I have been following Northstar Media’s annual salary survey for years. It’s always been a valuable snapshot of our meeting planner salaries, and I share it often with people considering our industry. The spring 2020 survey showed the average meeting planner salary as US$87,000 (corporate, association and third party). Although this reflects a nice jump from $77,000 in 2012, we aren’t making as much progress as we should.
The $87,000 salary reflected a response pool of people who average 48 years old, have worked in the industry 14 years and work 50 hours per week. Almost half have a CMP. If you compare this salary to similar positions like a project manager (average salary $112,000 according to PMI.org) or marketing manager (average salary $134,000 according to Allbusinessschools.com), we are still pacing way behind.
Planners do the work of a project manager, like monitoring various workstreams and stakeholder needs. And they have the responsibilities of marketing managers, driving attendance, creating promotional campaigns and drafting content. Add to these duties the pressure of producing live experiences, and meeting and event planner earns the dubious honor of being one of the most stressful careers. Meeting professionals have to be experts in many fields, yet the work is still undervalued both in salaries and perception.
We need to be more transparent about salaries and job descriptions to increase consistency across sectors.
The gaps increase when you drill down further. The Northstar survey reveals that the average female meeting planner makes only $84,000 compared to the $100,000 of her male counterpart. And while we have made great progress with recognition of meeting planner titles, if your title happens to be event manager, your average salary drops to only $50,000 (indeed.com). The COVID-related effects of women leaving the workforce and contract labor replacing laid-off staff will only widen these gaps.
Almost everyone I talk with is passionate about being in such a vibrant and interesting industry. But we all want a fair wage. We want to be compensated for the expertise, complexity and stress this role entails. In fact, the Northstar respondents ranked these as the factors that would improve their job satisfaction: more money, less pressure, more advancement and more appreciation and respect for the work they do. I’ve heard these frustrations as long as I’ve been in our industry, so what can we do NOW to elevate our work?
First, we need to be more transparent about salaries and job descriptions to increase consistency across sectors. This consistency will help gender pay equity because our positions will be more recognizable to HR teams when hiring and in benchmarking salaries.
The second thing we can do as meeting professionals is to articulate the complexity of our work. We are the masterminds behind the curtains, focusing on the attendee experience. But we cannot downplay the amount of effort and skill involved in delivering the project. Inventory the work you are doing, get it inserted into your job description and calibrate it to similar positions in other industries (such as project manager or marketing manager).
Finally, we need to tie our results to driving business forward. How have our events and conferences mapped to the KPIs of the company? Speaking the language of business will help you build the case to get the support, salary and respect you deserve.
Annette Gregg, CMM, MBA
MPI Senior Vice President, Experience
agregg@mpi.org
