January 2006 ISSUE
what's in it for me?
survey says - you like the salary survey
When we discuss APEGGA membership with new graduates and other potential members, a question often asked is, “What’s in it for me?”
The simple answer, of course, is that APEGGA provides you a licence to practice engineering, geology or geophysics, and under Alberta law, you need our licence to practice.
But there is much more that we do. Though licensure and the enforcement of the EGGP Act make up our primary purpose, APEGGA offers a wide range of benefits and other services to its members.
What’s In It For Me? is a series of articles describing these programs.
APEGGA Salary Survey
The APEGGA salary survey — published under a more formal name, the Value
of Professional Services — is one of our most commonly accessed member
services. The survey accounts for nearly half of all downloads from APEGGA’s
website and receives attention not only from our members but a wide range of
other interested parties as well.
The survey and report are produced entirely by APEGGA staff. This year, we had 134 companies representing 9,068 individual APEGGA members participate, making it the largest survey of its kind in Western Canada.
The reason for this interest is fairly obvious — people like to know how they are doing in comparison to others with the same background and in the same industries. Companies like to know where their compensation packages stand within their industries. Information of this kind is what allows a free market economy to work efficiently.
Under Alberta’s professional legislation, a person must be licensed by APEGGA to practice engineering, geology or geophysics in the province, so the link between the value of the APEGGA licence and the salaries reported in the survey is clear. Other professions fall under similar professional legislation — medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians, lawyers, accountants and architects all must hold licences from their professional associations in order to practice.
To understand how APEGGA professionals’ earnings and professional fees stack up against other professions, the 2005 salary survey examined these other professions.
The mean base salary results from APEGGA’s survey were compared with the results of the 2005 Alberta Wage and Salary Survey for other professions. The average salary for each profession was compared with the overall annual salary for all workers in the province to demonstrate how each profession’s salary is performing in the economy. Medical doctors were excluded from the salary portion of the analysis because the Alberta results for this category were significantly lower than other recent results and thus somewhat suspect.
For all of the regulated professions examined, however, the annual cost of professional dues was determined and then expressed as a percentage of the profession’s mean salary.
APEGGA will continue to perform this kind of analysis every year in the salary survey to ensure our members understand the true costs and benefits of professional licensure.
