason behind the justification.

When you look at the numbers in this edition you may notice that the reported salary gap between men and women is $5,000 tighter than last year’s survey results if you’re convinced that survey statistics are reliable indicators of trends beyond what someone is feeling at the moment he or she is answering the questions. But, in a year of exhaustive and extensive political exit polling by the very media industry of which I’m a player, I won’t bore you with a lengthy discourse on polling and survey philosophy, regardless of how snarkily delicious it might read.

On average nationwide, men make $15,000 more than women in healthcare supply chain management, according to the 2008 survey. If you work in the Southeast, the gulf widens to nearly $21,000; if you work in the Northeast it’s more than $19,000 and in the Central region it’s more than $15,000. Women seem to find a bit more balance in the Pacific and Mountain regions where the gap spans $4,000 to $6,000.

Unfortunately, average salaries around the country are lower across the board this year, compared to the previous year, perhaps due in part to the higher number of women responding. While this is enlightening (but not surprising), it’s as irritating as a grain of sand nestled inside a clamshell. Sans pearl.

Even at $15,000, which represents a considerable amount of cash for most mere mortals fortifying clinicians and stock locations, such a gender-based salary gap is not only utterly appalling but absolutely ludicrous because there’s no reasonable justification for it. None. No excuse.

There are plenty of equally capable, equally innovative and inventive, equally cost-conscious women in supply chain leadership positions who attend the same conferences, read the same media vehicles, hobnob in the same political and social networking circles and inspire success. And there are others not yet in key leadership positions that probably should be now or definitely should be in the future. They deserve to be rewarded in the same fashion because they earn it just like everyone else.

Whether it emanates from the board room or the CEO’s office at the top or it erupts from the ground level in the grotto of supply chain management, healthcare professionals (administrators and clinicians alike) need to unite and apply enough public and private pressure to make a difference. Pledge to tighten the salary squeeze between genders nationwide to four digits within two years (2010) with no outliers. Then pledge again to narrow the spread to three digits by 2015. Both challenges are possible and achievable if you take them seriously.

It’s time to stop the inanity. Change the rules of convention before convention plucks ingenuity, initiative, innovation and invention out of the process for good.