Survey Says: WICT, NAMIC Teaming Up for Calls to Industry

You’re running out of excuses for not filling out WICT and NAMIC‘s employment surveys. Answering a call from the industry, the 2 are working to combine the data collection process for WICT’s annual PAR survey and NAMIC’s biennial survey on multi-ethnic employment in the industry. WICT and NAMIC will still distribute separate surveys this year, but at the same time, with simplified questions, featuring basic employee info. The idea is that while you have the info handy for one survey, you’ll fill out the other one as well. The ultimate goal is to eventually combine the two efforts into one survey that measures multi-ethnic employment as well as pay equity, advancement and resources for women (more consolidation in the industry!? Shocker!) "HR execs are being bombarded by surveys, not just from within our industry," explained NAMIC pres Kathy Johnson. NAMIC will release its findings at its leadership conference in Sept. WICT’s PAR results will be released in conjunction with its Nov Gala. The groups are still deciding how things will work in the future, when NAMIC’s conference is clustered with fall events, including CTAM Summit, and the WICT Gala moves to the spring event cluster, which includes the Cable Show. WICT and NAMIC hope the merged effort will mean greater participation. ’06 NAMIC survey garnered responses from just 14 companies. Last year’s PAR survey received responses from 38 companies, primarily programmers and cable operators. "We would love to see more vendor and suppliers participating," said WICT pres/CEO Benita Fitzgerald Mosley. "We’re going to make a big push to try and infiltrate that sector so that we can pull it out and have it stand on its own like we do with programming and operators." At this point, NAMIC’s just hoping for greater participation from MSOs and programmers, with its partner DiversityInc sending the survey request out to about 40 companies this year. For the 1st time, WICT’s PAR survey can be filled out online. NAMIC’s study has previously been available on the Web. "We know that it’s really difficult to take the time and energy to corral all this data, and we really appreciate the efforts that companies put into participating," Mosley said. "We’re listening to them and responding to their needs the best way we can at this point." — Check out Cable360.net for more from Mosely and Johnson.