July 30 Update:
SAC is pleased to announce that The Portage Group has been selected to conduct the national compensation and workforce survey. SAC has signed the contract, and work will begin this summer. Members can expect to receive the survey in their inboxes in mid to late August, with the final report anticipated toward the end of 2026.
June 4:
Speech-Language & Audiology Canada (SAC) is seeking proposals to design and conduct a national compensation and workforce survey to provide benchmarking insights for members and support SAC’s advocacy and workforce intelligence. The survey is intended to become a recurring benchmark resource for members and the broader profession.
It has been several years since SAC last conducted a salary and benefits survey of its members and associates, with the most recent survey undertaken in 2018. This survey remains an important resource for SAC’s membership, as it provides comprehensive insights into compensation trends across the profession and enables communication health professionals to assess how their own salary and benefits compare with those of their peers nationwide.
See the Request for Proposal.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the total size of SAC’s eligible survey population by profession, and are there target sample sizes or response rates for each group?
SAC does not prescribe minimum sample sizes or response rate thresholds. Proponents are expected to propose and justify their own targets based on statistical reliability and representation requirements.
Are there priority subgroups that require targeted sampling strategies (e.g., rural practitioners, private practice)?
The RFP requires meaningful representation across provinces and territories, profession groups, years of experience, employment settings, and employment status.
Proponents should design sampling strategies that account for potential underrepresentation in these dimensions. The two priority groups are: 1) Rural and remote (including Northern remote and Indigenous groups), 2) Private practice practitioners.
Can SAC provide member database details on representation, across provinces/territories, profession groups, years in practice, employment setting, employment status, so that vendor can design a sample strategy?
For the purpose of this RFP, the following number of members should be considered for jurisdictions across Canada:
Members:
- SLP: 6600
- AUD: 950
- CHA: 400
For more detailed data, the proponents should reach directly to SAC.
Of the 6,200 members, what is the breakout per each of the three major study groups: (a) speech-language pathologists, (b) audiologists, and (c) communication health assistants?
Approximately 83% of members identify as speech-language pathologists, 12% as audiologists, and 5% as communication health assistants. Members are located across all provinces and territories and work in a variety of employment settings and practice models.
SAC recognizes that employment arrangements, including full-time, part-time, contractor, private practice, and multiple-employer models, vary across the professions. Respondents are encouraged to recommend appropriate sampling, recruitment, and response strategies to support meaningful analysis across key groups.
Additional aggregate information required to support survey implementation may be provided to the successful respondent, subject to privacy, confidentiality, and contractual requirements.
To what extent should the 2026 survey align with the 2018 survey instrument to enable longitudinal comparisons? If no, are you looking for a complete survey re-design? If yes, would you consider extending the deadline for the development to ensure proper feedback and testing?
The expectation is that this survey will partially align with the 2018 survey. A complete redesign is not the intention of this RFP, however since this is a new survey, a complete replication is not expected either.
We are open to considering reasonable adjustments to the development timeline, where proponents can demonstrate that additional time will have a meaningful impact on the quality of the tool and data that will be collected.
Should vendors assume one integrated survey with branching by profession, or three separate but coordinated surveys for S-LPs, audiologists, and communication health assistants?
The RFP requires that survey instruments be customized for each of the three profession groups. Whether this is achieved through a single instrument with branching logic or three distinct instruments is left to the proponent to recommend and justify. Proponents should explain how their approach supports both profession-specific analysis and cross-profession comparison.
The RFP requests analysis across the following key areas, “Hours worked, including full-time/part-time status, weekly hours, and workload distribution”. What is meant by “workload distribution”? For each of the three groups, roughly what percentage are full-time vs. part-time?
“Workload distribution” refers to how time is allocated across different service types or settings (e.g., direct client care versus administration, versus supervision, travel, report writing, teaching, leadership roles, etc.), depending on the area where the practitioner works.
The proponents should develop the product based on the assumption that the full-time/part-time practitioner population varies across professions, employment sectors, carrier stages and practice models.
Does SAC require a standardized definition of Total Cash Compensation across all sectors, including private practice and contractor models?
For private practice respondents, should compensation data capture gross billings, net income, or both?
At minimum the compensation will distinguish between base salary and wages. Additional forms of compensations could be overtime, bonuses, consulting, etc. For the private practice some examples are gross billing rates and revenue sharing.
The proponents are expected to propose a methodology that would allow comparison across sectors and relevant analysis within the practice models.
How does SAC expect compensation be reported for respondents with multiple roles or income sources?
Recognizing that many respondents may have different work arrangements, the survey methodology should accommodate the reality of different types of practice.
The approach should allow the respondents to identify a primary employment setting and capture additional sources of income (where applicable). The methodology should allow the possibility to analyze both data points (primary versus total compensation without double counting).
Are there specific compensation or workforce issues SAC already knows are of concern to members?
For more information on this, please email us for a copy of the 2018 survey report.
What level of data disaggregation is expected in the final outputs (e.g., province × experience × sector)?
The RFP requires analysis across demographics, compensation, experience, workload, employment sectors, tenure, benefits, and employer change motivators, with representation across provinces/territories, profession groups, experience levels, employment settings, and employment status.
Proponents should be able to recommend the appropriate approach to subgroup analysis and minimum reporting, based on sample sizes, confidentiality of the responses, and analytical data.
For reporting, our assumption is 7 reports in total (one comprehensive internal report in English and 3 profession-specific reports in English and French). Is this assumption correct?
The RFP identifies the following core deliverables:
- profession-specific summary reports for all three groups (or one comprehensive report covering all three), available in English and French;
- one detailed internal findings report in English only; and
- one executive summary for leadership and the Board.
Reports can be organized to include audience-targeting sections within the same report.
Who are the most important audiences for the final outputs: members, SAC leadership, the Board, employers, policymakers, or external stakeholders?
The primary audiences identified in the RFP are:
- External: SAC members (profession-specific summary reports) and other interested parties.
- Internal: SAC leadership and staff (internal findings report), and the SAC Board (executive summary).
Will you want comparisons made with the 2018 results? If yes, will the 2018 questionnaire and report be available for review? Will the raw data be available from the 2018 study?
Please email us for a copy of the 2018 survey report. Proponents should consider a comparison with the 2018 results, where methodologically appropriate.
Will the consultant be responsible for full translation and linguistic validation, or will SAC provide review and approval support?
The RFP requires all public-facing reports and survey instruments to be available in English and French and asks proponents to state whether translation is included in their pricing and who is responsible for review and validation.
Will SAC provide direct access to member contact lists, or will survey distribution be managed exclusively by SAC?
Survey distribution is managed by SAC to ensure members privacy protection and compliance with data privacy requirements. SAC doesn’t intend to provide access to member contact lists.
Proponents should describe the approach to survey distribution, such as requirements to survey platforms, unique survey links, reminder schedules, response monitoring, etc.
Should proposals assume a multi-year engagement structure, given the intent to establish a recurring survey?
The RFP states that the survey is intended to establish a recurring benchmarking framework and that SAC may consider a multi-year agreement where appropriate. Proposals may include pricing and a proposed structure for a multi-year engagement, but this is not a requirement.
Proponents should identify one-time versus recurring fees in their financial proposals.
What does SAC want this survey to track in future years as a recurring benchmark? And, is this expected to be conducted again in 2027?
Some of the core elements to be tracked are: compensation (salary and total), benefits, employment status, hours worked, workload distribution, years of experience, employment sectors, and the factors influencing recruitment and retention.
The frequency of the survey administration has not been determined yet. However, proponents can provide recommendations with regards to this in their proposals.
Regarding Section 5: Financial Proposal: The second to last item is: Non-monetary indicators supporting pricing assumptions. We’re not sure what this means. Could you give us some examples of non-monetary indicators?
This refers to any non-cost factors that inform or justify the proposed pricing. For example, the number of survey questions, estimated respondent completion time, volume of translations required, number of report outputs, projected data cleaning complexity, or assumptions about member response rates. SAC is asking proponents to be transparent about the assumptions underlying their cost estimates.
The project timeline is very compressed e.g. you have allowed one month for data collection. In our experience this is would not be adequate. Are you open to an expanded timeline?
Proponents should be able identify and recommend timelines and to provide a rationale for those recommendations and the benefits of expending the timeline in their proposals.
SAC is open to consider reasonable changes to the project schedule where the proponents were able to demonstrate that the approach improves the overall quality, value and reliability of the data.
The financial proposal mentions additional fees and optional service pricing. What additional fees and optional service pricing does SAC expect?
SAC does not prescribe what additional or optional items must be included. Section 5 invites proponents to identify any services beyond the mandatory deliverables and price them separately. Examples might include additional data cuts, extended data retention, or additional knowledge-translation/knowledge-sharing sessions (where at least one is offered at no cost as part of the project).
The RFP states: “The successful consultant may be required to maintain appropriate professional liability and cyber liability insurance for the duration of the engagement and provide proof upon request.” Have you made a decision on this i.e. will professional liability and cyber liability insurance be a mandatory requirement?
Given the nature of this project, this is a mandatory requirement.
The financial proposal mentions annual price increase. Does SAC expect annual tracking and associated costs?
A decision on multi-annual engagement will be made at a later date. Proponents are encouraged to identify any types of assumptions regarding multi-year pricing options and costs associated with this.
To assist proponents in aligning proposed methodologies and deliverables with SAC’s expectations, would SAC be willing to provide either an anticipated budget range or an indication of the budget category for this project?
Proponents are expected to submit proposals that reflect the scope and complexity of the work, and articulate the value, methodology, and deliverable within their proposals.
SAC is a national charitable non-profit organization. We anticipate moderately complex national compensation proposals for the three professional groups, bilingual deliverables, and multiple reporting outputs.
