Enhancing the clinical research workforce: a collaborative approach with human resources.

Jobs for clinical research professionals (CRPs) have grown increasingly complex over the past 20+ years. This is due largely to additional administrative burden for investigators, study teams, sponsors, Clinical Research Organizations (CROs), and sites, particularly Academic Medical Centers (AMCs). Furthermore, National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reduced capacity to effectively fund research recognizing this is dependent on the overall congressional budget, which creates greater pressure for clinician scientists to secure external support. It is widely known clinical research will continue to become increasingly more complex for clinician scientists. This manuscript explores adoption of a clinical research competency-based job classification framework from the Joint Task Force for Clinical Trial Competency (JTFCTC) across several AMCs and the role of Human Resources (HR) in facilitating this process. This collaboration focuses on fostering successful projects tied to the business case in order to address equity and improve support for the clinical research enterprise.

Tackling standardization in clinical research workforce hiring using competency-based job classifications.

In 2016, Duke reconfigured its clinical research job descriptions and workforce to be competency-based, modeled around the Joint Taskforce for Clinical Trial Competency framework. To ensure consistency in job classification amongst new hires in the clinical research workforce, Duke subsequently implemented a Title Picker tool. The tool compares the research unit's description of job responsibility needs against those standardized job descriptions used to map incumbents in 2016. Duke worked with human resources and evaluated the impact on their process as well as on the broader community of staff who hire clinical research professionals. Implementation of the tool has enabled Duke to create consistent job classifications for its workforce and better understand who composes the clinical research professional workforce. This tool has provided valuable workforce metrics, such as attrition, hiring, etc., and strengthened our collaboration with Human Resources.